Editing French Directory (section)

== Directory judged by historians ==
=== 19th century ===
Historians generally have not been kind to the 'Age of the Directory'. [[Adolphe Thiers]], later twice the Prime Minister and the first president of the [[French Third Republic|Third Republic]], wrote the first major history in French of the Revolution, in ten volumes, published between 1823 and 1827. He described the Directory this way:
:<blockquote>One of the indispensable qualities of a government is to have good reputation that defends it against unjust attacks. When it has lost this reputation, and when people blame it for the faults of others, and even for bad luck, then it no longer has the ability to govern, and this incapacity should force it to retire. How many governments had been used up during the Revolution!... The Directory had been used up like the Committee of Public Safety before it, and the government of Napoleon that followed. All the accusations against the Directory proved not its faults but its nullity.<ref name="Thiers, Adolphe 1827">Thiers, Adolphe, ''Histoire de la Révolution française'', Volume 10, Chapter XV, (1827). Online version on Project Gutenberg</ref> </blockquote>

Thiers blamed Barras, the only Director who served from the beginning to the end of the Directory, for its failure.
:<blockquote>By a bizarre chance, but one that is seen often in the conflicts within revolutions, public opinion had indulgence for the one Director who merited it the least. Barras alone deserved all that was said of the Directory. First of all, he never worked; he left to his colleagues all the burden of business. He spoke only at decisive moments, when his voice was stronger than his courage. He occupied himself with nothing. He only concerned himself with the personnel of the government, which best suited his genius at intrigue. He took a share of all the profits of the government suppliers, and alone of the Directors deserved the accusation of corruption. Despite all of his faults, he was treated differently than the others, first of all because, unlike the other four, he was not a lawyer; and despite his laziness, his debauched habits, his bad manners, and his liaisons with the Jacobins, he alone was credited with 18 Fructidor [the downfall of Robespierre], and he gave the appearance of a man of action, more capable of governing than his colleagues... He was even treacherous toward his colleagues; because all of the criticism that he deserved himself he skillfully managed to shift exclusively onto them.<ref name="Thiers, Adolphe 1827"/>  </blockquote>

The most celebrated and vivid description of French society under the Directory was written by the [[Goncourt brothers]], Edmond and Jules, published in 1864, which described the mores, daily life, culture and preoccupations of the Parisians. Its final chapter contained the lines:
:<blockquote>Like a guest at the end of an orgy, France was weary; weary of gods, of tribunes, of heroes, of executioners; weary of struggles, of efforts, of cries, of curses, of enthusiasms, of fevers, of intoxications, of storms, of triumphs, of agonies – France was weary of revolutions, coups d'états. constitutions, legislatures... weary of conquests, weary of being saved; weary of Belgium submissive, Italy conquered; of Germany, when all the eagles of Germany had been taken to the ''Invalides'', but France was still not the head; France was weary of climbing into the sky, of amassing empires, of monopolizing the world; France glutted with glory; France broken, sleeping on a mattress of corpses, sleeping on a bed of laurels. France, emptied of men, of silver, of crimes, of ideas, of eloquence; France, like Mirabeau when he was dying, asking of his doctors and his descendants only one single thing: to sleep!<ref>De Goncourt, Edmond et Jules, ''Histoire de la société française pendant le Directoire'', (1864) [[Groupe Flammarion|Flammarion]], Paris</ref></blockquote>

The shortest and simplest description of the entire period, from the Convention to the Empire, was given by [[Honoré de Balzac]] in 1837–43 in his novel ''[[Illusions perdues]]''. The Spanish Jesuit diplomat Carlos Herrera tells Lucien de Rubempré: "In 1793 the French invented government by the people, which ended with an absolute emperor. So much for your national history".<ref>Balzac, Honoré, ''Illusions perdues'', Gallimard, p. 629. {{ISBN|2-07-036062-8}}</ref>

