When was the National Convention established in France?
National Convention
The monarchy made a distinction between French soil on the mainland and soil under French control such as the colonies. This distinction allowed for slavery to be illegal in France but continue in the colonies. Colonists in Saint Domingue wanted to have representation, 21 members due to their population size and contribution to the economy. This was shot down by the National Convention as the majority of their population were slaves and thus had no rights as citizens and contributed nothing to representative population. The Société des amis des Noirs in France originally did oppose slavery during the 1780s, however much of this opposition was ignored as a result of the French Revolution breaking out. The French showed a much greater willingness to act on the issue of slavery when the threat of a war with Spain seemed imminent. In 1792 the National Convention agreed to delegate 3 commissaries for Saint Domingue. Two of the commissaires, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel, implemented rights for free men of color that were equal to their white counterparts. On May 5, 1793, Sonthonax and Polverel, first attacked the plantation system and forced the owners to treat the slaves better and care more for their well-being. Sonthonax then attacked slavery itself by freeing any slave Huzards, Latin for hazards, who had been armed by their masters since they could not return to peaceful plantation life. Polverel issued a proclamation in Cap Francais on June 21, 1793 which freed all slaves who agreed to fight for the French Republic from both internal and external threats. The commissaires then ruled that the Republic would pay an indemnity to the owners of female slaves marrying free men and that all children of that union would be free. The National Convention eventually allowed for 6 representative members for the colony. When pressured by the Friends of the Blacks to end the slave trade in the colonies, the National Convention refused on the grounds of slavery being too core to the French economic wealth. The committee felt “six million French people relied on the colonies to survive” and continued to stand by this argument. On October 12, 1790 the National Convention declared the only body of power who could control the status of people in the colonies were committees in the colonies themselves--this meant although free blacks met the requirement for active citizenship the white colonists would not allow it. This was done in an attempt to please the white colonists and convince them not to join forces with the British. This also gave the colonies the power to control their own laws regarding slavery and allowed for the National Convention to wash their hands of the issue. Three deputies from Saint Domingue traveled to France to attempt to persuade the National Convention to abolish slavery. The National Convention abolished slavery after hearing speeches from the deputies on February 4, 1794. However, the Committee of Public Safety delayed sending the proclamation to the colonies for two months. This was due to the apparent opposition of Robespierre to the abolition of slavery. The issue was eventually resolved following the Committee circumventing Robespierre and ordering the abolition decree to be sent to Saint Domingue. However, Napoleon's attempt to return to slavery in 1801 removed France's state of being the first to abolish slavery and led to the loss of the most prosperous French colony.
Thermidorians
Over the following days, the Thermidorians took over the majority in the National Convention and in the 1795 a new constitution was created, with the National Convention disestablished for the creation of the French Directory. The Thermidorians became a republican and bourgeoisie group—and like the new constitution—also conservative on social themes and liberal on economic themes.
1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State
Prior to the French Revolution of 1789, Roman Catholicism had been the state religion of France, and closely identified with the "Ancien Régime". However, the revolution led to various policy changes, including a brief separation of church and state in 1795, ended by Napoleon's re-establishment of the Catholic Church as the state religion with the Concordat of 1801. An important document in the evolution toward religious liberty was Article Ten of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, stating that "No one may be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious ones, as long as the manifestation of such opinions does not interfere with the established Law and Order." The 1871 Paris Commune had proclaimed state secularism on 3 April 1871, but it had been cancelled following the Commune's defeat.
National Convention
Discontent increased along with the shortages. On 17 March a delegation from "faubourgs Saint-Marceau and Saint-Jacques" complained that "We are on the verge of regretting all the sacrifices that we have made for the Revolution." Police law was passed which lay down the death penalty for use of seditious language. Arms were distributed to the "good citizens", the faithful nucleus of the National Guard. The trial of strength was approaching.
On 10 Germinal (30 March) all the sections called their general assemblies. The political geography of Paris emerged clearly from this. Convention debate was centered on two issues: the fate of Barère, Collot, Billaud and Vadier, and the implementation of the constitution of 1793. While in the sections of the center and the west formal addresses called for the punishment of the "Four" and passed over the food shortages, the sections of the east and the "faubourgs" demanded measures to deal with the grain crisis, the implementation of the constitution of 1793, the reopening of the popular societies and the release of the imprisoned patriots.
National Rally (France)
The party was founded in 1972 to unify a variety of French nationalist movements of the time. Jean-Marie Le Pen was the party's first leader and the undisputed centre of the party from its start until his resignation in 2011. While the party struggled as a marginal force for its first ten years, since 1984 it has been the major force of French nationalism. The 2002 presidential election was the first in France to include a National Front candidate in the run-off after Jean-Marie Le Pen beat the Socialist candidate in the first round. In the run-off, he finished a distant second to Jacques Chirac. His daughter Marine Le Pen was elected to succeed him. In April 2017, she temporarily stepped down in order to concentrate on being the presidential candidate and to unite voters.
Joachim Murat
In the autumn of 1795, three years after King Louis XVI of France was deposed, royalist and counter-revolutionaries organised an armed uprising. On 3 October, General Napoleon Bonaparte, who was stationed in Paris, was named commander of the French National Convention's defending forces. This constitutional convention, after a long period of emergency rule, was striving to establish a more stable and permanent government in the uncertain period after the Reign of Terror. Bonaparte tasked Murat with the gathering of artillery from a suburb outside the control of the government's forces. Murat managed to take the cannons of the "Camp des Sablons" and transport them to the centre of Paris while avoiding the rioters. The use of these cannons – the famous "whiff of grapeshot" – on 5 October allowed Bonaparte to save the members of the National Convention. For this success, Joachim Murat was made "chef de brigade" (colonel) and thereafter remained one of Napoleon's best officers.
1810s
By 1815, Europe had been almost constantly at war. During this time, the military conquests of France had resulted in the spread of liberalism throughout much of the continent, resulting in many states adopting the Napoleonic code. Largely as a reaction to the radicalism of the French Revolution, the victorious powers of the Napoleonic Wars resolved to suppress liberalism and nationalism, and revert largely to the "status quo" of Europe prior to 1789.
The result was the Concert of Europe, also known as the "Congress System". It was the balance of power that existed in Europe from 1815 until the early 20th century. Its founding members were the United Kingdom, Austrian Empire, Russian Empire and Kingdom of Prussia, the members of the Quadruple Alliance responsible for the downfall of the First French Empire; in time France became established as a fifth member of the concert. At first, the leading personalities of the system were British foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh, Austrian chancellor Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich and Tsar Alexander I of Russia.
France
Facing financial troubles, King Louis XVI summoned the Estates-General (gathering the three Estates of the realm) in May 1789 to propose solutions to his government. As it came to an impasse, the representatives of the Third Estate formed into a National Assembly, signalling the outbreak of the French Revolution. Fearing that the king would suppress the newly created National Assembly, insurgents stormed the Bastille on 14 July 1789, a date which would become France's National Day.
