Abbé Sieyès
The Abbé Sieyès wrote the pamphlet that began the French Revolution and the constitution that ended it. Born in 1748 in Fréjus, he entered the church without a vocation and rose to vicar general of Chartres, blocked from higher office because he was not noble. In January 1789 he published What Is the Third Estate?, which opened by asking what the third estate was — everything; what it had been in the political order — nothing; and what it asked — to become something. It sold tens of thousands of copies. He was elected as a deputy for Paris, and it was his motion in June 1789 that turned the Estates-General into the National Assembly, the act that transferred sovereignty. He then largely fell silent through the Terror. Asked afterwards what he had done during it, he is said to have replied that he had lived. He voted for the king's death. He served in the Directory and concluded that it could not survive, and looked for a general. He found Bonaparte, and together they staged the coup of 18 Brumaire in November 1799. Sieyès expected to write the constitution and to leave the soldier in a decorative role; Bonaparte took the substance of the new office and left Sieyès an estate and a senate seat. He was made a count under the Empire and exiled as a regicide after 1815. He returned in 1830 and died in 1836. His theory of the constituent power outlived his politics. He is the man who supplied the revolution with its opening argument and the empire with its legal form.
- Lived: 1748 CE – 1836 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: political_theorist, abb, politician
