Sieyès, Emmanuel-Joseph

(1748-1836) (Abbé Sieyès)

   political figure

   Born in Fréjus, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, or Abbé Sieyès, as he is known, was an avid reader of the 18th-century philosophers. He took holy orders in 1787 and was named vicar general of Chartres. Coming to Paris in 1788, he published shortly after his Essai sur les privileges and, at the beginning of the revolution of 1789, his celebrated pamphlet Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? (1789), in which he upholds the principles of the Revolution. A deputy to the estates general, he played a decisive role in the transformation of that body into the National Assembly (June 1789) and stood with mirabeau against any attempts to disband it. An early member of the jacobin Club, he contributed to the decision to divide France into 83 departments and to expand the suffrage in the constitution of 1791. A constitutional monarchist, he joined the moderates and was elected to the Convention, where he voted, however, for the death of the king. Although he is seen as one of the instigators of the terror because of his support for the idea of the General Will, Sieyès played only a small role during that period. But later, as a member of the Committee of Public Safety after 9 Thermidor, Year II (July 27, 1794), he was involved in diplomacy and as a proponent of annexation signed the Treaty of The Hague (1795) with Holland. Elected a Director in 1795, he resigned in favor of lazare carnot and took his place on the Council of Five Hundred, over which he presided after the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor, Year V (September 4, 1797). Minister plenipotentiary to Prussia, Sieyès returned to Paris in May 1799 to join the Directory again and, in November, helped prepare the way for the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (November 9, 1799), which launched the political career of Napoléon Bonaparte. Together with Bonaparte and pierre ducos, he became a member of the Consulate and helped to frame the Constitution of the Year v III, which napoléon I then revised. Sieyès subsequently resigned from politics. He was made a count of the Empire in 1809 and, during the hundred days, a peer of France. Seeking refuge in Brussels, in Belgium, after Bonaparte's defeat, he was proscribed as a regicide (1816) and did not return to France until 1830. Abbé Sieyès was elected into the académie FRANÇAISE in 1803.