National Convention
On the morning of 12 Germinal (1 April) crowds gathered on the "Ile de la Cité" and, pushing aside the palace guards, burst into the chamber where the Convention met. Amidst the uproar, spokesmen of the sections outlined the people's grievances. Reliable battalions of National Guard were called and demonstrators, lacking arms and leaders, were forced to withdraw. For the most people it was the constitution of 1793 – seen as a liberating utopia – which represented the solution to all evils. There were others who openly regretted the passing of "the reign of Robespierre".
But it was not the end. A new explosion was on the horizon. Insurrection was being openly prepared. On 1 Prairial (20 May 1795) the alarm bells sounded in the "faubourgs" Saint-Antoine and Marceau. The armed battalions arrived at Place du Carousel and entered the sitting chamber. After an hour of uproar, "The Insurrection of the People" ("L'Insurection du Peuple") was read. In the chaos, none of the ringleaders thought of implementing the key item of the program: the overthrow of the government.
National Convention
Administrative and economic centralization went hand in hand. The state of siege forced France into autarky; to save the Republic the government mobilized all the nation's productive forces and reluctantly accepted the need for a controlled economy, which it introduced extemporaneously, as the emergency required. It was necessary to develop war production, revive foreign trade, and find new resources in France itself; and time was short. Circumstances gradually compelled it to assume the economic government of the country. Along with organization of the army, this was the most original feature of its work.
History of France
On 20 September 1792, the French won a battle against Prussian troops near Valmy and the new National Convention replaced the Legislative Assembly. From the start the Convention suffered from the bitter division between a group around Robespierre, Danton and Marat referred to as 'Montagnards' or 'Jacobins' or 'left' and a group referred to as 'Girondins' or 'right'. But the majority of the representatives, referred to as 'la Plaine', were member of neither of those two antagonistic groups and managed to preserve some speed in the Convention's debates. Right away on 21 September the Convention abolished the monarchy, making France the French First Republic. A new French Republican Calendar was introduced to replace the Christian Gregorian calendar, renaming the year 1792 as year 1 of the Republic.
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
After the Thermidorian Reaction, the Convention repealed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy; however, the schism between the civilly constituted French Church and the Papacy was only resolved when the Concordat of 1801 was agreed on. The Concordat was reached on July 15, 1801 and it was made widely known the following year, on Easter. It was an agreement executed by Napoleon Bonaparte and clerical and papal representatives from Rome and Paris, and determined the role and status of the Roman Catholic Church in France; moreover, it concluded the confiscations and church reforms that had been implemented over the course of the revolution. The agreement also gave the first consul (Napoleon) the authority and right to nominate bishops, redistribute the current parishes and bishoprics, and allowed for seminaries to be established. In an effort to please Pius VII it was agreed upon that suitable salaries would be provided for bishops and curés and he would condone the acquisition of church lands.
National Convention
The ensemble of institutions, measures and procedures which constituted it was codified in a decree of 14 Frimaire (4 December) which set the seal on what had been the gradual development of centralized dictatorship founded on the Terror. In the center was the Convention, whose secular arm was the Committee of Public Safety, vested with immense powers: it interpreted the Convention's decrees and settled their methods of application; under its immediate authority it had all state bodies and all civil servants (even ministers would disappear in April 1794); it directed military and diplomatic activity, appointed generals and members of other committees, subject to ratification by the Convention. It held responsibility for conducting war, public order and the provisioning of the population. The Commune of Paris, a famous "sans-culotte" bastion, was neutralized by coming under its control.
France
In August 1791, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia in the Declaration of Pillnitz threatened revolutionary France to intervene by force of arms to restore the French absolute monarchy. In September 1791, the National Constituent Assembly forced King Louis XVI to accept the French Constitution of 1791, thus turning the French absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. In the newly established Legislative Assembly (October 1791), enmity developed and deepened between a group, later called the 'Girondins', who favored war with Austria and Prussia, and a group later called 'Montagnards' or 'Jacobins', who opposed such a war. A majority in the Assembly in 1792 however saw a war with Austria and Prussia as a chance to boost the popularity of the revolutionary government, and thought that France would win a war against those gathered monarchies. On 20 April 1792, therefore, they declared war on Austria.
On 10 August 1792, an angry crowd threatened the palace of King Louis XVI, who took refuge in the Legislative Assembly.
A Prussian army invaded France later in August 1792.
In early September, Parisians, infuriated by the Prussian army capturing Verdun and counter-revolutionary uprisings in the west of France, murdered between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners by raiding the Parisian prisons. The Assembly and the Paris city council seemed unable to stop that bloodshed. The National Convention, chosen in the first elections under male universal suffrage, on 20 September 1792 succeeded the Legislative Assembly and on 21 September abolished the monarchy by proclaiming the French First Republic.
Ex-King Louis XVI was convicted of treason and guillotined in January 1793.
France had declared war on England and the Dutch Republic in November 1792 and did the same on Spain in March 1793; in the spring of 1793, Austria, Great Britain and the Dutch Republic invaded France; in March, France created a "sister republic" in the "Republic of Mainz".
National Convention
Most historians divide the National Convention into two main factions: the Girondins and the Montagnards. The Girondins were the more radical democratic faction at the Convention, as opposed to the Montagnards, who were authoritarian populists. They drew their name from the Gironde, a region of France from which many of the deputies of this faction were elected (although many "Girondins" were actually Parisian by origin). They were also known as the Brissotins after their most prominent speaker, Jaques Pierre Brissot.
National Convention
Although the Convention lasted until 1795, power was effectively stripped from the elected deputies and concentrated in the small Committee of Public Safety from April 1793. The eight months from the fall of 1793 to the spring of 1794, when Maximilien Robespierre and his allies dominated the Committee of Public Safety, represent the most radical and bloodiest phase of the French Revolution, known as the Reign of Terror. After the fall of Robespierre, the Convention lasted for another year until a new constitution was written, ushering in the French Directory.
Anarchism in France
The Confédération nationale du travail (CNT, or National Confederation of Labour) was founded in 1946 by Spanish anarcho-syndicalists in exile with former members of the CGT-SR. The CNT later split into the CNT-Vignoles and the CNT-AIT, which is the French section of the IWA.
Joseph Fouché
After the downfall of the monarchy on 10 August 1792 (following the storming of the royal Tuileries Palace), he was elected as deputy for the "département" of the Loire-Inférieure to the National Convention—which proclaimed the French Republic on 22 September.
List of Presidents of the National Convention
Initially elected to provide a new constitution after the overthrow of the monarchy on 10 August 1792, the Convention included 749 deputies drawn from businesses and trades, and from such professions as law, journalism, medicine, and the clergy. Among its earliest acts was the formal abolition of the monarchy, through Proclamation, on 21 September, and the subsequent establishment of the Republic on 22 September. The French Republican Calendar discarded all Christian reference points and calculated time from the Republic's first full day after the monarchy – 22 September 1792, the first day of Year One.
