The arrest of Pichegru at the Tuileries Palace
The Coup of 18 Fructidor was a coup launched by republican members of the French Directory (led by Jean-Francois Reubell, Louis Marie de La Revelliere-Lepeaux, and Lazare Hoche) against the 216 royalist deputies of the Council of Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred on 4 September 1797. The coup occurred after the royalist Legitimists won a majority of seats in the French Directory, and the republicans and the military feared that the government would revert to being a monarchy under the Legitimists. 80,000 French troops under generals Lazare Hoche and Pierre Augereau were dispatched to arrest the President of the Council of Five Hundred, Jean-Charles Pichegru, after Napoleon Bonaparte revealed that he was a royalist traitor, and the royalists were arrested at the Tuileries Palace, among other places. 61 civilians were deported to French Guiana while 18 were imprisoned, and the government reinstituted Jacobin policies such as the arrest of relatives of royalist emigres and the reinstitution of military tribunals to try returning emigres.