French First Republic

• 1. Introduction

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  The French First Republic was born on the 21st of September 1792, when France's National Convention voted unanimously to abolish the constitutional monarchy. It proved unable to settle on a single form of government in the twelve years that followed. What drove a country to end centuries of monarchy in a single afternoon vote? What forces kept tearing each new government apart? And who finally managed to take the wreckage of a failing republic and remake it as an empire?

  Rather than formally proclaiming a new republic the day after the founding vote, the Convention's deputies chose to date all future official acts from Year One of the Republic.

• 2. The Monarchy's Violent End

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  In July 1792, Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, issued a declaration that deepened the revolution's most dangerous passions. As commanding general of the Austro-Prussian army, he threatened to destroy Paris if any harm came to King Louis XVI or his family. The intent was to protect the king. The effect was to give the revolutionary factions a sense of mortal urgency they had not possessed before.

  On the 10th of August 1792, citizens stormed the Tuileries Palace. Six hundred of the king's Swiss guards were killed in the assault. The king's remaining authority collapsed that afternoon. The constitutional monarchy was shattered before the Convention formally abolished it.

  The first week of September 1792 brought organized killing on a larger scale. Parisian mobs broke into the city's prisons and killed over half the inmates. Nobles, clergymen, and political prisoners died alongside common criminals, including prostitutes and petty thieves. Many victims were murdered inside their own cells, raped, stabbed, or slashed to death. These killings became known as the September Massacres.

  Six members of France's Legislative Assembly had been assigned to oversee elections that produced the Convention, a body born from this crisis. The Convention's mandate was dual: abolish the monarchy and draft a new constitution. Louis XVI, referred to by then only as Capet, was stripped of all political powers in the Convention's first session. His trial for high treason was set to open that December.

• 3. The Convention and Terror

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  On the 16th of January 1793, Louis XVI was convicted. Five days later, on the 21st of January, he was executed. His death fell in the middle of a grim winter. Paris was gripped by food riots and mass hunger, crises the Convention had largely set aside while managing the war.

  On the 6th of April 1793, the Convention created the Committee of Public Safety. Its mandate covered radical political movements and food shortages. It also had to address uprisings in the Vendée and Brittany, recent military defeats, and the desertion of the army's commanding general. The Committee was conceived as an emergency government.

  The Committee's policy of terror sent perceived enemies of the republic to the guillotine at an ever-increasing rate. Growing discontent with the National Convention as a ruling body ran alongside this violence. This period became known as the Reign of Terror.

  In June 1793, the Convention drafted the Constitution of 1793. Popular vote ratified it in early August. But the rights it guaranteed were suspended under the Committee's control. Those rights included the protections promised in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The constitution provided for neither a formal head of state nor a formal head of government, a vacuum that would prove decisive.

• 4. The Directory

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  Robespierre was arrested and executed on the 28th of July 1794. The Jacobin club was closed immediately. Surviving Girondins, who had been expelled from power during the Terror, were reinstated into the government.

  A year after Robespierre's fall, the National Convention adopted the Constitution of the Year III. Freedom of worship was reestablished. Large numbers of prisoners were released. Elections for a new legislative body were initiated.

  On the 3rd of November 1795, the Directory formally came into existence. France would now be governed by a bicameral Parliament. An upper chamber, the Council of Elders, held 250 members. A lower chamber, the Council of Five Hundred, held 500. Executive authority rested with a collective body of five directors. That collective gave the period its name.

  The Assignats, France's paper currency, suffered severe hyperinflation. French military disasters followed in 1798 and 1799. After four years, the Directory's own members were among those who plotted to bring it down.

• 5. Napoleon's Consulate

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  Napoleon Bonaparte was a co-conspirator in the coup that fell on the 9th of November 1799, known in the revolutionary calendar as 18 Brumaire. When it succeeded, he became First Consul and head of the government. Four new assemblies sat beneath this executive authority.

  The Council of State prepared draft laws and adjudicated administrative disputes. Article 52 of the Constitution of Year VIII formally defined its role as drafting proposed laws and regulations under the direction of the consuls.

  The Tribunate, officially established on 11 Nivôse Year VIII (the 1st of January 1800), began with one hundred deputies, each serving five-year terms. The Constitution of Year X later reduced that number to fifty. Its function was to deliberate on proposed laws before they went to the Legislative Body for a vote.

  The Legislative Body held three hundred members, also serving five-year terms with one-fifth renewed annually. It could vote on proposed laws, but it could not debate or amend them.

  The Conservative Senate held sixty irremovable members, each required to be at least forty years old. Bonaparte appointed them directly. They in turn co-opted twenty additional senators. The Senate elected members of the other legislative bodies and the judges of the Court of Cassation. Through the mechanism of sénatus-consultes, established by the Constitution of Year X, it later acquired the power to draft legislation directly.

  On the 18th of May 1804, the Conservative Senate proclaimed Napoleon Emperor of the French. He subsequently proclaimed himself Emperor of the French. The body that carried out the proclamation had been established specifically to preserve the republic's constitution.