National Convention

The Convention came about when the Legislative Assembly decreed the provisional suspension of King Louis XVI and the convocation of a National Convention to draw up a new constitution with no monarchy. The other major innovation was to decree that deputies to that Convention should be elected by all Frenchmen twenty-one years old or more, domiciled for a year and living by the product of their labor. The National Convention was, therefore, the first French assembly elected by a suffrage without distinctions of class.^[1]


Although the Convention lasted until 1795, power was effectively delegated by the Convention and concentrated in the small Committee of Public Safety from April 1793. The eight months from the fall of 1793 to the spring of 1794, when Maximilien Robespierre and his allies dominated the Committee of Public Safety, represent the most radical and bloodiest phase of the French Revolution, known as the Reign of Terror. After the fall of Robespierre, the Convention lasted for another year until a new constitution was written, ushering in the French Directory.

Elections[edit]

The indirect election took place from 2 to 10 September 1792 after the election of the electoral colleges by primary assemblies on 26 August.^[2] Despite the introduction of universal male suffrage, the turn-out was low^{[3][note 1]}, though the election saw an increase in comparison to the 1791 elections—in 1792 11.9% of a greatly increased electorate votes, compared to 10.2% of a much smaller electorate in the 1791. The low turn-out was partly due to a fear of victimization; in Paris, Robespierre presided over the elections and, in concert with the radical press, managed to exclude any candidate of royalist sympathies.^[5] In the whole of France, only eleven primary assemblies wanted to retain the monarchy. The electoral assemblies all tacitly voted for a "republic", though only Paris used that word.^[3] The elections returned the same sort of men that the active citizens had chosen in 1791.^[6]


On 20 September the Convention held its first session in the "Salle des Cent-Suisses", the next day it moved to the Salle du Manège, which had little room for the public and bad acoustics.^[7] From 10 May 1793 it met in the Salle des Machines, an immense hall in which the deputies were loosely scattered. The Salle des Machines had galleries for the public who often influenced the debates with interruptions or applause.^{[8] [note 2]}


The members of the Convention came from all classes of society, but the most numerous were lawyers. 75 members had sat in the National Constituent Assembly, 183 in the Legislative Assembly. The full number of deputies was 749, not counting 33 from the French colonies, of whom only some arrived in Paris in time. Thomas Paine and Anacharsis Cloots were appointed in the Convention by Girondins. Besides these, however, the newly formed départements annexed to France from 1782 to 1789 were allowed to send deputations.^[1]


According to its own ruling, the Convention elected its President every fortnight, and the outgoing President was eligible for re-election after the lapse of a fortnight. Ordinarily, the sessions were held in the morning, but evening sessions also occurred frequently, often extending late into the night. Sometimes in exceptional circumstances, the Convention declared itself in permanent session and sat for several days without interruption. For both legislative and administrative the Convention used committees, with powers more or less widely extended and regulated by successive laws. The most famous of these committees included the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security.^[1]


The Convention held legislative and executive powers during the first years of the French First Republic and had three distinct periods: Girondin, Montagnard or Jacobin, and Thermidorian.