Throughout his campaigns abroad, he maintained a network of informants in Paris, these informants kept Napoleon abreast of the political scene of the Directory. Upon receiving word that the Directory was floundering politically, Napoleon took flight from his armies in Egypt, and returned to Paris in 1799. He promptly joined a conspiracy to topple the same institution that he had defended only four years earlier. .
With the collapse of the Directory, Napoleon became the First Consul of a triumvirate of consuls. He undercut the Right by guaranteeing the property acquired during the revolution would not be returned to the noble class. To deal with rivals on the Left, he simply chose to eliminate them. His policies returned law and order to a society that was falling into anarchy, while at the same time dissolving social class privileges. These improvements came about in no small part due to the fact that the consuls delivered on their promise of a balanced budget, while working to improve relations with the Catholic Church damaged during the revolution. Napoleon had reestablished relations with the pope in 1801, through the Concordat, stating that Catholicism was the official religion of France. .
All of these policies were popular with the public, and helped to improve Napoleon's already large public persona. After his term was up as First Consul in 1802, Napoleon decided he was not ready to give up power; he called for a plebiscite, to be elected First Consul for life. By an overwhelming majority, he achieved his intended office. He wasted no time in celebrating, immediately setting out to win concessions, through treaty, from neighboring states. In the same year of 1802, he signed pro-French treaties with; Great Britain and Austria. These treaties gave a resemblance that there would be a lasting peace throughout Europe for a long time to come. This turned out to be false.
