Coup of 18 Brumaire
The coup d'état of 18 Brumaire brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power as First Consul of France. In the view of most historians, it ended the French Revolution and would soon lead to the coronation of Napoleon as emperor. This bloodless coup d'état overthrew the Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate. This occurred on 9 November 1799, which was 18 Brumaire, Year VIII under the short-lived French Republican calendar system.
"Eighteenth Brumaire" redirects here. For Karl Marx's essay about the French coup of 1851, see The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.Date
9 November 1799
Coup successful. Consulate established; adoption of a constitution under which the First Consul, a position Bonaparte was to hold, had the most power in the French government
Legacy[edit]
In 1852, Karl Marx wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte about a much later event, the coup d'état of 1851 against the Second Republic by Napoleon III, who was Napoleon's nephew. Marx considered Napoleon III a trifling politician compared to his world-shaking uncle, as expressed in Marx's oft-quoted opening bon mot: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."[8]
