French Republican calendar in the context of "Brumaire"

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.

Floréal (French pronunciation: [flɔʁeal]) was the eighth month in the French Republican calendar. The month was named after the Latin word flos 'flower'.

Floréal was the second month of the spring quarter (mois de printemps). It started 20 April or 21 April. It ended 19 May or 20 May. It follows Germinal and precedes Prairial.

The Constitution of the Year VIII (French: Constitution de l'an VIII or French: Constitution du 22 frimaire an VIII) was a national constitution of France, adopted on 24 December 1799 (during Year VIII of the French Republican calendar), which established the form of government known as the Consulate. The coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799) had effectively given all power to Napoleon Bonaparte, and in the eyes of some, ended the French Revolution.

After the coup, Napoleon and his allies legitimized his position by crafting a Constitution that would be, in the words of Napoleon, "short and obscure". The constitution tailor-made the position of First Consul to give Napoleon most of the powers of a dictator. It was the first constitution since the 1789 Revolution without a Declaration of Rights.

The Battle of Austerlitz (2 December 1805/11 Frimaire An XIV FRC), also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of the most important military engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. The battle occurred near the town of Austerlitz in the Austrian Empire (now Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic). Around 158,000 troops were involved, of which around 24,000 were killed or wounded.

The battle is often cited by military historians as one of Napoleon's tactical masterpieces, in the same league as other historic engagements like Hannibal's Cannae (216 BC) or Alexander the Great's Gaugamela (331 BC). The military victory of Napoleon's Grande Armée at Austerlitz brought the War of the Third Coalition to an end, with the Peace of Pressburg signed by the French and Austrians later in the month. These achievements did not establish a lasting peace on the continent. Austerlitz had driven neither Russia nor Britain, whose armies protected Sicily from a French invasion, to settle. Prussian resistance to France's growing military power in Central Europe led to the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.

Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French on December 2, 1804 (11 Frimaire, Year XIII according to the French Republican calendar, commonly used at the time in France), at Notre-Dame de Paris in Paris. It marked "the instantiation of [the] modern empire" and was a "transparently masterminded piece of modern propaganda".Napoleon wanted to establish the legitimacy of his imperial reign with its new dynasty and nobility. To this end, he designed a new coronation ceremony unlike that for the kings of France, which had emphasised the king's consecration (sacre) and anointment and was conferred by the archbishop of Reims in Reims Cathedral. Napoleon's was a sacred ceremony held in the great cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in the presence of Pope Pius VII. Napoleon brought together various rites and customs, incorporating ceremonies of Carolingian tradition, the ancien régime, and the French Revolution, all presented in sumptuous luxury.

On May 18, 1804, the Sénat conservateur vested the Republican government of the French First Republic in an emperor, and preparations for the coronation followed. Napoleon's elevation to emperor was overwhelmingly approved by the French people in the French constitutional referendum of 1804. Among Napoleon's motivations for being crowned were to gain prestige in international royalist and Roman Catholic circles and to lay the foundation for a future dynasty.

Prairial (French pronunciation: [pʁɛʁjal]) was the ninth month in the French Republican calendar. This month was named after the French word prairie 'meadow'. It was the name given to several ships.

Prairial was the third month of the spring quarter (mois de printemps). It started May 20 or May 21. It ended June 18 or June 19. It follows Floréal and precedes Messidor.

Decimal time is the representation of the time of day using units which are decimally related. This term is often used specifically to refer to the French Republican calendar time system used from 1794 to 1800, during the French Revolution, which divided the day into 10 decimal hours, each decimal hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds (100,000 decimal seconds per day), as opposed to the more familiar standard time, which divides the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds (86,400 SI seconds per day).

The main advantage of a decimal time system is that, since the base used to divide the time is the same as the one used to represent it, the representation of hours, minutes and seconds can be handled as a unified value. Therefore, it becomes simpler to interpret a timestamp and to perform conversions. For instance, 12345 is 1 decimal hour, 23 decimal minutes, and 45 decimal seconds, or 1.2345 decimal hours, or 123.45 decimal minutes or 12345 decimal seconds; 3 hours is 300 minutes or 30,000 seconds.This property also makes it straightforward to represent a timestamp as a fractional day, so that 2025-12-02.54321 can be interpreted as five decimal hours, 43 decimal minutes and 21 decimal seconds after the start of that day, or a fraction of 0.54321 (54.321%) through that day (which is shortly after traditional 13:00). It also adjusts well to digital time representation using epochs, in that the internal time representation can be used directly both for computation and for user-facing display.