Nantes
After the Battle of Nantes, the National Convention (which had founded the First French Republic) decided to purge the city of its anti-revolutionary elements. Nantes was seen by the convention as a corrupt merchant city; the local elite was less supportive of the French Revolution, since its growing centralisation reduced their influence. From October 1793 to February 1794, deputy Jean-Baptiste Carrier presided over a revolutionary tribunal notorious for cruelty and ruthlessness. Between 12,000 and 13,000 people (including women and children) were arrested, and 8,000 to 11,000 died of typhus or were executed by the guillotine, shooting or drowning. The Drownings at Nantes were intended to kill large numbers of people simultaneously, and Carrier called the Loire "the national bathtub".
French First Republic
In the history of France, the First Republic (French: "Première République"), officially the French Republic ("République française"), was founded on 22 September 1792 during the French Revolution. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First Empire in 1804 under Napoleon, although the form of the government changed several times. This period was characterized by the fall of the monarchy, the establishment of the National Convention and the Reign of Terror, the Thermidorian Reaction and the founding of the Directory, and, finally, the creation of the Consulate and Napoleon's rise to power.
Democracy
In 1789, Revolutionary France adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and, although short-lived, the National Convention was elected by all men in 1792. However, in the early 19th century, little of democracy—as theory, practice, or even as word—remained in the North Atlantic world.
Charles-François Lebrun
Lebrun retired from this position on 7 August 1792, and again retired to Dourdan. Three days later, the storming of the Tuileries Palace signalled the move towards the establishment of the French Republic by the creation of the National Convention. Lebrun further aroused the indignation of republicans when he accepted to represent Dourdan in the electoral college of Seine-et-Oise which nominated deputies to the Convention.
Constitution of the Year X
Both the Constitution of the Year X and the Constitution of the Year VIII were further amended by the Constitution of the Year XII, which established the First French Empire with Napoleon as Emperor.
List of heads of state of France
The "Directory" () was the government of France following the collapse of the National Convention in late 1795. Administered by a collective leadership of five directors, it preceded the Consulate established in a coup d'etat by Napoleon. It lasted from 2 November 1795 until 10 November 1799, a period commonly known as the "Directory era". The directory operated with a bicameral structure. A Council of the Ancients, selected by lot, named the directors. For its own security, the Left (whose members dominated the Council) resolved that all five must be old members of the Convention and regicides who had voted to execute King Louis XVI. The Ancients chose Jean-François Rewbell; Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras; Louis Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux; Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot; and Étienne-François Le Tourneur.
École Nationale des Chartes
The École des Chartes was created by order of Louis XVIII on 22 February 1821, although its roots are in the Revolution and the Napoleonic period. The Revolution, during which property was confiscated, congregations were suppressed and competencies were transferred from the Church to the State, produced radical cultural changes. In 1793 the feudist Antoine Maugard approached the public instruction committee of the Convention with a proposal for a project of historical and diplomatic education. The project was never carried out, and Maugard was largely forgotten. The institution was finally created by the philologist and anthropologist Joseph Marie de Gérando, baron of the Empire and general secretary to Champagny, the Minister of the Interior. In 1807 he submitted a proposal to Napoleon for the creation of a school to train young scholars of history. Napoleon examined the proposal and declared that he wished to develop a much larger specialist history school. However, Gérando was posted to Italy on an administrative mission, and the project was interrupted. At the end of 1820, Gérando convinced Count Siméon, a philosopher and professor of law who had been state councilor under the Empire and who was at that time Minister of the Interior, of the usefulness of an institution modeled on the "grandes écoles", dedicated to the study of "a branch of French literature", the charters. The 1820s were a favorable period for the creation of the École des Chartes. This was firstly because the atmosphere of nostalgia for the Middle Ages created a desire to train specialists who would, by carrying out a direct study of archives and manuscripts confiscated during the Revolution, be able to renew French historiography. Secondly, the need was also felt to maintain this branch of study, which stemmed from Maurist tradition, since the field was endangered by a lack of knowledgeable collaborators in the "science of charters and manuscripts". And thirdly, during the reign of Louis XVIII, a period which saw the return of the Ultras and during which the constitutional monarchy was called into question, the political context influenced the creation of an institution whose name inevitably made explicit reference to the defense of the Charter.
National archives
The National Archives of France was created informally on July 29, 1789 by the Revolutionaries to document the prior "ancien régime". The crown's as well as private records from the clergy were collected for historical value as those parties were deemed irrelevant to French society. Separately, as of September 9, 1790, the new regime collected contemporaneous documents as "the depository of all acts that establish the constitution of the kingdom, the rights of its public, its laws" ("ergo" a new public record). Thus the National Archives served to house practical documents from the First Republic onwards while the National Library of France became the center of historical study. The changing view of the 19th Century began merging the two concepts of the "historically important" records and the "bureaucratic transactional" records. Archivists trained at the French National School of Paleography and Archival Studies were charged with maintaining records as a factor of accountability to the public. Jenkinson, a luminary of British archival practice, specifically criticized the French and Belgian accessions of isolated private documents into national archives, saying "we cannot think that a stray paper from some dispersed family collection... is a fit inmate for a National Archive Establishment." He characterized the combination like a melange of the Manuscripts Commission and the Public Record Office, a merger which would happen in the UK some 90 years later.
National Convention
The Convention came about when the Legislative Assembly, which had found it impossible to work with the king, decreed the provisional suspension of King Louis XVI and the convocation of a National Convention to draw up a new constitution with no monarchy. The other major innovation was to decree that deputies to that Convention should be elected by all Frenchmen twenty-five years old or more, domiciled for a year and living by the product of their labor. The National Convention was, therefore, the first French assembly elected by a suffrage without distinctions of class.
French Revolution
Late in August 1792, elections were held, now under male universal suffrage, for the new National Convention, which replaced the Legislative Assembly on 20 September 1792. From the start the Convention suffered from the bitter division between a group around Robespierre, Danton and Marat, referred to as 'Montagnards' or 'Jacobins' or the 'left', and a group referred to as 'Girondins' or the 'right'. But the majority of the representatives, referred to as 'la Plaine', were member of neither of those two antagonistic groups and managed to preserve some speed in the Convention's debates.
Convention (meeting)
In the technical sense, a convention is a meeting of delegates or representatives. The 1947 Newfoundland National Convention is a classic example of a state-sponsored political convention. More often, organizations made up of smaller units, chapters, or lodges, such as labor unions, honorary societies, and fraternities and sororities, meet as a whole in convention by sending delegates of the units to deliberate on the organization's common issues. This also applies to a political convention, though in modern times the common issues are limited to selecting a party candidate or party chairman. In this technical sense, a congress, when it consists of representatives, is a convention. The British House of Commons is a convention, as are most other houses of a modern representative legislature. The National Convention or just "Convention" in France comprised the constitutional and legislative assembly which sat from September 20, 1792 to October 26, 1795. The governing bodies of religious groups may also be called conventions, such as the General Convention of the Episcopal Church USA and the Southern Baptist Convention.
