On 16 July 1797, under pressure from the councils, the three republican directors, Barras, Reubell and La Reveillière-Lépeaux, ordered a ministerial reshuffle disadvantaging the royalists. On 3 September, Vaublanc, with his colleague Admiral Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse and other "clichiens", was a hair's breadth from achieving a coup d'état against the triumvirate of republican directors. Their plan, which convinced the director Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot, was simple. Vaublanc was charged with delivering a speech on 4 September before the Council of 500 which would demand the impeachment of the triumvirate. Meanwhile, General Pichegru, who had been persuaded by Carnot to join the conspiracy at the head of the Legislature's Guard, would come to arrest the directors.