The new constitution installed the Directoire and created the first bicameral legislature in French history. The parliament consisted of 500 representatives (the Conseil des Cinq-Cents (Council of the Five Hundred)) and 250 senators (the Conseil des Anciens (Council of Seniors)). Executive power went to five "directors," named annually by the Conseil des Anciens from a list submitted by the Conseil des Cinq-Cents.

The new régime met with opposition from remaining Jacobins and the royalists. The army suppressed riots and counter-revolutionary activities. In this way the army and its successful general, Napoleon Bonaparte gained much power.

In 1797 the directors purged the parliament ruthlessly, branding many deputies as royalists and sentencing them to the penal colony of French Guiana (called "the dry guillotine"). This coup d'etat of Fructidor (September 1797) was a devastating blow to all moderates. Thereafter, although administration improved and French power increased in Europe, coups against conservative or radical revivals occurred annually until 1799, when the Abbe Sieyes, determined to strengthen central authority, enlisted the aid of Bonaparte to effect the coup d'etat of Brumaire (November 9-10).

On November 9, 1799 Napoleon staged the coup which installed the Consulate; this effectively led to his dictatorship and eventually (in 1804) to his proclamation as emperor, which brought to a close the specifically republican phase of the French Revolution.