[Sidenote: Embarrassments of the Directory during Bonaparte's Absence from France]
Thereupon, General Bonaparte, luckily eluding the British warships, returned to France. It was believed by Frenchmen that his last expedition had been eminently successful: but that in the meantime the work of the Directory had been disastrous, no one doubted. While Bonaparte was away, affairs in France had gone from bad to worse. There were new plots, increased financial and social disorders, and finally the renewal on a large scale of foreign war.
[Sidenote: The Second Coalition and the Renewal of War in Europe]
After the treaty of Campo Formio, the Directors had prosecuted zealously the policy of surrounding France with a circle of dependent republics. Even before that peace, Holland had been transformed into the Batavian Republic, and now pretexts of various sorts were utilized to convert the duchy of Milan, or Lombardy, into the Cisalpine Republic; the oligarchy of Genoa into the Ligurian Republic; the Papal States into the Roman Republic; the kingdom of the Two Sicilies into the Parthenopaean Republic; the Swiss Confederation into the Helvetic Republic.
In view of the fact that the governments of all these republics were modeled after that of France and were allied with France, the monarchs of Europe bestirred themselves once more to get rid of the danger that threatened them. A Second Coalition was formed by Great Britain, Austria, and Russia, and, thanks to liberal sums of money supplied by William Pitt, the British minister, they were able to put large armies in the field.
[Sidenote: French Reverses]
During 1799 the Second Coalition won repeated victories; the French were driven from Italy; and most of the dependent republics collapsed. It seemed as though Bonaparte's first Italian campaign had been for naught. Possibly the military hero of France had himself foreseen this very situation and had intended to exploit it to his own advantage.
[Sidenote: Return of Bonaparte from Egypt: the "Man of the Hour">[
At any rate, when Bonaparte had sailed for Egypt, he had left his country apparently prosperous, victorious, and honored. Now, when he landed at Fréjus on 9 October, 1799, he found France bankrupt, defeated, and disgraced. It is small wonder that his journey from Fréjus to Paris was a triumphal procession. The majority of Frenchmen were convinced that he was the man of the hour.
[Sidenote: The Coup d'État of the Eighteenth Brumaire: Overthrow of the Directory, 1799] Within a month of his return from Egypt, public opinion enabled the young conqueror to overthrow the government of the Directory. Skillfully intriguing with the Abbé Sieyès, who was now one of the Directors, he surrounded the Assemblies with a cordon of troops loyal to himself and on 18-19 Brumaire (9-10 November, 1799) secured by show of force the downfall of the government and the appointment of himself to supreme military command. This blow at the state (coup d'état) was soon followed by the promulgation of a new constitution, by which General Bonaparte became First Consul of the French Republic.