The Republic was only successful on the battlefield, and even that was to a large degree due to Napoleon's own efforts (the War of the Second Coalition was nearly a disaster until he turned it around). It was not at all a stable government and in fact faced civil war throughout its existence. Napoleon brought stability to France and reformed its domestic institutions in many positive ways. The downside of his rule, of course, was that he was constantly at war, which finally led to his demise - but honestly, almost any non-Bourbon regime in France in 1800 would have been. The rest of Europe was loath to accept any kind of French government besides the Bourbon monarchy.
That's quite a big "downside".
And I don't buy the argument that the rest of Europe's attitude towards Revolutionary France was purely because it was revolutionary and had nothing to do with Bonaparte's aggression. An ideologically hostile power is one thing; an ideologically hostile power that is endlessly attempting to conquer more territory from you and, after every war, humiliates you further by taking land or money and thus gives you a great incentive to fight the next war, to avenge the humiliation and get back what he took. No victory was ever enough for Bonaparte. Be a successful general? Nah, be leader of France. Be merely the recognised leader of the French Republic? Nah, be a monarch. Have Spain as an ally with a great deal of French influence? Nah, invade. Have the Have most of Europe under your thumb with the British thrown out? Nah, attempt to gain a much greater degree of control over the European powers by controlling their economic affairs—even though
your own army marches on British boots. Have Russia defy you in peace even when Russia can't realistically expect to attack you? Nah, invade Russia.
Et cetera ad infinitum. Nothing satisfied Bonaparte; the leaders of the rest of Europe were absolutely right to perceive that he would settle for nothing less than total domination of Europe. If not for Bonaparte, they would have grown tired of fighting France when it brought them no reward and nothing but defeat, if France seemed a dangerously powerful great power that could be coexisted with; but Bonaparte's France
couldn't be coexisted with because it wasn't just dangerously powerful, it also clearly sought to dominate, rather than merely not be dominated by, other great powers. He couldn't have crippled the United Kingdom, as he ought to have understood; but he could have rendered it powerless to hurt him by taking away its 'sword', the European countries that had good reason to hate him and to accept British money to fight against him. There wasn't going to be an early-19th-century D-Day; the United Kingdom was as powerful as the number of Continental enemies Revolutionary France makes for itself.
The Republic might have achieved stability without him; but with him it was doomed to destruction, because France, even with a brilliant military leader and plenty of reforms to strengthen it, can't beat the rest of Europe united against it again and again and again. It needs to win every time; the rest of Europe united only needs to win once, and it did. (The Hundred Days never stood a chance.) Bonaparte's glory-lust caused a demographic disaster for France that gave France at least four grievous defeats—the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War and the two World Wars—for more than a hundred years to come; the unification of Germany wouldn't be so much of a threat to a France whose population was equal to Germany's. Bonaparte directly caused the destruction of the French Republic and the success of counter-revolution. Plus, he dismantled the last of French democracy in favour of his own autocracy.
I honestly can't see why anyone would revere the man. Creating the
Code Napoléon and various other judicial reforms is no compensation for causing such tremendous woe for one's own country.
France would be wanked if he had never taken power. Being less amazingly militarily successful probably wouldn't have meant being instantly overrun. Without him, Revolutionary France might have survived; with him, because of his insatiable ambition, it never could.