French First Republic
Encyclopedia
The French First Republic was founded on 22 September 1792, by the newly established National Convention
. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First French Empire
in 1804 under Napoleon I. This period is characterized by the fall of the monarchy, the establishment of the National Convention and the infamous Reign of Terror
, the founding of the Directory
and the Thermidorian Reaction
, and finally, the creation of the Consulate
and Napoleon’s rise to power.
, which was in power before the proclamation of the First Republic, France was engaged in war with Prussia
and Austria
. In June 1792, the Duke of Brunswick, commanding general of the Austro–Prussian Army, issued his Brunswick Manifesto, in which he threatened the destruction of Paris should any harm come to King Louis XVI. The foreign threat exacerbated France's political turmoil amid the French Revolution
and deepened the passion and sense of urgency among the various factions. In the violence of 10 August 1792, citizens stormed the Tuileries Palace
, killing six hundred of the King’s Swiss guard
s and insisting on the removal of the king.
A renewed fear of anti-revolutionary action prompted further violence, and in the first week of September 1792, mobs of Parisians broke into the city’s prisons, killing over half of the prisoners. This included nobles, clergymen, and political prisoners, but also numerous common criminals, such as prostitutes and petty thieves, many murdered in their cells—raped, stabbed, and slashed to death. This became known as the September Massacres
.
Throughout the winter of 1792 and spring of 1793, Paris was plagued by food riots and mass hunger. The new Convention did little to remedy the problem until late spring of 1793, occupied instead with matters of war. Finally, on 6 April 1793, the Convention created the Committee of Public Safety
, headed by Maximilien Robespierre
, and was given a monumental task: “To deal with the radical movements of the Enragés
, food shortages and riots, the revolt in the Vendée
and in Brittany
, recent defeats of its armies, and the desertion of its commanding general.” Most notably, the Committee of Public Safety instated a policy of terror, and the guillotine
began to fall on perceived enemies of the republic at an ever-increasing rate, beginning the period known today as the Reign of Terror
.
Despite growing discontent with the National Convention as a ruling body, in June the Convention drafted the Constitution of 1793
, which was ratified by popular vote in early August. However, the Committee of Public Safety was seen as an “emergency” government, and the rights guaranteed by the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the new constitution were suspended under its control. The Committee carried out thousands of executions against supposed enemies of the young Republic, to the point that the guillotine came to be known as “the national razor”—because it seemed to be falling on everybody’s neck. The Committee’s laws and policies took the revolution to unprecedented heights—they introduced the revolutionary calendar
in 1793, closed churches in and around Paris as a part of a movement of dechristianization, tried and executed Marie Antoinette
, and instituted the Law of Suspects
, among others. Under Robespierre’s leadership, members of various revolutionary factions and groups were executed including the Hébertists
and the Dantonists, many of whom had been Robespierre’s personal friends.
The war efforts were improving for France by 1794, due in part to the military excellence of Napoleon Bonaparte. Many in the National Convention were calling for a return to normalization, but Robespierre disagreed. Between the mass executions, the wild fear of the populace, and the institution of the Festival of Reason, by the middle of 1794 there was “a great deal of enthusiasm for ending the terror, [but] no one could figure out how to do it…The only thing that would end the terror, and apparently the only thing they could all agree upon, was the fall of Robespierre”. He was arrested on 27 July and executed on 28 July 1794 without trial.
was closed and the surviving Girondins were reinstated. In August, the National Convention adopted the Constitution of 1795. They reestablished freedom of worship, began releasing large numbers of prisoners, and most importantly, initiated elections for a new legislative body. On 3 November 1795, the Directory was established. Under this system, France was led by a bicameral Parliament, consisting of an upper chamber called the Council of Elders (with 250 members) and a lower chamber called the Council of Five-Hundreds (with, accordingly, 500 members) and a collective Executive government of five members called the Directory (from which the historical period gets its name). Due to internal instability and French military disasters in 1798 and 1799, the Directory only lasted for four years.
began with the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799. Members of the Directory itself planned the coup, indicating clearly the failing power of the Directory. Napoleon Bonaparte was a co-conspirator in the coup, and became head of the government as the First Consul. He would later proclaim himself emperor, effectively putting an end to the French First Republic and launching the age of the French First Empire.
