Emmanuel Sieyès
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès
Clergyman and political theorist of Third Estate sovereignty
Amid the 1788–1789 Estates-General crisis he identified the Third Estate with the whole nation, and later ended the Directory through the coup of 18 Brumaire.
A clergyman and political theorist, Sieyès linked the Third Estate to the nation in his 1789 pamphlet What Is the Third Estate? He helped bring the National Assembly into being and later sat with the Plain in the National Convention. Near the end of the Directory he participated in the coup of Brumaire and helped establish the Consulate.
Career timeline
- 1775–1788Secretary and deputy to the bishop of Tréguier, then vicar general and chancellor of the diocese of Chartres; sat in the Estates of Brittany.
- 1789Published What Is the Third Estate?; as a Third Estate deputy he pushed for the National Assembly and joined the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
- 1792–1795Sat in the National Convention, voted for the death of Louis XVI, and served on a diplomatic mission to The Hague in 1795.
- 1799Made a Director in May; helped lead the coup of 18 Brumaire and became a provisional Consul of the Consulate.
- 1799–1830Served in the Sénat conservateur, was expelled from the Academy after the Restoration, left for Brussels, and returned to France after the July Revolution.
- 1836Died in Paris aged 88; unpublished manuscripts credit him with the first use of the term sociologie.