Council of Ancients Conseil des Anciens | |
---|---|
French First Republic | |
Type | |
Type | |
History | |
Established | 2 November 1795 |
Disbanded | 10 November 1799 |
Preceded by | National Convention (unicameral) |
Succeeded by | Imperial Senate |
Seats | 250 |
Meeting place | |
Salle du Manège, rue de Rivoli, Paris |
The Council of Ancients or Council of Elders (French : Conseil des Anciens) was the upper house of the French legislature under the Constitution of the Year III, during the period commonly known as the Directory (French: Directoire), from 22 August 1795 until 9 November 1799, roughly the second half of the period generally referred to as the French Revolution.
The Council of Ancients was the senior of the two-halves of the republican legislative system. The Ancients were 250 members who could accept or reject laws put forward by the lower house of the Directory, the Council of Five Hundred (Conseil des Cinq-Cents). Each member had to be at least forty years of age, and a third of them would be replaced annually. They had no authority to draft laws, but any bills that they renounced could not be reintroduced for at least a year. [1]
Besides functioning as a legislative body, the Ancients chose five Directors, who jointly held executive power, from the list of names put forward by the Council of Five Hundred. The Council of Ancients had their own distinctive official uniform, with robes, cape and hat, just as did the Council of Five Hundred and the Directors. [2] [3] Under the Thermidorean constitution, as Boissy d'Anglas put it, the Council of Five Hundred was to be the imagination of the Republic, and the Council of Ancients its reason. [4] [5]
The name adopted for the body was based on the French translation/adaptation of the term Senate. [6]
The Directory was the governing five-member committee in the French First Republic from 26 October 1795 until 10 November 1799, when it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup of 18 Brumaire and replaced by the Consulate. Directoire is the name of the final four years of the French Revolution. Mainstream historiography also uses the term in reference to the period from the dissolution of the National Convention on 26 October 1795 to Napoleon's coup d’état.
The Council of Five Hundred was the lower house of the legislature of France under the Constitution of the Year III. It existed from 31 October 1795 to 9 November 1799 during the Directory (Directoire) period of the French Revolution.
Jean-Nicolas Bouilly was a French playwright, librettist, children's writer, and politician of the French Revolution. He is best known for writing a libretto, supposedly based on a true story, about a woman who disguises herself as a man to rescue her husband from prison, which formed the basis of Beethoven's opera Fidelio as well as a number of other operas.
Jean-Baptiste Treilhard was an important French statesman of the revolutionary period. He passed through the troubled times of the Republic and Empire with great political savvy, playing a decisive role at important times.
Clermont-Dessous is a commune in the Lot-et-Garonne department in south-western France.
Jean-Antoine Marbot, also known to contemporaries as Antoine Marbot, was a French general and politician. He belongs to a family that has distinguished itself particularly in the career of arms, giving three generals to France in less than 50 years.
The Monneron family was a French family of businessmen and politicians, best known for the Monneron brothers.
The Commission des Sciences et des Arts was a French scientific and artistic institute. Established on 16 March 1798, it consisted of 167 members, of which all but 16 joined Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt and produced the Description de l'Égypte. More than half were engineers and technicians, including 21 mathematicians, 3 astronomers, 17 civil engineers, 13 naturalists and mining engineers, geographers, 3 gunpowder engineers, 4 architects, 8 artists, 10 mechanical artists, 1 sculptor, 15 interpreters, 10 men of letters, 22 printers in Latin, Greek and Arabic characters. Bonaparte organised his scientific 'corps' like an army, dividing its members into 5 categories and assigning to each member a military rank and a defined military role beyond his scientific function.
The military governor of Paris is a post within the French Army. He commands the garrison of Paris and represents all the military based in Paris at high state occasions. He is also responsible for organizing major national ceremonies such as the Bastille Day military parade down the Champs-Élysées.
The Galerie des Batailles is a gallery occupying the first floor of the Aile du Midi of the Palace of Versailles, joining onto the grand and petit appartement de la reine. 120 m (390 ft) long and 13 m (43 ft) wide, it is an epigone of the grand gallery of the Louvre and was intended to glorify French military history from the Battle of Tolbiac to the Battle of Wagram.
Claude Ambroise Régnier, duc de Massa, was a French lawyer and politician. He was a deputy in 1789, a member of the Council of Ancients, a member of the Senate and a Minister.
Marie Jean François Philibert Lecarlier d'Ardon was a wealthy French landowner who entered politics during the French Revolution and was Minister of Police for a few months.
Augustin Tuncq, born in Conteville (Somme) on 27 August 1746 and died in Paris on 9 February 1800, served in the French military during the reign of the House of Bourbon and was a general of the French Revolutionary Wars. Most notably, he commanded Republican forces during the War in the Vendée and successfully defended Chalot from Vendean attack. He was a severe critic of his commander, Jean Antoine Rossignol, who later had him arrested and returned to Paris for trial. Accused by Jacques Hébert, he was saved from conviction only by the fall of the Hébertists, and the execution of Hébert himself. He subsequently commanded the coastal defenses at Brest, and was a divisional commander in Pierre Marie Barthélemy Ferino's column of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle during the Rhine Campaign of 1796. After the campaign he tried several times to retire; he died of injuries from a carriage accident in Paris in 1800.
Pierre Charles Louis Baudin, born 18 December 1748 in Sedan, Ardennes and died 14 October 1799 in Paris, was a French revolutionary and politician. He is the father of the admiral and explorer Charles Baudin and brother-in-law of the chemist Jean Henri Hassenfratz. He was noted as a moderate; he opposed the execution of Louis XVI.
Amédée Willot, Count of Gramprez, held several military commands during the French Revolutionary Wars but his association with Jean-Charles Pichegru led to his exile from France in 1797. He joined the French Royal Army as a volunteer in 1771 and was a captain by 1787. He was elected commander of a volunteer battalion in 1792 and served in the War of the Pyrenees. Shortly after being promoted commander of a light infantry regiment Willot was appointed general of brigade in June 1793. A few months later he was denounced as a Royalist and jailed. In the light of later events, this may have been an accurate assessment of Willot's sentiments. After release from prison in January 1795, he led troops in Spain during the summer campaign. He was promoted to general of division in July 1795.
François-Pierre-Auguste Léger was an 18th–19th-century French playwright.
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