It was in this year 1795, "year III of the Republic," that was abolished the democratic constitution of 1793, which had not yet been put into execution, and established the Directory, of five members, one to be retired every year and replaced by a new member, all to be named by the legislative power and responsible to it. The latter was also divided, the council of the Five Hundred (_Cinq-Cents_) being charged with the duty of proposing the law, and that of the _Anciens_ with that of examining it and executing it. By this division of power it was hoped to avoid a dictatorship and to constitute a liberal republic. The two legislative councils were composed two-thirds of members of the Convention and one-third of newly-elected delegates; the new government established itself in the palace of the Luxembourg. Carnot, the most illustrious of the five Directors, gave the command of the army of Italy to Napoleon Bonaparte. On the 4th of September, 1797, the Directory, with the aid of Augereau and some twelve thousand men, suppressed the majority of the two _Conseils_, who had become royalists and anti-revolutionary, and sent a large number of them into exile. To this _coup d'état_ of the 18th Fructidor, year V, succeeded that of the 22d Floréal, year VI (May 11, 1798), which annulled the election of the deputies who were called _patriotes_. General Bonaparte, with his army, was in Egypt; the European powers judged the time propitious to form a new coalition against such an unstable government and exhausted people. On the 30th Prairial, year VII (18th of June, 1799), the Conseils combined against the Directors and forced three of them to resign, but Bonaparte landed at Fréjus, and to all these futile little revolutions succeeded the vital one of the 18th Brumaire (9th of November, 1799), in which his grenadiers turned the members of the Cinq-Cents out of their hall at the point of the bayonet, and the Anciens, left alone in session, conferred the executive power on three provisional Consuls, Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger Ducos. Two commissions, of twenty-five members each, were appointed to revise the constitution. "It was the Revolution abdicating, transferring its power to military authority, and about to enter with it on a new phase. And, moreover, it was still one more _journée_, that is to say, violent measure. What lessons given to the peoples by these perpetual insurrections, of the Commune, of the Convention, of the Directory, of the Conseils, of the royalists as of the republicans, and, finally, of the army! And how could it be possible to form citizens respecting the law, careful to modify it only with wisdom, instead of tearing it to pieces with rage, when, for the last ten years, nothing had been accomplished without sudden and violent measures?"