=== 20th and 21st century ===
In 1909, [[Pyotr Kropotkin]] wrote:
:<blockquote>The Directory was a terribly orgy of the middle classes, in which the fortunes acquired during the Revolution, especially during the Thermidorean reaction, were squandered in unbridled luxury. For if the Revolution had put in circulation eight milliards of paper-money, the Thermidorean reaction went ten times as fast in that direction, for it issued the amazing sum of thirty milliards in paper ''within fifteen months''.<ref>[[Peter Kropotkin|Kropotkin, Pyotr Alexeyevich]], ''The Great French Revolution, 1789–1793'', chapter ''The 9th Thermidor'', translated by [[Nora Dryhurst|N. F. Dryhurst]], publisher Cosimo Classics, New York, 2009, p. 571. {{ISBN|978-1605206608}}</ref></blockquote>

In 1971, [[Robert Roswell Palmer]] wrote:
:<blockquote>The Directory became a kind of ineffective dictatorship. It repudiated most of the assignats [paper money] and the debt but failed to restore financial confidence or stability. Guerrilla activity flared up again in the Vendée and other parts of western France. The religious schism became more acute; the Directory took severe measures toward the refractory clergy [those who would not swear allegiance to the government].<ref name="Joel Colton 1971 p 412">R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton, ''A History of the Modern World'', 4th ed., 1971, p. 412</ref></blockquote>

In 1971, the American historians [[Jerome Blum]], [[Rondo Cameron]], and Thomas G. Barnes wrote:
:<blockquote>It was a government of self-interest rather than virtue, thus losing any claim on idealism. It never had a strong base of popular support; when elections were held, most of its candidates were defeated. Historians have been quite negative on the Directory's use of military force to overturn election returns that went against them. [...] Having by this coup d'état forfeited its claim to be a constitutional government, the Directory henceforth clung to power only by such illegal acts as purges and quashed elections.<ref name="Jerome Blum 1970 p 488">[[Jerome Blum]], Rondo Cameron, and Thomas G. Barnes, ''The European World – A History'', 2nd ed., 1970, p. 488</ref></blockquote>

In the 1970s, other historians wrote that the achievements of the Directory were minor, though it did establish administrative procedures and financial reforms that worked out well when Napoleon started using them.<ref name="Hunt 1979 p 735">Hunt, Lansky and Hanson, (1979) p. 735</ref><ref name="Directory 1975 pp. 159-73">Martyn Lyons, ''France under the Directory'' (1975), pp. 159–173</ref> It was blamed for creating chronic violence, ambivalent forms of justice, and repeated recourse to heavy-handed repression.<ref name="Howard G. Brown 2007 1">{{cite book|author=Howard G. Brown|title=Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression from the Terror to Napoleon|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QccRae4wRZoC&pg=PA1|year=2007|publisher=U. of Virginia Press|page=1|isbn=978-0813927299}}</ref>

In 1994, Isser Woloch wrote:
:<blockquote>The Terror had left a dual legacy that made such normalcy impossible. On the one hand, massive disengagement, apathy, and cynicism about government; on the other hand, rancorous, violent hostility between the politically engaged minorities of royalists and Jacobins, between whom the directorial moderates vainly attempted to navigate. Legality became the main casualty in this situation.<ref>Isser Woloch, ''In the Aftermath of the French Revolution'', History Teacher, 1994, 28#1 pp. 7–11 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/494283 in JSTOR]</ref></blockquote>

In 2007, Howard Brown wrote:
:<blockquote>The four years of the Directory were a time of chronic disquiet and the late atrocities had made goodwill between parties impossible. The same instinct of self-preservation which had led the members of the Convention to claim so large a part in the new legislature and the whole of the Directory impelled them to keep their predominance. War was at the center of attention, not only for the survival of France but for the loot and forced payments into the French treasury.<ref>Howard G, Brown, ''French revolutionary studies – A Discredited Regime: The Directory and Army Contracting'', in ''French History'', Oxford University Press, 1990, 4#1 pp: 48–76.</ref></blockquote>