Ligue de Football Professionnel
Following the conclusion of the war, many clubs were hesitant to follow the initiatives of the French Football Federation due to their belief that the federation were not thinking in their best interests and, instead, opted to join an initiative by Gambardella referred the "Groupement des clubs autorisés". On 27 October 1944, the Ligue Nationale de Football (National Football League) was officially founded with Gambardella being installed as the organization's first president. The league changed its name back to "Groupement des clubs autorisés" shortly after and kept the name until 1970 before returning to Ligue Nationale de Football. In 2000, the league changed its name to the Ligue de Football Professionnel.
La Nation française
La Nation française ("The French Nation") was a French monarchist weekly magazine influenced by Charles Maurras, the founder of the Action française movement. It was founded in 1955 as an offshoot of "Aspects de la France", another monarchist review founded in June 1947 by Maurice Pujo and Georges Calzant, former members of the Action Française who continued to support the nationalist monarchist current. Directed by journalist Pierre Boutang, others writers include: Jean de La Varende, Antoine Blondin, Roger Nimier, Philippe Ariès or Gabriel Matzneff. "La Nation française" supported Henri of Orléans, "count of Paris." After having defended "French Algeria" during the Algerian War (1954–62), it dissolved itself, on disagreements in particular concerning Boutang's "compromission" with Charles de Gaulle. The magazine ceased publication in 1967.
History of far-right movements in France
Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the Front National (FN) party in 1972, along with former Organisation armée secrète (OAS) member Jacques Bompard, former Collaborationist Roland Gaucher, François Duprat, who introduced the negationist thesis to France, and others nostalgics of Vichy France, Catholic fundamentalists, etc. Le Pen presented himself for the first time in the 1974 presidential election, obtaining 0.74%. The electoral rise of the FN did not start until Jean-Pierre Stirbois's victory, in 1983, in Dreux. The FN became stronger throughout the 1980s, managing to unite most far-right tendencies, passing electoral alliances with the right-wing Rally for the Republic (RPR), while some FN members quit the party to join the RPR or the Union for a French Democracy (UDF). At the 1986 legislative elections, the FN managed to obtain 35 seats, with 10% of the votes.
French Committee of National Liberation
The French Committee of National Liberation () was a provisional government of Free France formed by the French generals Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle to provide united leadership, organize and coordinate the campaign to liberate France from Nazi Germany during World War II. The committee was formed on 3 June 1943 and after a period of joint leadership, on November 9 it came under the chairmanship of Gen. de Gaulle. The committee directly challenged the legitimacy of the Vichy regime and unified all the French forces that fought against the Nazis and collaborators. The committee functioned as a provisional government for Algeria (then a part of metropolitan France) and the liberated parts of the colonial empire. Later it evolved into the Provisional Government of the French Republic, under the premiership of Charles de Gaulle.
Catholic Church in France
Prior to the French Revolution, the Catholic Church had been the official state religion of France since the conversion to Christianity of Clovis I, leading to France being called "the eldest daughter of the Church." The King of France was known as "His Most Christian Majesty." Following the Protestant Reformation, France was riven by sectarian conflict as the Huguenots and Catholics strived for supremacy in the Wars of Religion until the 1598 Edict of Nantes established a measure of religious toleration.
Fédération Nationale Catholique
The Fédération Nationale Catholique (FNC) () was a French movement that was active in the 1920s and 1930s, with the purpose of defending the Catholic Church against secular trends in the governments of the time. The Federation was founded in 1924 in response to the election of a left-wing government with a secularist policy. After rapidly gaining members and staging large demonstrations, it soon achieved its goal of maintaining the status quo separation between church and state. The movement gradually lost momentum in the years that followed, although it remained in existence during the Vichy regime.
French nationalism
French nationalism emerged from its numerous wars with England, which involved the reconquest of the territories that made up France. The wars produced a great icon of French nationalism, Joan of Arc. The Catholic religion also played a major role after the Protestant Reformation. French nationalism became a powerful movement after the French Revolution in 1789. Napoleon Bonaparte promoted French nationalism based upon the ideals of the French Revolution such as the idea of "liberty, equality, fraternity" and justified French expansionism and French military campaigns on the claim that France had the right to spread the enlightened ideals of the French Revolution across Europe, and also to expand France into its so-called "natural borders." Napoleon's invasions of other nations had the effect of spreading the concept of nationalism outside France.
History of the Catholic Church in France
"The Convention (21 September 1792-26 October 1795) which proclaimed the republic and caused Louis XVI to be executed (21 January 1793), followed a very tortuous policy toward religion. As early as 13 November 1792, Cambon, in the name of the Financial Committee, announced to the Convention that he would speedily submit a scheme of general reform including a suppression of the appropriation for religious worship, which, he asserted, cost the republic "100,000,000 livres annually". The Jacobins opposed this scheme as premature, and Robespierre declared it derogatory to public morality. During the first eight months of its existence the policy of the Convention was to maintain the "Civil Constitution" and to increase the penalties against "refractory" priests who were suspected of complicity on the War in the Vendée. A decree dated 18 March 1793, punished with death all compromised priests. It no longer aimed at refractory priests only, but any ecclesiastic accused of disloyalty (incivisme) by any six citizens became liable to transportation. In the eyes of the revolution, there were no longer good priests and bad priests; for the sans-culottes every priest was suspect. "
History of Europe
French intervention in the American Revolutionary War had nearly bankrupted the state. After repeated failed attempts at financial reform, King Louis XVI had to convene the Estates-General, a representative body of the country made up of three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. The third estate, joined by members of the other two, declared itself to be a National Assembly and swore an oath not to dissolve until France had a constitution and created, in July, the National Constituent Assembly. At the same time the people of Paris revolted, famously storming the Bastille prison on 14 July 1789.
French Committee of National Liberation
With the Allied invasion of Normandy, the Committee moved its headquarters to London, and in August 1944 the Committee moved to Paris, following the liberation of France by Allied forces. In September, Allied forces recognized the Committee as the legitimate, provisional government of France, whereupon the Committee reorganized itself under the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, incorporating representatives of various French political parties such as the Socialists and French Communists. The Committee also began the process of writing a new constitution to found the French Fourth Republic. However, Charles de Gaulle resigned in 1946 over the provisional legislature's refusal to grant more powers to the President and owing to the in-fighting between various political factions and the Communists.
Francophobia
Though French history in the broadest sense extends back more than a millennium, its political unity dates back from the reign of Louis XI, who set up the basis of nation-state (rather than a dynastic, transnational entity typical of the late Middle Ages). In the last days of the Ancien Regime, only aristocrats and scholars spoke French in much of the kingdom, as about two-thirds of the population spoke a variety of local languages, often referred to as dialects. Henceforth, Eric Hobsbawm argues that the French nation-state was constituted during the 19th century through conscription, which accounted for interactions between French citizens coming from various regions and the Third Republic's public instruction laws, enacted in the 1880s, probably in parallel with the birth of the European nationalisms.
University of France
On 15 September 1793, petitioned by the Department of Paris and several other departments, the National Convention decided that, independently of the primary schools,
National Front (French Resistance)
The National Front ( or "Front national de l'indépendance de la France") was a World War II far-left French Resistance movement, created in 1941 by Jacques Duclos and Pierre Villon, both members of the French Communist Party (PCF). Its name was inspired by the Popular Front, a left-wing coalition which governed France from 1936 to 1938.
