18 Brumaire

The coup of 18 Brumaire (often simply 18 Brumaire or Brumaire) was the coup d'état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate. This occurred on 9 November 1799, which was 18 Brumaire, Year VIII under the French Republican Calendar.

The name, already well-established in common usage, was reinforced by the title of Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, 1852), an account of the 2 December 1851 coup by Napoleon's nephew, which begins with the oft-quoted "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."