The Directory, as the government of the first French Republic was called, became the established government of France when the Convention formalized their new Constitution during the Thermidorian Reaction. The new government not only controlled the entirety of France, but included all the newly conquered military regions, most notably Belgium [Austrian Netherlands], that France had just recently annexed. The new government granted nearly universal male
suffrage, but it still did not allow the poor to vote. Basically, the government was organized in much the same manner as the American government: it had a bicameral legislature and an executive branch . The legislature's two branches, called the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients, were elected by popular vote, and it was the legislature that selected the five members who controlled the executive branch, called the Directory.
From the beginning, the government became dependant on the military to ensure its survival, as it had enemies from all sides: the right was the royalist insurgency, financed heavily by British money and very much the rest of Europe; the left, which was composed of the radicals of government who aspired for a more democratic, socialist, and liberalization of the government. One of the generals who often put down Parisian mobs and local rebellions against the Directory was a young Corsican general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, who will become an important figure in the coming years.
The first ever elections of the new France were held in March of 1797, and it became a serious blow to the republicans and anti-Bourbon forces in government, as much of the legislature became saturated with royalists and royalist-leaning conservatives. This, in no way, was acceptable to the government, which had for the last 9 years tried to expel all traces of monarchial government, and it was unacceptable to that dashing young Napoleon. In the coup d'état of September 4, 1797, the councils of the legislature revoked the elections of a few months earlier, purged the Directory, and installed the Old Republicans of the Convention back into power, all while a detachment of Napoleons personal troops overlooked. Formal peace treaties were made with Great Brit ian and Austria, 
and rebellions up and down the Rhine and Italian peninsula replaced old monarchies with fresh new republics under Napoleon's auspices.
After the coup d'état of 1797 there was little hope left for the republic to be free or constitutional, and most members of government were rapidly giving up on it. For the rest of 1797, and 1798, there were more rebellions, more purging of "enemies of the republic", mostly left and right forces, and more guerrilla warfare in the outlying provinces. More and more, "republican" France became dependant on military support, and the government evolved into a military dictatorship. Meanwhile, the government elected to have Napoleon draw a plan up for the invasion of England, but Napoleon saw it as premature and overly ambitious, and instead struck against Egypt, part of the Ottoman Empire, and critical to British trade with India. Russia also became alarmed with French advances on Egypt, and mobilized its army, as well as the Austrians. Napoleon, and indeed France, again were embroiled in a general war with the rest of Europe, for the second time in nearly 5 years. The nations of Austria, Russia, and Great Brit ian formed another military alliance, known as the Second Coalition, and moved against French armies. The powerful British navy cut off Napolean's army in Egypt, yet he was able to escape back to France, while Russian armies were operating actively as close as Italy and Switzerland. On Napolean's return, he initiated another coup d'état, this time forcing the council out of their chambers at the tip of a bayonet, and installing himself as the first of three consuls now leading the government. The Directory government of republican France was replaced with a Despotic Republic, known as the Consulate.