France
Also in March 1793, the civil war of the Vendée against Paris started, evoked by both the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 and the nationwide army conscription early 1793; elsewhere in France rebellion was brewing too.
A factionalist feud in the National Convention, smoldering ever since October 1791, came to a climax with the group of the 'Girondins' on 2 June 1793 being forced to resign and leave the Convention.
The counter-revolution, begun in March 1793 in the Vendée, by July had spread to Brittany, Normandy, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulon, Lyon. Paris' Convention government between October and December 1793 with brutal measures managed to subdue most internal uprisings, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. Some historians consider the civil war to have lasted until 1796 with a toll of possibly 450,000 lives.
France in February 1794 abolished slavery in its American colonies, but would reintroduce it later.
Ethnic groups in Europe
The member states of the Council of Europe in 1995 signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. The broad aims of the Convention are to ensure that the signatory states respect the rights of national minorities, undertaking to combat discrimination, promote equality, preserve and develop the culture and identity of national minorities, guarantee certain freedoms in relation to access to the media, minority languages and education and encourage the participation of national minorities in public life. The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities defines a national minority implicitly to include minorities possessing a territorial identity and a distinct cultural heritage. By 2008, 39 member states have signed and ratified the Convention, with the notable exception of France.
LGBT social movements
The emerging currents of secular humanist thought which had inspired Bentham also informed the French Revolution, and when the newly formed National Constituent Assembly began drafting the policies and laws of the new republic in 1792, groups of militant "sodomite-citizens" in Paris petitioned the Assemblée nationale, the governing body of the French Revolution, for freedom and recognition. In 1791, France became the first nation to decriminalize homosexuality, probably thanks in part to Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, who was one of the authors of the Napoleonic Code. With the introduction of the Napoleonic Code in 1808, the Duchy of Warsaw also decriminalized homosexuality.
National Legislative Assembly (France)
Many who had sat in the National Constituent Assembly and many more who had sat in the Legislative Assembly were re-elected. The Convention met on 20 September 1792 and became the new government of France.
Constitution of the Year VIII
The Constitution of the Year VIII ( or ) was a national constitution of France, adopted on December 24, 1799 (during the Year VIII of the French Revolutionary Calendar), which established the form of government known as the Consulate. The coup of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799) had effectively given all power to Napoleon Bonaparte, and in the eyes of some, ended the French Revolution.
Constitution of the Year X
The Constitution of the Year X was a national constitution of France adopted during the Year X (10) on 16 Thermidor (4 August) of the French Revolutionary Calendar (1802 in the Gregorian calendar). It amended the Constitution of the Year VIII, revising the Consulate to augment Napoleon Bonaparte's authority by making him First Consul for Life.
National Rally (France)
While the ON had competed in some local elections since 1970, at its second congress in June 1972 it decided to establish a new political party to contest the 1973 legislative elections. The party was launched on 5 October 1972 under the name National Front for French Unity ("Front national pour l'unité française"), or Front National. In order to create a broad movement, the ON sought to model the new party (as it earlier had sought to model itself) on the more established Italian Social Movement (MSI), which at the time appeared to establish a broad coalition for the Italian right. The FN adopted a French version of the MSI tricolour flame as its logo. It wanted to unite the various French far-right currents, and brought together Le Pen's nationalist group, Roger Holeindre's Party of French Unity, Georges Bidault's Justice and Liberty movement, former Poujadists, Algerian War veterans, and some monarchists, among others. Le Pen was chosen to be the first president of the party, as he was untainted with the militant public image of the ON and was a relatively moderate figure on the far-right.
Sénat conservateur
The Sénat conservateur ("Conservative Senate") was an advisory body established in France during the Consulate following the French Revolution. It was established in 1799 under the Constitution of the Year VIII following the Napoleon Bonaparte-led Coup of 18 Brumaire. It lasted until 1814 when Napoleon Bonaparte was overthrown and the Bourbon monarchy was restored. The Sénat was a key element in Napoleon's regime.
Constitution of the Year XII
The Constitution of the Year XII was a national constitution of France adopted during the Year XII of the French Revolutionary Calendar (1804 in the Gregorian calendar).
National Assembly (French Revolution)
In the "séance royale" of 23 June the King granted a "Charte octroyée", a constitution granted of the royal favour, which affirmed, subject to the traditional limitations, the right of separate deliberation for the three orders, which constitutionally formed three chambers. This move failed; soon that part of the deputies of the nobles who still stood apart joined the National Assembly at the request of the king. The Estates-General had ceased to exist, having become the National Assembly (and after 9 July 1789, the National Constituent Assembly), though these bodies consisted of the same deputies elected by the separate orders.
History of Europe
On 20 September 1792 the National Convention abolished the monarchy and declared France a republic. Due to the emergency of war, the National Convention created the Committee of Public Safety, controlled by Maximilien de Robespierre of the Jacobin Club, to act as the country's executive. Under Robespierre, the committee initiated the Reign of Terror, during which up to 40,000 people were executed in Paris, mainly nobles and those convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal, often on the flimsiest of evidence. Internal tensions at Paris drove the Committee towards increasing assertions of radicalism and increasing suspicions, fueling new terror: A few months into this phase, more and more prominent revolutionaries were being sent to the guillotine by Robespierre and his faction, for example Madame Roland and Georges Danton. Elsewhere in the country, counter-revolutionary insurrections were brutally suppressed. The regime was overthrown in the coup of 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794) and Robespierre was executed. The regime which followed ended the Terror and relaxed Robespierre's more extreme policies.
National Convention
In the whole of France, only eleven primary assemblies wanted to retain the monarchy. Of the electoral assemblies, all tacitly voted for a republic – though only Paris used the word. None of the deputies stood as a royalist for elections. Out of the five million Frenchmen able to vote, only a million showed up at the polls.
Estates of the realm
By June, when continued impasses led to further deterioration in relations, the Estates-General was reconstituted first as the National Assembly (June 17, 1789) seeking a solution for the realm independent of the King's management of the meetings of the Estates General which occasionally continued to meet. These self-organized meetings are today defined as the epoch event beginning the historical epoch (era) of the French Revolution, during which – after several more weeks of civil unrest – the body assumed a new status as a revolutionary legislature, the National Constituent Assembly (July 9, 1789).
Proclamation of the abolition of the monarchy
During the French Revolution, the proclamation of the abolition of the monarchy (French: "Proclamation de l'abolition de la royauté") was a proclamation by the National Convention of France announcing that it had abolished the French monarchy on 21 September 1792.
Women's Petition to the National Assembly
The Women's Petition to the National Assembly was produced during the French Revolution and presented to the French National Assembly in November 1789 after The March on Versailles on 5 October 1789, proposing a decree by the National Assembly to give women equality. There were thousands of petitions presented to the National Assembly and this one was not discussed. This petition showed how the authors were knowledgeable about the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen which had been adopted in August 1789. They provided 6 pages of women's contributions and addressed gender roles and slavery.
