Page "Joseph Fouché" Paragraph 19

In the ensuing Directory government ( 1795 – 1799 ), Fouché remained at first in obscurity, but the relations he had with the far left, once headed by Chaumette and now by François-Noël Babeuf, helped him to rise once more.

He is said to have betrayed to the Director Paul Barras Babeuf's plot of 1796, however, recent research has tended to throw doubt on the assertion.