Napoleon Bonaparte along with Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Lucien Bonaporte, Robert Ducas, Joseph Fouché, and Tallegrand overthrew the Directory, the executive branch of the government, and took power. Sieyès had expected to lead the new regime, but Napoleon became supreme through drafting the Constitution of Year VIII and securing his election as First Consul shortly afterwards, the most powerful person in France.

See William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 374-75.