In mainstream historiography, the term Directoire is also used to refer to the period i. It annexed Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine , while Bonaparte conquered a large part of Italy.
The Directory established 29 short-lived sister republics in Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The conquered cities and states were required to send France huge amounts of money, as well as art treasures, which were used to fill the new Louvre museum in Paris. The French economy was in continual crisis during the Directory. At the beginning, the treasury was empty; the paper money, the Assignat , had fallen to a fraction of its value, and prices soared.
The Directory stopped printing assignats and restored the value of the money, but this caused a new crisis; prices and wages fell, and economic activity slowed to a standstill. In its first two years, the Directory concentrated on ending the excesses of the Jacobin Reign of Terror ; mass executions stopped, and measures taken against exiled priests and royalists were relaxed.
They took two additional seats in the Directory, hopelessly dividing it. In , after several defeats, French victories in the Netherlands and Switzerland restored the French military position, but the Directory had lost all the political factions' support, including some of its Directors. The coup abolished the Directory and replaced it with the French Consulate led by Bonaparte. The period known as the Reign of Terror began as a way of harnessing revolutionary fervour, but quickly degenerated into the settlement of personal grievances.
On 17 September , the Law of Suspects authorised the arrest of any suspected "enemies of freedom"; on 10 October, the National Convention recognised the Committee of Public Safety under Maximilien Robespierre as the supreme authority , and suspended the Constitution until "peace was achieved". According to archival records, from September to July some 16, people were executed on charges of counter-revolutionary activity; another 40, may have been summarily executed or died awaiting trial.
