People of the Revolution and the USSR

French revolutionary movement Liberalism and republicanism 1748–1836

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.

Girondins Liberalism and republicanism 1754–1793 ✕ Executed

Girondin journalist and deputy who championed revolutionary war

In 1791–92 he led the Legislative Assembly's push for war against Austria, which led to the declaration of war in April 1792. Sentenced on 30 October 1793, he was guillotined the next day.

A journalist and deputy in the Legislative Assembly and National Convention, Brissot also participated in antislavery activism. In 1791–92 he became the chief advocate of foreign war in the name of defending and extending the Revolution and emerged as a leading Girondin. He was arrested after the Girondins’ fall in June 1793 and later executed.

Feuillants Liberalism and republicanism 1757–1834 ○ Natural causes · Paris

French general who fought in the revolutions of two continents

He presented a draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on 11 July 1789, and after the storming of the Bastille was made commander-in-chief of the National Guard. The Guard's firing on the crowd at the Champ de Mars in 1791 cost him popular trust and ended his middle course.

French military officer and politician, born in 1757 to a land-owning family at Chavaniac in Auvergne and dead in Paris in 1834. He volunteered for the American Revolutionary War, served as a Continental Army major general at the siege of Yorktown, sat in the Estates General of 1789, commanded the National Guard, and helped write the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In the Revolution he sought a middle course and defended constitutional monarchy, but the bloodshed on the Champ de Mars in 1791 cost him popular trust, and the Austrians held him over five years after his arrest was ordered in 1792. He refused to serve Napoleon and sat as a liberal deputy under the restored Bourbons. In the July Revolution of 1830 he again commanded the National Guard and backed Louis-Philippe. He advocated the abolition of slavery and was called the 'Hero of the Two Worlds'.

Feuillants Liberalism and republicanism 1760–1829

Politician who moved from the revolutionary triumvirate to the Feuillants

He joined the Third Estate in 1789 but, through the triumvirate and the Feuillants, sought to stabilise the Revolution behind a constitutional monarchy; when the monarchy fell in 1792 he emigrated.

An aristocratic officer and veteran of the American War of Independence, Lameth joined the Third Estate in 1789 and supported the abolition of privilege. He formed the “triumvirate” with Barnave and Duport before becoming a Feuillant defender of constitutional monarchy. After exile and return, he served as a prefect under Napoleon and later as a liberal deputy.