The Brumaire Decree
10 November, 1799

         The Council..., considering the situation of the Republic…, approves the act of urgency and the following resolution:

         1. The Directory no longer exists; and the individuals hereinafter named are no longer members of the national representation because of the excesses and crimes in which they have continually engaged, and especially the greatest number of them in this morning’s session…

         2. The Legislative Body creates provisionally an Executive Consular Commission, composed of citizens Sieyès and Roger Ducos, former Directors, and Bonaparte, General, who shall bear the name of Consuls of the French Republic.

         3. Said Commission is invested with the plentitude of directorial power, and is particularly charged with establishing order in all branches of the administration, with re-establishing internal tranquillity, and with obtaining an honorable and stable peace.

…

         5. The Legislative Body adjourns itself until 1 Ventôse next, at which time shall reassemble at Paris, without need of sanction….

         6. During the adjournment of the Legislative Body, the adjourned members shall preserve their indemnity and their constitutional guarantee.

         7. They may be employed as ministers, diplomatic agents, delegates of the executive consular commission, and in all the other civil offices without losing their status as representatives of the people. They are even invited, in the name of public welfare, to accept them.

         8. Before its separation,…each Council shall appoint a commission of twenty-five members from its own midst.

         9. The commissions named by the two Councils shall legislated, with the formal and necessary proposal of the Executive Consular Commission, upon all urgent matters of police, legislation, and finance.

         10. The commission of the Five Hundred shall exercise the initiative; the commission of the Elders, the consent.

         11. The two commissions are further responsible for preparing…the changes which are to be brought about in the organic arrangements of the Constitution, the faults and inconveniences of which have been shown by experience.

         12. Such changes may have as their aim only the inviolable consolidation, guarantee, and consecration of the sovereignty of the French people, the Republic one and indivisible, the representative system, the division of powers, liberty, equality, security, and property.

         13. The Executive Consular Commission my present them with its views in such connection.

         14. Finally, the two commissions are charged with the preparation of a civil code.

         15. They shall sit at Paris in the palace of the Legislative Body, and they may convoke it in special session for the ratification of peace or in serious public danger.

         16. The present [resolution] shall be printed, dispatched by special messengers into the departments, and solemnly published and posted in all communes of the Republic.