French Directory in the context of "Napoleon I of France"

The Palais Bourbon (pronounced [pa.lɛ buʁ.bɔ̃]) is the meeting place of the National Assembly, the lower legislative chamber of the French Parliament. It is in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, on the Rive Gauche of the Seine across from the Place de la Concorde. The official address is on the Rue de l'Université, facing the Place du Palais-Bourbon.

The original palace was built beginning in 1722 for Louise Françoise de Bourbon, Duchess of Bourbon, the legitimised daughter of Louis XIV and the Marquise de Montespan. Four successive architects – Lorenzo Giardini, Pierre Cailleteau, Jean Aubert and Ange-Jacques Gabriel – completed the palace in 1728. It was then confiscated from Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, during the French Revolution and nationalised. From 1795 to 1799, during the Directory, it was the meeting place of the Council of Five Hundred, which chose the government leaders. Beginning in 1806, during Napoleon Bonaparte's First French Empire, Bernard Poyet's Neoclassical façade was added to mirror that of the Église de la Madeleine, facing it across the Seine beyond the Place de la Concorde.

The Coup of 18 Brumaire (French: Coup d'État du 18 Brumaire) brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power as First Consul of the French First Republic. In the view of most historians, it ended the French Revolution and would soon lead to the coronation of Napoleon as Emperor of the French. 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.

The Consulate (French: Consulat) was the top-level government of the First French Republic from the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire on 9 November 1799 until the start of the French Empire on 18 May 1804.

During this period, Napoleon Bonaparte, with his appointment as First Consul, established himself as the head of a more autocratic and centralised republican government in France while not declaring himself sole ruler. Due to the long-lasting institutions established during these years, Robert B. Holtman has called the consulate "one of the most important periods of all French history." By the end of this period, Bonaparte had engineered an authoritarian personal rule now viewed as a military dictatorship.

The Council of Five Hundred (Conseil des Cinq-Cents) was the lower house of the legislature of the French First Republic under the Constitution of the Year III. It operated from 31 October 1795 to 9 November 1799 during the Directory (French: Directoire) period of the French Revolution.

This article lists Presidents of the French Parliament or, as the case may be, of its lower chamber.

The National Constituent Assembly was created in 1789 out of the Estates-General. It, and the revolutionary legislative assemblies that followed – the Legislative Assembly (1791–1792) and the National Convention (1792–1795), had a quickly rotating Presidency. With the establishment of the Directory in 1795, there were two chambers of the French legislature. The lower, the Council of Five Hundred, also had a quickly rotating chairmanship. Under Napoleon I, the Legislative Corps had all authority to actually enact laws, but was essentially a rubberstamp body, lacking the power to debate legislation. With the restoration of the monarchy, a bicameral system was restored, with a Chamber of Peers and a Chamber of Deputies. The Chamber of Deputies, for the first time, had presidents elected for a substantial period of time.