National Convention
During the French Revolution, the National Convention or Convention, in France, comprised the constitutional and legislative assembly which sat from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795 . It held executive power in France during the first years of the French First Republic...
. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First French Empire
First French Empire
The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...
in 1804 under Napoleon I. This period is characterized by the fall of the monarchy, the establishment of the National Convention and the infamous Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
, the founding of the Directory
French Directory
The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
and the Thermidorian Reaction
Thermidorian Reaction
The Thermidorian Reaction was a revolt in the French Revolution against the excesses of the Reign of Terror. It was triggered by a vote of the Committee of Public Safety to execute Maximilien Robespierre, Antoine Louis Léon de Saint-Just de Richebourg and several other leading members of the Terror...
, and finally, the creation of the Consulate
French Consulate
The Consulate was the government of France between the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire in 1804...
and Napoleon’s rise to power.
End of the monarchy in France
Under the Legislative AssemblyLegislative Assembly (France)
During the French Revolution, the Legislative Assembly was the legislature of France from 1 October 1791 to September 1792. It provided the focus of political debate and revolutionary law-making between the periods of the National Constituent Assembly and of the National Convention.The Legislative...
, which was in power before the proclamation of the First Republic, France was engaged in war with Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
and Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. In June 1792, the Duke of Brunswick, commanding general of the Austro–Prussian Army, issued his Brunswick Manifesto, in which he threatened the destruction of Paris should any harm come to King Louis XVI. The foreign threat exacerbated France's political turmoil amid the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and deepened the passion and sense of urgency among the various factions. In the violence of 10 August 1792, citizens stormed the Tuileries Palace
Tuileries Palace
The Tuileries Palace was a royal palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine until 1871, when it was destroyed in the upheaval during the suppression of the Paris Commune...
, killing six hundred of the King’s Swiss guard
Swiss Guard
Swiss Guards or Schweizergarde is the name given to the Swiss soldiers who have served as bodyguards, ceremonial guards, and palace guards at foreign European courts since the late 15th century. They have had a high reputation for discipline, as well as loyalty to their employers...
s and insisting on the removal of the king.
A renewed fear of anti-revolutionary action prompted further violence, and in the first week of September 1792, mobs of Parisians broke into the city’s prisons, killing over half of the prisoners. This included nobles, clergymen, and political prisoners, but also numerous common criminals, such as prostitutes and petty thieves, many murdered in their cells—raped, stabbed, and slashed to death. This became known as the September Massacres
September Massacres
The September Massacres were a wave of mob violence which overtook Paris in late summer 1792, during the French Revolution. By the time it had subsided, half the prison population of Paris had been executed: some 1,200 trapped prisoners, including many women and young boys...
.
The National Convention
As a result of the spike in public violence and the political instability of the constitutional monarchy, a party of six members of France’s Legislative Assembly was assigned the task of overseeing elections. The resulting Convention was founded with the dual purpose of abolishing the monarchy and drafting a new constitution. The Convention’s first act was to establish the French First Republic and officially strip the king of all political powers. The King, by then a private citizen bearing his family name of Capet, was subsequently put on trial for crimes of high treason starting in December 1792. On 16 January 1793 he was found guilty, and on 21 January, he was guillotined.Throughout the winter of 1792 and spring of 1793, Paris was plagued by food riots and mass hunger. The new Convention did little to remedy the problem until late spring of 1793, occupied instead with matters of war. Finally, on 6 April 1793, the Convention created the Committee of Public Safety
Committee of Public Safety
The Committee of Public Safety , created in April 1793 by the National Convention and then restructured in July 1793, formed the de facto executive government in France during the Reign of Terror , a stage of the French Revolution...
, headed by Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. He largely dominated the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror, which ended with his...
, and was given a monumental task: “To deal with the radical movements of the Enragés
Enragés
Les Enragés were a loose amalgam of radicals active during the French Revolution. Politically they stood to the left of the Jacobins. Represented by Jacques Roux, Théophile Leclerc, Jean Varlet and others, they believed that liberty for all meant more than mere constitutional rights...
