French First Republic

The republican regime established in France in 1792 after the monarchy’s abolition. It lasted until Napoleon Bonaparte established the French Empire in 1804.

Committee of Public Safety: A committee of the National Convention that directed France’s wartime government during the Reign of Terror. It concentrated executive power during the republic’s most radical emergency.
French Revolution: A period of political and social upheaval in France beginning in 1789 and ending with Napoleon’s rise to power. The republic was one of the revolution’s central political outcomes.
Maximilien Robespierre: A French revolutionary leader associated with the Committee of Public Safety and the Reign of Terror. His fall in 1794 marked the end of the republic’s radical phase.
French monarchy: The hereditary system of royal government that ruled France before the republic’s establishment in 1792. The republic rejected hereditary sovereignty and abolished the monarchy.
Civil Constitution of the Clergy: A 1790 law that reorganized the Catholic Church in France and required clergy to swear loyalty to the state. Its unresolved religious division persisted through the republic’s political transformations.
Reign of Terror: A period of political repression and executions in revolutionary France, chiefly from 1793 to 1794. It shows how the republic’s emergency government suppressed perceived enemies.
Storming of the Tuileries: The insurrection of 10 August 1792 that overthrew the French monarchy’s authority in Paris. It precipitated the suspension of Louis XVI and the creation of a new legislature.
Georges Danton: A leading French revolutionary politician who served as the first president of the Committee of Public Safety. His execution exposed the escalating conflicts within revolutionary leadership.
Constitution of 1791: France’s first written constitution, which established a constitutional monarchy in 1791. It preserved a king, unlike the republican settlement adopted the following year.
Levée en masse: The 1793 policy of mass national mobilization for France’s defense during revolutionary war. It tied republican citizenship to mass military service and sustained the war effort.

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