p.0432] malcontents in the streets near the Tuileries, 13 Vendemiaire (5th
of October 1795). Thereupon Barras became one of the five Directors who
controlled the executive of the French republic. Owing to his intimate
relations with Josephine de Beauharnais, he helped to facilitate a marriage
between her and Bonaparte; and many have averred, though on defective
evidence, that Barras procured the appointment of Bonaparte to the command
of the army of Italy early in the year 1796. The achievements of Bonaparte
gave to the Directory a stability which it would not otherwise have
enjoyed; and when in the summer of 1797 the royalist and constitutional
opposition again gathered strength, Bonaparte sent General Augereau
(_q.v._), a headstrong Jacobin, forcibly to repress that movement by what
was known as the _coup d'etat_ of 18 Fructidor (4th September). Barras and
the violent Jacobins now carried matters with so high a hand as to render
the government of the Directory odious; and Bonaparte had no difficulty in
overthrowing it by the _coup d'etat_ of 18-19 Brumaire (9th-10th of
November). Barras saw the need of a change and was to some extent (how far
will perhaps never be known) an accomplice in Bonaparte's designs, though
he did not suspect the power and ambition of their contriver. He was left
on one side by the three Consuls who took the place of the five Directors
and found his political career at an end. He had amassed a large fortune
and spent his later years in voluptuous ease. Among the men of the
Revolution few did more than Barras to degrade that movement. His
immorality in both public and private life was notorious and contributed in
no small degree to the downfall of the Directory, and with it of the first
French Republic. Despite his profession of royalism in and after 1815, he
remained more or less suspect to the Bourbons; and it was with some
difficulty that the notes for his memoirs were saved from seizure on his
death on the 29th of January 1829.

Barras left memoirs in a rough state to be drawn up by his literary
executor, M. Rousselin de St Albin. The amount of alteration which they
underwent at his hands is not fully known; but M. George Duruy, who edited
them on their publication in 1895, has given fairly satisfactory proofs of
their genuineness. For other sources respecting Barras see the _Memoirs_ of
Gohier, Larevelliere-Lepeaux and de Lescure; also Sciout, _Le Directoire_
(4 vols., Paris, 1895-1897), A.