It is equally questionable whether it can be regarded as saving France from anarchy.
His admirers, it is true, have striven to depict France as trodden down by invaders, dissolved by anarchy, and saved only by the stroke of Brumaire.

But she was already triumphant: it was quite possible that she would peacefully adjust her governmental difficulties: they were certainly no greater than they had been in and since the year 1797: Fouche had closed the club of the Jacobins: the Councils had recovered their rightful influence, and, but for the plotters of Brumaire, might have effected a return to ordinary government of the type of 1795-7.

This was the real blow; that the vigorous trunk, the Legislature, was struck down along with the withering Directorial branch.
The friends of liberty might well be dismayed when they saw how tamely France accepted this astounding stroke.

Some allowance was naturally to be made, at first, for the popular apathy: the Jacobins, already discouraged by past repression, were partly dazed by the suddenness of the blow, and were also ignorant of the aims of the men who dealt it; and while they were waiting to see the import of events, power passed rapidly into the hands of Bonaparte and his coadjutors.

Such is an explanation, in part at least, of the strange docility now shown by a populace which still vaunted its loyalty to the democratic republic.
But there is another explanation, which goes far deeper.