The Directory in retrospect is often characterized as tyrannical and ineffective, a conservative reaction to the extremism of the Terror. Many conventional histories mark it as the "end of the Revolution." Despite bringing a temporary sense of stability, however, the Directory government was deeply unpopular and unable to resolve the economic and political unrest it inherited.

The New Thermidorean Constitution of 1795 reversed many of the more democratic aspirations laid out in the previous Constitution of 1791 and in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The Directory government limited the voting rights of the lower classes and reserved the franchise for the wealthiest tax payers (only around 30,000 men met the requirements). The post-Thermidor government represented a decisive turn against the political extremism of previous years and they dismantled the Jacobin clubs and sought to suppress the most radical strains of the Revolution.

One of the greatest weaknesses of the new government was the lack of an effective single executive, power was divided between the five members of the executive Directory, and two elected parliamentary bodies. This system required cooperation between all branches and often led to political stalemate due to division between conservative royalist deputies and the republican contingent. The Directory struggled to hold back a groundswell of royalist support in the parliamentary elections, including a plot to restore the Bourbon monarchy in 1797. The government used military force to annul the results of the election and purge the royalist deputies, undermining most any claim to legitimacy. A further series of plots and coups on both the royalist and Jacobin sides made the Directory government particularly prone to instability.

As far as domestic policy goes, they replaced the widely unpopular and inflationary assignats with metallic currency and dismantled price controls. On the other hand, the Directory years saw the reintroduction of indirect taxation and intensified conscription which was intensely unpopular and further eroded popular support. This caused only further inflation and unrest in the short term, but by 1798, the government finally achieved monetary stability, thanks mostly to Napoleon's spoils and tributes from occupied states.

In fact, the main achievements of the Directory government were not in domestic policy, but in their military success. What had begun as a defensive war against European powers united to quell the threat of the Revolution had become a war of territorial expansion for France. In 1797, Napoleon negotiated a peace deal with Austria at Campo Formio without the approval of the Directory, foreshadowing the government's loss of popular support and vulnerability to a military coup.

Source: Peter McPhee, The French Revolution, 1789-1799 (Oxford University Press, 2002).