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.
Also known as: Sieyes · Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès · Abbé Sieyès
Activities and affiliations
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1789–1791
French revolutionary movementDeputy of the Third EstateMain
Political and party leadership -
1799
French First Republic state institutionsDirector, Provisional ConsulHeads of state and government of France
Government and administration -
1799
Consulate and First Empire state institutionsProvisional ConsulHeads of state and government of France
Political and party leadership
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- 1836Died in Paris aged 88; unpublished manuscripts credit him with the first use of the term sociologie.
Related historical events
Revolutionary choices and political context
Sieyès’s What Is the Third Estate? sharply posed the question of who represented the nation in a society of orders. He linked the nation not to privileged estates but to the Third Estate that produced and paid taxes, giving the National Assembly language for claiming sovereignty apart from the king.
Representation was not the same as direct democracy. Sieyès held that the nation formed its will through representatives, a view in tension with several popular movements of the Revolution. His part in the Brumaire coup at the end of the Directory shows what could follow when a search for stability through constitutional design joined military force. He links the Revolution’s beginning to establishment of Napoleon’s Consulate.