Editing French Directory (section)

=== Rich and poor ===
[[File:Boilly-Point-de-Convention-ca1797.jpg|thumb|Dress of upper-class Parisians in 1797 by [[Louis-Léopold Boilly]]]]
Under the Directory the middle and upper classes took a dominant position in Paris society, replacing the nobility. Enormous fortunes were made, often by providing supplies to the army or by speculation on real estate. Some parts of the middle and upper classes suffered: the abolition of the old professional guilds of lawyers and doctors brought the ruin of many members, who faced competition from anyone who wanted to use those titles. The merchants and shipowners in Bordeaux, Nantes, Marseille and other ports were ruined by the British naval blockade. Bankers took on a more prominent role, when investment was scarce.

Two new groups gained importance during the Directory. The number of government officials of all levels increased dramatically. The writer [[Louis-Sébastien Mercier]] in his ''Paris pendant la Révolution (1789–1798), ou Le nouveau Paris'', published in 1800, wrote: "There is no one who has not complained of the insolence, or the ignorance, of the multitude of government officials employed in the bureaus to sharpen their pens and to obstruct the course of affairs. New has the bureaucracy been carried to a point so so exaggerated, so costly, to exhausting."{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|p=276}}

Generals and other military officers also grew greatly in importance during the Directory and became a caste independent of the political structure. The Directory had abolished the Jacobin system of political commissioners who supervised and could overrule the military commanders. Generals like Bonaparte in Italy, Hoche in Germany and Pichegru in Alsace directed entire provinces according to their own ideas and wishes, with little interference from Paris. The soldiers of these generals were often more loyal to their generals than to the Directory, as the soldiers of Bonaparte showed during the 1799 coup d'état that ended the Directory.{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|p=277}}

The working class and poor in Paris and other large cities suffered particularly from the high inflation during the first part of the Directory, which brought higher prices for bread, meat, wine, firewood and other basic commodities. In the last two years of the Directory, the problem was the opposite: with the suppression of the ''assignats'', the money became scarce, the economy slowed, and unemployment grew. The Directory distributed scarce food items, such as cooking oil, butter and eggs, to government employees and to members of the Councils. Before the Revolution, taking care of the poor had been the responsibility of the Church. During the Directory, the government, particularly in Paris and other large cities, was forced to take over this role. To feed the Parisians and prevent food riots, the government bought flour in the countryside at market prices with its silver coins, then gave it to the bakeries, which sold it at the traditional market price of four sous a pound, which was virtually nothing. The subsidies were reduced in the last years of the Directory, paying only for bread, but they were an enormous expense for the Directory. At the beginning, the government tried to provide the standard minimum of one pound of bread a day per person, but the shortage of money reduced the daily ration to sixty grams of bread a day. The government also tried giving rice as a substitute for bread, but the poor lacked firewood to cook it.{{sfn|Lefebvre|1977|pp=173–174}}

Under the Directory a system of public charity "was finally put in place with some success," with legislation passed in November 1796 establishing bureaux de bienfaisance in every commune. These were responsible for providing home relief. Funding for state hospitals was also increased, and legislation from December 1796 placed abandoned children under the state's care.<ref>The A to Z of the French Revolution By Paul R. Hanson, 2007, P.64</ref>