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Early life He was born at Fréjus in the south of France, and was educated for priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church at the Sorbonne. While there, he became influenced by the teachings of John Locke, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, the Encyclopédistes, and other political thinkers, all in preference to theology. Despite this embrace of Enlightenment thinking, he entered the Church, and was rapidly promoted to vicar general and chancellor of the diocese of Chartres. What Is the Third Estate? and the Declaration In 1788, the King proposed convocation of the Estates-General of France after the interval of more than a century and a half, and the invitation of Jacques Necker to writers to state their views as to the organization of the Estates, enabled Sieyès to publish his celebrated pamphlet, Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? ("What Is the Third Estate?") He begins his answer: "Everything. What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing. What does it desire? To be something." This phrase, which was to remain famous, is said to have been inspired by Nicolas Chamfort. The pamphlet was very successful, and its author, despite his clerical vocation (which made him part of the First Estate), was elected as the last (the twentieth) of the deputies the Third Estate of Paris to the Estates-General. He played his main role in the opening years of the Revolution, drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, expanding on the theory of national sovereignty, popular sovereignty, and representation implied in his pamphlet, with a distinction between active and passive citizens that justified suffrage limited to male owners of property. Assemblies, Convention, and Terror Although not noted as a speaker (he spoke rarely and briefly), Sieyès had major influence, and he recommended the decision of the Estates to reunite its chamber as the National Assembly, although he opposed the abolition of tithes and the confiscation of Church lands. Elected to the special committee on the constitution, he opposed the right of "absolute veto" for the King of France, which Honoré Mirabeau unsuccessfully supported. He had considerable influence on the framing of the departmental system, but, after the spring of 1790, he was eclipsed by other politicians, and was elected only once to the post of fortnightly president of the Constituent Assembly. Like all other members of the Constituent Assembly, he was excluded from the Legislative Assembly by the ordinance, initially proposed by Maximilien Robespierre, that decreed that none of its members should be eligible for the next legislature. He reappeared in the third national Assembly, known as the National Convention of the French Republic (September 1792 - September 1795). He voted for the death of Louis XVI, but not in the contemptuous terms sometimes ascribed to him. Menaced by the Reign of Terror, and offended by its character, Sieyès even abjured his faith at the time of the installation of the Cult of Reason, and afterwards he characterized his conduct during the period in the ironic phrase, J'ai vécu ("I survived"). Directory and intrigue In 1795 he went on a diplomatic mission to The Hague, and was instrumental in drawing up a treaty between the French and Batavian republics. He resented the constitution of 1795 (that of the Directory), and refused to serve as a Director of the Republic. In May 1798 he went as the plenipotentiary of France to the court of Berlin, in order to try to induce Prussia to ally with France against the Second Coalition; despite his efforts, this was not to happen. His prestige grew, and he was Director of France in place of Jean-François Rewbell in May 1799. Nevertheless, Sieyès was considering ways to overthrow the Directory, and is said to have taken in view the replacement of the government with unlikely rulers such as Archduke Charles of Austria and Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick (a major enemy of the Revolution). He attempted to undermine the constitution, and thus caused the revived Jacobin Club to be closed while making offers to General Joubert for a coup d'état. Brumaire, Empire, and later life The death of Joubert at the Battle of Novi, and the return of Napoleon Bonaparte from the Egypt campaign put an end to this project, but Sieyès resumed it by reaching a new understanding with Bonaparte. After 18 Brumaire, Sieyès produced the constitution which he had long been planning, only to have it completely remodelled by Bonaparte, who thereby achieved a coup within the coup - the Constitution of the Year VIII favored by the latter became the basis of the Consulate. Sieyès soon retired from the post of provisional Consul, which he had accepted after Brumaire, and became one of the first senators (it was rumored at the time that this concession earned him his large estate at Crôsne). After the plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise in late December 1800, Sieyès the senator defended the arbitrary and illegal proceedings whereby Bonaparte rid himself of the leading Jacobins. During the Empire he rarely emerged from his retirement, but at the time of the Bourbon Restorations restorations (1814 and 1815-1830) he left France, and returned after the July Revolution. Notes See also | ||||||||||
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