[Sidenote: Reforms of the National Convention, 1792-1795]
In the midst of foreign war and internal dissension, even in the midst of the Terror, the National Convention found time to further the social reforms of the earlier stage of the Revolution. Just as the bourgeois Constituent Assembly destroyed the inequalities arising from the privileges of the "old régime," so the popular Convention sought to put an end to the inequalities arising from wealth. Under its new leaders, the Revolution assumed for a time a distinctly socialistic character. The property of the émigrés was confiscated for the benefit of the state. A maximum price for grain was set by law. Large estates were broken up and offered for sale to poorer citizens in lots of two or three acres, to be paid for in small annual installments. All ground rents were abolished without compensation to the owners. "The rich," said Marat, "have so long sucked out the marrow of the people that they are now visited with a crushing retribution."
Some of the reforms of the Convention went to absurd lengths. In the popular passion for equality, every one was to be called "Citizen" rather than "Monsieur." The official record of the expense of Marie Antoinette's funeral was the simple entry, "Five francs for a coffin for the widow of Citizen Capet." Ornate clothing disappeared with titles of nobility, and the silk stockings and knee breeches (culottes), which had distinguished the privileged classes and the gentlemen, were universally supplanted by the long trousers which had hitherto been worn only by the lowest class of workingmen (sans- culottes). To do away with the remembrance of historic Christianity, the year was divided anew into twelve months, each containing three weeks of ten days (décades), every tenth day (décadi) being for rest, and the five or six days left over at the end of the year, called sans-culottides, were national holidays; the names of the months were changed, and the revolutionary calendar made to date from the establishment of the republic, 22 September, 1792.
Many of the reforms had long been urgently needed and proved to be of permanent value. Such was the establishment of a convenient and uniform system of weights and measures, based on decimal reckoning, the so- called metric system, which has come to be accepted by almost all civilized nations save the English-speaking peoples. Such, too, was the elaborate system of state education which the philosopher Condorcet [Footnote: Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794).] prepared and which, though more pressing questions compelled its postponement, became the basis on which the modern scheme of free public instruction has been built up in France. Such, moreover, was the separation of Church and state, effected in September, 1794, the establishment in the following year of liberty of worship, and the restoration of the churches to Christian worship on condition that the clergymen submitted to the laws of the state. Such, finally, was the project of preparing a single comprehensive code of law for the whole country. Although the legal code was not completed until the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte, nevertheless the Convention made a beginning and incorporated in it a fundamental principle of inheritance that has marked modern France—the principle that no person may will his property to one direct heir to the exclusion of others but that all children must inherit almost equally. Moreover, the practice of imprisoning men for debt was abolished, negro slavery was ended, and woman's claim on property was protected in common with man's. Finally the new republican constitution was permeated with ideas of political democracy.
[Sidenote: Eventual Bourgeois Control Of The National Convention]
After the downfall of Robespierre (Thermidorian Reaction), the National Convention ceased to press reforms in behalf of the proletariat and came more and more under the influence of the moderate well-to-do bourgeoisie. The law against suspects was repealed and the grain laws were amended. The Revolutionary Tribunal was suppressed and the name of the Place de la Révolution was changed to the Place de la Concorde. The death in prison of the young and only son of Louis XVI in 1795 was a severe blow to the hopes of the royalists. By 1795 France seemed definitively committed to a republican form of government, which, however, would not be extremely radical but only moderate, being now founded on the bourgeoisie rather than on the proletariat.
THE DIRECTORY (1795-1799) AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE REPUBLIC INTO A MILITARY DICTATORSHIP
[Sidenote: Constitution of the Year III, the Constitution of the First
French Republic]
[Sidenote: The Directory]
The constitution of the first French Republic was drawn up by the National Convention during the last year of its session and after it had passed under bourgeois influence. This constitution which went into effect in 1795 and is known, therefore, as the Constitution of the Year III (of the Republic), intrusted the legislative power to two chambers, chosen by indirect election,—a lower house of five hundred members, to propose laws, and a Council of Ancients, of two hundred and fifty members, to examine and enact the laws. The bourgeois distrust of the lower classes showed itself again in restricting the electorate to taxpayers who had lived at least a year in one place. The executive authority of the republic was vested in a board of five members, styled Directors, and elected by the legislature, one retiring every year. The Board of Directors, or "Directory," was to supervise the enforcement of laws and to appoint the ministers of state, or cabinet, who should be responsible to it.
[Sidenote: Brief Duration of the Directory, 1795-1799]