, food shortages and riots, the revolt in the Vendée
Vendée
The Vendée is a department in the Pays-de-la-Loire region in west central France, on the Atlantic Ocean. The name Vendée is taken from the Vendée river which runs through the south-eastern part of the department.-History:...
and in Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
, recent defeats of its armies, and the desertion of its commanding general.” Most notably, the Committee of Public Safety instated a policy of terror, and the guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...
began to fall on perceived enemies of the republic at an ever-increasing rate, beginning the period known today as the Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
.
Despite growing discontent with the National Convention as a ruling body, in June the Convention drafted the Constitution of 1793
French Constitution of 1793
The Constitution of 24 June 1793 , also known as the Constitution of the Year I, or the The Montagnard Constitution , was the constitution instated by the Montagnards and by popular referendum under the First Republic during the French Revolution...
, which was ratified by popular vote in early August. However, the Committee of Public Safety was seen as an “emergency” government, and the rights guaranteed by the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the new constitution were suspended under its control. The Committee carried out thousands of executions against supposed enemies of the young Republic, to the point that the guillotine came to be known as “the national razor”—because it seemed to be falling on everybody’s neck. The Committee’s laws and policies took the revolution to unprecedented heights—they introduced the revolutionary calendar
French Republican Calendar
The French Republican Calendar or French Revolutionary Calendar was a calendar created and implemented during the French Revolution, and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, and for 18 days by the Paris Commune in 1871...
in 1793, closed churches in and around Paris as a part of a movement of dechristianization, tried and executed Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....
, and instituted the Law of Suspects
Law of Suspects
The Law of Suspects is a term which is used to refer to an enactment passed on 17 September 1793 during the course of the French Revolution. It allowed for the creation of revolutionary tribunals to try those who were suspected of treason against the Republic and to punish those convicted with death...
, among others. Under Robespierre’s leadership, members of various revolutionary factions and groups were executed including the Hébertists
Hébertists
The Hébertists were an ultra-revolutionary political faction associated with the populist journalist Jacques Hébert. They came to power during the Reign of Terror and played a significant role in the French Revolution....
and the Dantonists, many of whom had been Robespierre’s personal friends.
The war efforts were improving for France by 1794, due in part to the military excellence of Napoleon Bonaparte. Many in the National Convention were calling for a return to normalization, but Robespierre disagreed. Between the mass executions, the wild fear of the populace, and the institution of the Festival of Reason, by the middle of 1794 there was “a great deal of enthusiasm for ending the terror, [but] no one could figure out how to do it…The only thing that would end the terror, and apparently the only thing they could all agree upon, was the fall of Robespierre”. He was arrested on 27 July and executed on 28 July 1794 without trial.
The Directory
After the fall of Robespierre, the Jacobin clubJacobin Club
The Jacobin Club was the most famous and influential political club in the development of the French Revolution, so-named because of the Dominican convent where they met, located in the Rue St. Jacques , Paris. The club originated as the Club Benthorn, formed at Versailles from a group of Breton...
was closed and the surviving Girondins were reinstated. In August, the National Convention adopted the Constitution of 1795. They reestablished freedom of worship, began releasing large numbers of prisoners, and most importantly, initiated elections for a new legislative body. On 3 November 1795, the Directory was established. Under this system, France was led by a bicameral Parliament, consisting of an upper chamber called the Council of Elders (with 250 members) and a lower chamber called the Council of Five-Hundreds (with, accordingly, 500 members) and a collective Executive government of five members called the Directory (from which the historical period gets its name). Due to internal instability and French military disasters in 1798 and 1799, the Directory only lasted for four years.
The Consulate
The period known as the French ConsulateFrench Consulate
The Consulate was the government of France between the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire in 1804...
began with the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799. Members of the Directory itself planned the coup, indicating clearly the failing power of the Directory. Napoleon Bonaparte was a co-conspirator in the coup, and became head of the government as the First Consul. He would later proclaim himself emperor, effectively putting an end to the French First Republic and launching the age of the French First Empire.