BARRAS, PAUL FRANgOIS NICOLAS, COMTE DE member of the French Directory of 1795-99, was descended from a noble family of Provence, and before the ' Revolution took part in the French campaigns in India. In 1789 he adopted extreme democratic principles and was counted a Jacobin in the Convention, which he entered as deputy for the Var. Much of his time, however, was spent in missions to the districts of the south-east of France ; and in this way he made the acquaintance of Bonaparte at the siege of Toulon. In 1794 his share in the anti-Robespierrist coup d'etat of 9 Thermidor brought him almost to the front rank. In the next year, when the Con vention was threatened by the royalist revolt of Vendemiaire it appointed Barras to command the troops engaged in its defence. His nomination of Bonaparte as one of his subalterns led to the famous "whiff of grapeshot" which shattered the royalist forces, and Barras became one of the five Directors who controlled the French republic. He was partially responsible for arranging the marriage between Bonaparte and one of his own many cast-off mistresses, Josephine de Beauharnais; and was probably also responsible for the appointment of Bonaparte to the command of the army of Italy in 1796. Barras, who made no secret either of his venality or of his prodigious sexual immorality, neverthe less acquired great prestige from Bonaparte's victories, but during the absence of the latter on his Egyptian campaign (1798) the popularity of the whole Directory rapidly declined. Barras in dubitably assisted Bonaparte in his coup d'etat of the 18th Brumaire, but the latter realized that Barras's unconcealed and indeed flaunted licentiousness made him useless to the new regime. Barras found his political career at an end, nor did he succeed after 1814 in inducing Louis XVIII. to take him seriously as a royalist supporter.
Barras left memoirs in a rough state to be drawn up by his literary executor, M. Rousselin de St. Albin. The amount of alteration which they underwent at his hands is not fully known ; but M. George Duruy, who edited them on their publication in 1895, has given fairly satisfactory proofs of their genuineness. For other sources respecting Barras see the Memoirs of Gohier, Larevellicre-Lepeaux and de Lescure; also Sciout, Le Directoire (1895--97) , A. Sorel, L'Europe et la Revolution francaise (esp. vol. v. and vi., and A. Vandal, L'Avenement de Bonaparte (1go2—o4)•