List of Presidents of the National Convention
The Convention held both legislative and executive powers during the first years of the French First Republic and had three distinct periods: Girondins (moderate), Montagnard (radical) and Thermidorian (reaction). The Montagnards favored granting the poorer classes more political power; the Girondins favored a bourgeois republic and wanted to reduce the power and influence of Paris over the course of the revolution. A popular uprising in Paris helped to purge the Convention of the Girondins between 31 May and 2 June 1793; the last of the Girondins served as presidents in late July.
French Union
The French Union was established by the French constitution of October 27, 1946 (Fourth Republic). Under it, it was said that there were no French colonies, but that metropolitan France, the overseas departments, and the overseas territories combined to create a single French Union, or just one France.
Révolution nationale
In 1941, Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel, who had been an early proponent of eugenics and euthanasia and was a member of Jacques Doriot's French Popular Party (PPF), went on to advocate for the creation of the "Fondation Française pour l’Etude des Problèmes Humains" (French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems), using connections to the Pétain cabinet (specifically, French industrial physicians André Gros and Jacques Ménétrier). Charged of the "study, under all of its aspects, of measures aimed at safeguarding, improving and developing the French population in all of its activities," the Foundation was created by decree of the Vichy regime in 1941, and Carrel appointed as “regent”.
Secretariat-General for National Defence and Security (France)
The organism was founded in 1906 as the "Conseil supérieur de la défense nationale" ("High Council of National Defence" or CSDN); it was later known as the "Comité de défense nationale" ("Committee for National Defence") then became the ("Secrétariat général de la défense nationale" or "SGDN") "General secretary for national defence" in 1962.
Académie française
During the French Revolution, the National Convention suppressed all royal academies, including the Académie française. In 1792, the election of new members to replace those who died was prohibited; in 1793, the academies were themselves abolished. They were all replaced in 1795 by a single body called the Institut de France, or Institute of France. Napoleon Bonaparte, as First Consul, decided to restore the former academies, but only as "classes" or divisions of the Institut de France. The second class of the Institut was responsible for the French language, and corresponded to the former Académie française. When King Louis XVIII came to the throne in 1816, each class regained the title of "Académie"; accordingly, the second class of the Institut became the Académie française. Since 1816, the existence of the Académie française has been uninterrupted.
National Constituent Assembly (France)
Following the storming of the Bastille on 14 July, the National Constituent Assembly became the effective government of France. In the words of historian François Mignet: The assembly had acquired the entire power; the corporations depended on it; the national guards obeyed it... the royal power, though existing of right, was in a measure suspended, since it was not obeyed, and the assembly had to supply its action by its own.
Napoleon and Protestants
Protestantism was generally proscribed in France between 1685 (Edict of Fontainebleau) and 1787 (Edict of Versailles). During that period Roman Catholicism was the state religion. The French Revolution began a process of dechristianization that lasted from 1789 until the Concordat of 1801, an agreement between the nation and the Papacy. The French general and statesman responsible for the concordat, Napoleon Bonaparte, had a generally favorable attitude towards Protestants, and the concordat did not make Catholicism the state religion again.
Constituent assembly
During the French Revolution (from July 1789 to September 1791) a National Constituent Assembly () was formed when representatives assembled at the only location available – a tennis court – and swore the Tennis Court Oath on June 20, 1789, promising that they would not adjourn until they had drafted a new constitution for France. Louis XVI recognized the validity of the National Constituent Assembly on June 27, 1789.
National Convention
At last France saw a government take shape. Danton resigned from it on 10 July. Couthon, Saint-Just, Jeanbon Saint-Andre, and Prieur of the Marne formed a nucleus of resolute Montagnards who rallied Barère and Lindet, then successfully added Robespierre on 27 July, Carnot and Prieur of Cote-d'Ore on 14 August, and Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne on 6 September. They had a few clear ideas to which they clung: to command, to fight, and to conquer. Their work in common, the danger, the taste of and pride in power created solidarity that made the Committee an autonomous organism.
History of far-right movements in France
The Organisation armée secrète (OAS) was created in Madrid by French military opposed to the independence of Algeria. 
Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the Front National (FN) party in 1972. At the 1986 legislative elections, the FN managed to obtain 35 seats, with 10% of the votes. Mark Frederiksen, a French Algeria activist, created in April 1966 a neo-Nazi group, the FANE ("Fédération d'action nationaliste et européenne", Nationalist and European Federation of Action). However, in 1978, neo-Nazi members of the GNR-FANE broke again with the FN. During the 1980s, the National Front managed to gather, under Jean-Marie Le Pen's leadership, most rival far-right tendencies of France, following a succession of splits and alliances with other, minor parties, during the 1970s.
National Convention
The Convention held legislative and executive powers during the first years of the French First Republic and had three distinct periods: Girondin, Montagnard or Jacobin, and Thermidorian.
Conseil national de la Résistance (1962)
The Conseil national de la Résistance (CNR) was an underground French nationalist militant organization, founded 20 May 1962 in Rome. It was named after the 1943 "Conseil national de la Résistance" French resistance organization. It was dissolved in 1963, when Antoine Argoud was arrested by the French secret service in Munich, charged with the attempted assassination of French president Charles de Gaulle, and several of the other members went into exile, facing charges from the government. In 1968, a general amnesty was issued, Argoud was released from prison, and several of the former CNR members returned to France, some even returning to public life.
List of Presidents of the National Convention
From 22 September 1792 to 2 November 1795, the French Republic was governed by the National Convention, whose president (elected from within for a 14-day term) may be considered as France's legitimate Head of State during this period. Historians generally divide the Convention's activities into three periods, moderate, radical, and reaction, and the policies of presidents of the Convention reflect these distinctions. During the radical and reaction phases, some of the presidents were executed, most by guillotine, committed suicide, or were deported. In addition, some of the presidents were later deported during the Bourbon Restoration in 1815.
Territorial evolution of France
Several territories were foreign enclaves surrounded by the lands of the kingdom of France. The Convention nationale willed their merging into France, by treaty or regardless of the rights of the (mainly German) princely owners.
Some of these treaties were:The institution of a revolutionary regime in France led most of the European monarchies to form coalitions against it. The military successes of the armies of the First Republic resulted in a considerable expansion of the national territory.
Most of these annexations were to be lost subsequently, at the Congress of Vienna (1815).
List of Presidents of the National Convention
After the insurrection, any attempted resistance to revolutionary ideals was crushed. The insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793 marked a significant milestone in the history of the French Revolution. The days of 31 May – 2 June () resulted in the fall of the Girondin party under pressure of the Parisian "sans-culottes", Jacobins of the clubs, and Montagnards in the National Convention. The following men were elected as presidents of the Convention during its transition from its moderate to radical phase.
Révolution nationale
The Révolution nationale (, "National Revolution") was the official ideological program promoted by the Vichy regime (the “French State”) which had been established in July 1940 and led by Marshal Philippe Pétain. Pétain’s regime was characterized by anti-parliamentarism, rejection of the constitutional separation of powers, personality cult, xenophobia and state-sponsored anti-Semitism, promotion of traditional values and rejection of modernity, and by corporatism and opposition to the theory of class conflict. Despite its name, the ideological project was more reactionary than revolutionary as it opposed most changes introduced to French society by the French Revolution.
