A broadside announcing Napoleon's appointment as First Consul

LETOURMY, Jean Baptiste.

Buonaparte Premier Consul, Cambacérès le Second, Lebrun le Troisiéme. Détail. Des évènemens qui se sont passés é Paris, aux Conseils des Cinq-cents & des Anciens, dans les séances des 18 & 19 Brumaire & suivantes.
Orléans: Letourmey, 1799. Woodcut with original stencilled colour. Sheet 305 x 380mm (12 x 15").

A broadside telling the 'official account' of the events of 18 & 19 Brumaire, Year VIII of the Republic (9 & 10th November 1799), illustrated with full-length portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte, Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès and Charles-François Lebrun.
This official line was that Napoleon, arriving back from Egypt as a national hero, had found the government in disarray, bankrupt, unpopular and facing a Jacobin coup. He was appointed commander of troops in Paris, as the best hope for national security, sending soldiers to protect the members of the Councils of the Ancients & Five Hundred. Three of the five members of the Directory resigned and the Councils gave Bonaparte permission to dissolve both the Directory and Councils, replacing them with a triumvirate of Consuls, with Napoleon as First Consul.
In reality Napoleon had come back to Paris to advance his political ambitions, leaving his army to fend for itself in Egypt, resulting in defeat by the British. The soldiers 'protecting' the deputies cleared the Council of Five Hundred from their hall when some attempted to have Napoleon declared outside the law, which meant he could be arrested and executed immediately without trial. Once the troublemakers were dispersed Napoleon was given the right to rule by decree, with his junior consular colleagues possessing only advisory roles. The Republic had been replaced by a dictator.
Jean-Baptiste Letourmy (c. 1755-1800) was one of three brothers who peddled books throughout the Loire Valley, specialising in woodblock prints and chapbooks, before he settled in Orleans c.1774. Although he could be relied on to pay his bills, he dealt heavily in illegal books (pirated, banned or pornographic), often smuggled into France as loose sheets mixed in those of legitimate works. He never came to the attention of the authorities, and became one of the leading book dealers of the Loire region.

British Museum: 1925,0615.138.
Stock ID : 21549