French First Republic

The French First Republic was declared in September 1792, three years into the French Revolution, when the new National Convention abolished the monarchy. It lasted until Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor in 1804, and in those twelve years France went through revolutionary terror, a series of different constitutions, and wars against most of Europe.

The National Convention, elected in 1792, was the first French assembly elected by universal male suffrage. It was divided between the Girondins, more moderate deputies from the provinces, and the Montagnards, radicals who sat on the high benches, led by Robespierre, Danton and Marat. The Paris sans-culottes, working people, put pressure on the Convention through demonstrations. In June 1793, the Montagnards, backed by the sans-culottes, expelled the leading Girondins.

Facing foreign war, civil war in the Vendée and revolts in Lyon, Marseille and other cities, the Convention gave power to the Committee of Public Safety and introduced the Law of Suspects in September 1793. The Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced thousands to the guillotine, including the former queen Marie Antoinette, the Girondin leaders and, in April 1794, Danton. In the Vendée, republican troops killed tens of thousands of rebels and civilians. Price controls, the Maximum, were introduced. In Thermidor, July 1794, Robespierre was overthrown and executed.

The Republic introduced the metric system, adopted in 1795, and a new calendar, with years counted from 1792 and months named after natural phenomena, such as Brumaire, the month of mists, and Thermidor, the month of heat. Churches were closed during the dechristianisation campaign of 1793–1794, and Robespierre promoted a Cult of the Supreme Being. Slavery was abolished in the colonies in 1794. The Louvre opened as a public museum in 1793.

In August 1793 the Convention declared the levée en masse, mobilising the whole nation for war: young men for the army, women to make tents and clothes, old men to encourage patriotism. The French army grew to over a million men, larger than any in European history. Promoting officers on merit, new generals, such as Jourdan, Hoche and Bonaparte, led the armies to victory. France annexed Belgium and the Rhineland and created sister republics in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy.

The Constitution of 1795 created a government of five Directors and two legislative councils. The Directory faced economic crisis, royalist plots and radical conspiracies, such as Gracchus Babeuf's Conspiracy of the Equals in 1796. It relied increasingly on the army, which it used to annul election results in 1797. Bonaparte's victories in Italy made him a hero, and his expedition to Egypt in 1798 brought scholars who studied ancient Egypt.

On 18 Brumaire Year VIII, 9 November 1799, Bonaparte, with his brother Lucien and the Director Sieyès, carried out a coup. The Consulate was established, with Bonaparte as First Consul, and a new constitution was approved by referendum. In 1802 he became consul for life, and in 1804 emperor.

The First Republic established principles of popular sovereignty, the rights of citizens and the secular state that have shaped French politics ever since. The tricolour flag and the Marseillaise, the national anthem, date from this period.

Our maps show the First Republic on the 1800 map, at about 620,000 square kilometres. Nearly 90 percent of that is in today's France, with the rest in Belgium and parts of Italy, which it had annexed. Brussels is French on that map, and so is New Orleans, as the basemap counts Louisiana, which Spain returned to France in 1800 and France sold to the United States in 1803.