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Sieyès, Emmanuel-Joseph

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès

Born

3 May 1748

Died

20 June 1836

An ecclesiastic and political writer, Sieyès gave one of 1789’s most influential accounts of national representation in What Is the Third Estate? Elected for Paris, he proposed on 17 June that the deputies of the Third Estate declare themselves the National Assembly and contributed to constitution-making from 1789 to 1791. He voted for Louis XVI’s death, then spoke little during Year II. He returned to government in 1795 as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, later serving as ambassador in Berlin and then as a Director. In 1799 he helped prepare the coup of 18 Brumaire, which ended the Directory, but Bonaparte displaced much of his constitutional design and secured power as First Consul. Sieyès remained in the Senate under the Consulate and Empire. Exiled to Brussels as a regicide in 1816, he returned to France after the July Revolution and died in Paris in 1836.

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3 May 1748Birth of Abbé Sieyès See them in the timeline →