Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès was born in 1748 in Fréjus in southern France. Sieyès’ father was a tax collector.  Sieyès had an education with the Jesuits and while he toyed with joining the military he started to train as a priest.  Whilst training as a priest at the Sorbonne he was drawn more towards enlightenment philosophers rather than the more traditional theology he was supposed to be learning.  Whilst rising through the ranks of the clergy he could not but help notice that the nobility were able to progress far higher in the church than the ordinary people could as he found his progressed stalled at being an assistant bishop in Chartres.

When Louis XVI called for the Estates General Sieyès saw his moment to act.  He published a pamphlet entitled What is the Third Estate? In 1789.  The pamphlet had an immediate impact and he was elected to the Third Estate (although he should technically have been in the First Estate).  His critique of the entitled nobles exploiting the wealthy bourgeois and the weak and needy of society inspired many.  He also suggested that the way the people were represented no longer fitted the needs of French society.  He believed that the Estates should be united as one body to represent the entire French nation.  On the 5th of June 1789 the Third Estate invited the other Estates to join them and change their name to the National Assembly.  

As the Revolution progressed he would vote for the execution of the King although he had previously questioned the Convention’s ability to put the King on trial.  He would become distant from the revolution as he sought to not commit himself to any particular faction.  During the Terror he would go so far as to renounce his priesthood and commit himself purely to liberty and reason.

He would re emerge after the execution of Robespierre in 1794.  He would help create the treaty between France and the Batavian Republic in 1795.  In 1798 he would act as plenipotentiary of France to the Prussian court in Berlin.  He seemed not to be content with the Directory and was more than happy to assist Bonaparte on the 18 Brumaire by dissolving the assembly to allow the young general to seize control.  He hoped that he would be able to create a model constitution although his work was substantially changed by Napoleon in his Constitution of the Year VIII.

Sieyès would move towards a form of semi-retirement surfacing in 1815 in the Chamber of Peers.  After Napoleon’s fall he moved to Brussels only returning to France after the July Revolution of 1830.  He would die in 1836.

Germaine De Staël on Abbé Sieyès.  Taken from Considerations on the Principle events of the French Revolution, Germaine De Staël, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis (2008) p203-204

In the first rank on the popular side was seen the Abbé Sieyès, insulated by his peculiar temper, although surrounded by admirers of his mind.  Till the age of forty he had led a solitary life, reflecting on political questions and carrying great powers of abstraction into that study; but he was ill qualified to hold communication with other men, so easily was he hurt by their caprices, and so ready was he to irritate them in his turn.  But as he possessed a superior mind, with a keen and laconic manner of expressing himself, it was the fashion in the Assembly to show him an almost superstitious respect.  Mirabeau had no objection to hear the silence of the Abbé Sieyès extolled above his own eloquence, for rivalship of such a kind is not to be dreaded.  People imagined that Sieyès, that mysterious man, possessed secrets in government, from which surprising effects were expected whenever he should reveal them.  Some young men, and even some minds of great compass, professed the highest admiration for him; and there was a general disposition to praise him at the expense of everybody because he on no occasion allowed the world to form a complete estimate of him.

One thing, however, was known with certainty-he detested the distinctions of nobility; and yet he retained, from his professional habits, an attachment to the clerical order, which he showed in the clearest way possible at the time of the suppression of the tithes.  “They wish to be free and do not know to be just,” was his remark on that occasion; and all the faults of the Assembly were comprised in these words.  But they ought to have been equally applied to those various classes of the community who had a right to pecuniary indemnities.  The attachment of the Abbé Sieyès to the clergy would have ruined any other man in the opinion of the popular party; but, in consideration of his hatred of the nobles, the party of the Mountain forgave him his partiality to the priests.

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès on the Third Estate, What is the Third Estate? (1789) p2

Public services can also, at present, be divided into four known categories, the army, the law, the Church and the bureaucracy. It needs no detailed analysis to show that the Third Estate everywhere constitutes nineteen twentieths of them, except that it is loaded with all the really arduous work, all the tasks which the privileged order refuses to perform. Only the well paid and honorific posts are filled by members of the privileged order. Are we to give them credit for this? We could do so only if the Third Estate was unable or unwilling to fill these posts. We know the answer. Nevertheless, the privileged have dared to preclude the Third Estate. “No matter how useful you are,” they said, “no matter how able you are, you can go so far and no further. Honors are not for the like 0f you.” The rare exceptions, noticeable as they are bound to be, are mere mockery, and the sort of language allowed on such occasions is an additional insult.   If this exclusion is a social crime, a veritable act of war against the Third Estate, can it be said at least to be useful to the commonwealth? Ah! Do we not understand the consequences of monopoly? While discouraging those it excludes, does it not destroy the skill of those it favours? Are we unaware that any work from which free competition is excluded will be performed less well and more expensively? . . .

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès on the Third Estate, What is the Third Estate? (1789) p2

Who is bold enough to maintain that the Third Estate does not contain within itself everything needful to constitute a complete nation? It is like a strong and robust man with one arm still in chains. If the privileged order were removed, the nation would not be something less but something more. What then is the Third Estate? All; but an “all” that is fettered and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order? It would be all; but free and flourishing. Nothing will go well without the Third Estate; everything would go considerably better without the two others.

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès on the Third Estate, What is the Third Estate? (1789) p7

With respect to population, everybody knows that the third orderenjoys a vast numerical superiority over the first two. I have no better knowledge than anybody else as to the exact proportion; but, like anybody else, I can estimate .   Therefore, in total, there are less than 200,000 privileged individuals of the first two orders. Compare their number with the 25 or 26 million inhabitants, and draw your own conclusions.

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès on the Third Estate, What is the Third Estate? (1789) p17

From the second point of view, the Third Estate is the nation. In this capacity, its representatives constitute the whole National Assembly and are seized of all its powers. As they alone are the trustees of the general will, they do not need to consult those who mandated them about a dispute that does not exist. If they have ask for a constitution, it is with one accord; they are always ready to submit to the laws that the nation may please to give them, but they do not have to appeal to the nation on any problem arising out of the plurality of orders. For them, there is only one order, which is the same as saying that there is none; since for the nation there can be only the nation.