French Constitution of 1791
After very long negotiations, the constitution was reluctantly accepted by King Louis XVI in September 1791.
Redefining the organization of the French government, citizenship and the limits to the powers of government, the National Assembly set out to represent the interests of the general will. It abolished many “institutions which were injurious to liberty and equality of rights”. The National Assembly asserted its legal presence in French government by establishing its permanence in the Constitution and forming a system for recurring elections. The Assembly's belief in a sovereign nation and in equal representation can be seen in the constitutional separation of powers. The National Assembly was the legislative body, the king and royal ministers made up the executive branch and the judiciary was independent of the other two branches. On a local level, the previous feudal geographic divisions were formally abolished, and the territory of the French state was divided into several administrative units, Departments ("Départements"), but with the principle of centralism.
France
In early August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly abolished the privileges of the nobility such as personal serfdom and exclusive hunting rights.
Through the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (27 August 1789) France established fundamental rights for men. The Declaration affirms "the natural and imprescriptible rights of man" to "liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression". Freedom of speech and press were declared, and arbitrary arrests outlawed. It called for the destruction of aristocratic privileges and proclaimed freedom and equal rights for all men, as well as access to public office based on talent rather than birth.
Georges Danton
The French National Convention during the autumn of 1793 began to assert its authority further throughout France, creating the bloodiest period of the French Revolution in which some historians assert approximately 40,000 people were killed in France. Following the fall of the Girondins, a group known as the Indulgents would emerge from amongst the Montagnards as the legislative right within the Convention and Danton as their most vocal leader. Having long supported the progressive acts of the Committee of Public Safety, Danton would begin to propose that the Committee retract legislation instituting terror as “the order of the day.”
Archives Nationales (France)
The oldest document kept at the AN is a papyrus dated AD 625 coming from the archives of the Basilica of St Denis seized at the time of the French Revolution. This papyrus is the confirmation of a grant of land in the city of Paris to the Abbey of Saint-Denis issued by King Chlothar II. This document is the oldest original one kept by the Archives Nationales, although the Archives Nationales possess medieval copies of earlier records going as far back as AD 528 (but not the originals).
In total the Archives Nationales possess 47 original documents from the Merovingian period (ended in 751). They also possess 5 original documents from the reign of Pepin the Short (751-768), 31 from the reign of Charlemagne (768-814), 28 from the reign of Louis the Pious (814-840), 69 from the reign of Charles the Bald (840-877), 1 from the reign of Hugh Capet (987-996), 21 from the reign of Robert the Pious (996-1031), and then a rapidly increasing number of original documents after Robert the Pious, with for example more than 1,000 original documents from the reign of Philip Augustus (1180–1223) and several thousand original documents from the reign of Saint Louis (1226–1270).
The Archives Nationales also hold the original Declaration on the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, dating from 1789, which was used to disseminate to the political community the first-ever French Constitution and represents the first printed version of that text. It was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme Register in 2003 in recognition of its historical significance.
René Malbrant
In July 1946 Malbrant organized the States General of Colonization (a congress of French colonists, held in Paris). The convention gathered colonists that opposed giving French citizenships to the inhabitants of the overseas territories collectively. Through the pressure from these colonists, in October the same year the National Assembly adopted new draft constitutions for the overseas territories (which were in sharp contrasts to the ones adopted by the National Assembly in April 1946).
Représentant en mission
During the French Revolution, a représentant en mission (English: representative on mission) was an extraordinary envoy of the Legislative Assembly (1791–92) and its successor the National Convention (1792–95). The term is most often assigned to deputies designated by the National Convention for maintaining law and order in the départements and armies, as they had powers to oversee conscription into the army, and were used to monitor local military command. At the time France was in crisis; not only was war going badly, as French forces were being pushed out of Belgium, but also there was revolt in the Vendée over conscription into the army and resentment of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
History of France
With rivalry, even enmity, in the National Convention and its predecessors between so-called 'Montagnards' and 'Girondins' smouldering ever since late 1791, Jacques Hébert, Convention member leaning to the 'Montagnards' group, on 24 May 1793 called on the "sans-culottes"—the idealized simple, non-aristocratic, hard-working, upright, patriotic, republican, Paris labourers—to rise in revolt against the "henchmen of Capet [= the killed ex-king] and Dumouriez [= the defected general]". Hébert was arrested immediately by a Convention committee investigating Paris rebelliousness. While that committee consisted only of members from la Plaine and the Girondins, the anger of the sans-culottes was directed towards the Girondins. 25 May, a delegation of "la Commune" (the Paris city council) protested against Hébert’s arrest. The Convention’s President Isnard, a Girondin, answered them: "Members of "la Commune" (…) If by your incessant rebellions something befalls to the representatives of the nation, I declare, in the name of France, that Paris will be totally obliterated".
Levée en masse
The progression of the Revolution came to produce friction between France and its European neighbors, who grew determined to invade France to restore the monarchy. War with Prussia and Austria was declared in April 1792. Decrees such as that of 19 November 1792 reflect the fact that “the deputies were in no mood for caution.” The Convention's decree stated that: “The National Convention declares, in the name of the French nation, that it will grant fraternity and assistance to all peoples who wish to recover their liberty, and instructs the Executive Power to give the necessary orders to generals to grant assistance to these peoples and to defend those citizens who have been--or may be--persecuted for their attachment to the cause of liberty. The National Convention further decrees that the Executive Power shall order the generals to have this decree printed and distributed in all the various languages and in all the various countries of which they have taken possession.” Their decree signalled to foreign powers, namely Britain, that France was out for conquest, not just political reformation of its own lands.
National Constituent Assembly (France)
The National Constituent Assembly () was formed from the National Assembly on 9 July 1789 during the first stages of the French Revolution. It dissolved on 30 September 1791 and was succeeded by the Legislative Assembly.
French National-Collectivist Party
The party was officially founded by the journalist Pierre Clémenti on April 7, 1934 under the name French National Communist Party (Parti Français National Communiste). The movement was restarted in July 1940, after France's defeat by Nazi Germany. The German occupying authorities rejected the adjective 'Communist' in the party's name, so it switched to Collectivist and kept the same acronym. With several other parties, the PFNC helped organize the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism, a unit of French soldiers that fought on alongside the Germans on Eastern Front against the Soviet Union.
Georges Danton
The election to the National Convention took place in September 1792; after which the remnant of the Legislative Assembly formally surrendered its authority. The Convention ruled France until October 1795. Danton was a member; resigning as Minister of Justice once it was clear that the invading Austrian and Prussian armies had been turned back, he took a prominent part in the deliberations and proceedings of the Convention.
National Constituent Assembly (France)
After surviving the vicissitudes of a revolutionary two years, the National Constituent Assembly dissolved itself on 30 September 1791. The following day, the Constitution of 1791 went into effect, which granted power to the Legislative Assembly.
