The elections for the new Councils decreed…
October 1795 CE
Three-hundred seventy nine members of the old Convention, for the most part moderate republicans, have been elected to the new legislature.
To assure that the mandated five-member committee, which will become known as the Directory, does not abandon the Revolution entirely, the Council requires that all of the members of the Directory be former members of the Convention and regicides, those who had voted for the execution of Louis XVI.
Due to the rules established by the Convention, a majority of members of the new legislature, three hundred and eighty-one of seven hundred and forty-one deputies, had served in the Convention and are ardent republicans, but a large part of the new deputies elected are royalists, one hundred and eighteen versus eleven from the left.
The members of the upper house, the Council of Ancients, have been chosen by lot from among all of the deputies.
On October 31, 1795, the Council of Ancients chooses the first Directory from a list of candidates submitted by the Council of Five Hundred.