Louis XVI and the Legislative Assembly
The French Revolution was a period in the history of France covering the years 1789 to 1799, in which republicans overthrew the Bourbon monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church in France perforce underwent radical restructuring. This article covers the one-year period from 1 October 1791 to September 1792, during which France was governed by the Legislative Assembly, operating under the French Constitution of 1791, between the periods of the National Constituent Assembly and of the National Convention.
List of heads of state of France
From 22 September 1792 to 2 November 1795, the French Republic was governed by the National Convention, whose president (elected from within for a 14-day term) may be considered as France's legitimate Head of State during this period. Historians generally divide the Convention's activities into three periods, moderate, radical, and reaction, and the policies of presidents of the Convention reflect these distinctions. During the radical and reaction phases, some of the presidents were executed, most by guillotine, committed suicide, or were deported. In addition, some of the presidents were later deported during the Bourbon Restoration in 1815.
Concordat of 1801
During the French Revolution, the National Assembly had taken Church properties and issued the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which made the Church a department of the State, effectively removing it from papal authority. At the time, the nationalized Gallican Church was the official church of France, but it was essentially Catholicism. The Civil Constitution caused hostility among the Vendeans towards the change in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the French government. Subsequent laws abolished the traditional Gregorian calendar and Christian holidays.
Médaille du Cercle National des Armées de Terre, Air et Mer
The Cercle Nationale is the French military's select professional association. Foreigners who have contributed to improved relations between their countries and France's military are also eligible for membership. It has its origins in the Order in Council of February 5, 1887, in which President Jules Grévy and the government of France's Third Republuc sought to create a professional officer corps that was not tied to the monarchist Second French Empire. The French law of April 16, 1924 authorized the Cercle Nationale's establishment at the La Pépinière Barracks, a building designed by Charles Lemaresquier.
The Estates
Representation through estates was the norm in Europe until the advent of popular representation beginning with the French Revolution. The Estates General of France were convoked only twice between 1614 and 1789, both times during the Fronde (1648–53) and in neither case did they actually meet. At the final meeting of the Estates in 1789, they voted to join together in a single National Assembly, generally seen as marking the start of the Revolution. Still, Estates continued to meet in Navarre until 1828, in Hungary until 1848, in Sweden until 1866 and in the Duchy of Mecklenburg until 1918.
French Civil Protection
In 1965, there were local civil protection societies in 26 departments. Following a call from Prime minister Georges Pompidou, the national federation of civil protection ("Fédération nationale de protection civile") was constituted on December 14, 1965 in Paris, in order to manage these local societies and to raise popular awareness on civil defense. The first federal president was Léon Robine.
List of Presidents of France
After the establishment of the French First Republic in 1792, the three powers of the State were entrusted to the National Convention, the unicameral parliament. The National Convention was led by a president ("see List of Presidents of the National Convention"), who rotated fortnightly.
Modern history
The Legislative Assembly was the legislature of France from October 1, 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.
National Convention
On 20 September the Convention held its first session in the "Salle des Cent-Suisses", the next day it moved to the Salle du Manège, with little room for the public and a bad acoustic. From 10 May 1793 it met in the Salle des Machines, an immense hall in which the deputies were loosely scattered. The Salle des Machines had galleries for the public who often influenced the debates with interruptions or applause.
France in the long nineteenth century
Louis XVI shut the Salle des États where the Assembly met. The Assembly moved their deliberations to the king's tennis court, where they proceeded to swear the Tennis Court Oath (June 20, 1789), under which they agreed not to separate until they had given France a constitution. A majority of the representatives of the clergy soon joined them, as did 47 members of the nobility. By June 27 the royal party had overtly given in, although the military began to arrive in large numbers around Paris and Versailles. On July 9 the Assembly reconstituted itself as the National Constituent Assembly.
Identity document
France has had a national ID card for all citizens since the beginning of World War II in 1940. Compulsory identity documents were created before, for workers from 1803 to 1890, nomads ("") in 1912, and foreigners in 1917 during World War I.
National identity cards were first issued as the "carte d'identité Française" under the law of October 27, 1940, and were compulsory for everyone over the age of 16. Identity cards were valid for 10 years, had to be updated within a year in case of change of residence, and their renewal required paying a fee. Under the Vichy regime, in addition to the face photograph, the family name, first names, date and place of birth, the card included the national identity number managed by the national statistics INSEE, which is also used as the national service registration number, as the Social Security account number for health and retirement benefits, for access to court files and for tax purposes.
Under the decree 55-1397 of October 22, 1955 a revised non-compulsory card, the "carte nationale d'identité" (CNI) was introduced.
French Constitution of 1793
In light of France's internal and external conflicts, the National Convention found sufficient reason to maintain itself until peace and postponed the Constitution's implementation. Though the Constitution was overwhelmingly popular and its drafting and ratification buoyed popular support for the Montagnards, the convention set it aside indefinitely on 10 October 1793 and declared a "Revolutionary Government" until a future peace.
History of French
Through the Académie, public education, centuries of official control and the role of media, a unified official French language has been forged, but there remains a great deal of diversity today in terms of regional accents and words. For some critics, the "best" pronunciation of the French language is considered to be the one used in Touraine (around Tours and the Loire valley), but such value judgments are fraught with problems, and with the ever-increasing loss of lifelong attachments to a specific region and the growing importance of the national media, the future of specific "regional" accents is often difficult to predict. The French nation-state, which appeared after the 1789 French Revolution and Napoleon's empire, unified the French people in particular through the consolidation of the use of the French language. Hence, according to historian Eric Hobsbawm, "the French language has been essential to the concept of 'France', although in 1789 50% of the French people did not speak it at all, and only 12 to 13% spoke it 'fairly' – in fact, even in oïl language zones, out of a central region, it was not usually spoken except in cities, and, even there, not always in the faubourgs [approximatively translatable to "suburbs"]. In the North as in the South of France, almost nobody spoke French." Hobsbawm highlighted the role of conscription, invented by Napoleon, and of the 1880s public instruction laws, which allowed to mix the various groups of France into a nationalist mold which created the French citizen and his consciousness of membership to a common nation, while the various "patois" were progressively eradicated.
French nationalism
The large conservative Catholic element, frustrated by the failure to restore the monarchy, turned to a new variation on nationalism. Led by the daily newspaper "La Croix," founded by the Assumptionist priests in 1883, it denounced the Republic's anti-clericalism, and encouraged Boulangism and Germanophobia. It promoted French imperialism as the fulfillment of a mission to bring civilization and Christianity to the pagans ("mission civilisatrice") and it boasted of France's cultural superiority over everyone else. 
The Dreyfus affair of the 1890s saw conservatives use nationalism to attack the Third Republic. However, when the republicans passed laws hostile to the Catholic Church in 1901-1905, such as disbanding the Assumptionists, many conservatives switched their energies and funding away from nationalistic projects to instead a defense of the Church. Devout Catholic women were especially active in this switch. Historian Robert Fuller argues it effectively ended the nationalist challenge to the Third Republic.
French First Republic
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, on 10 August 1792, was to establish the French First Republic and officially strip the king of all political powers. Citizen Louis Capet, 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 convicted, and on 21 January, he was executed by guillotine.