Sieyès, << syay YEHS, >> Emmanuel Joseph (1748-1836), was a leader of the French Revolution (1789-1799). A priest, he was popularly known as Abbé Sieyès. Sieyès became famous for his 1789 pamphlet What Is the Third Estate? , which helped start the revolution.
By law, French society was divided into three groups called estates. Members of the clergy made up the first estate, nobles the second, and the rest of the people the third. In his pamphlet, Sieyès attacked the privileges of the nobility. He claimed the nobility monopolized all the advantages of society but did little of its work. At the beginning of the revolution, Sieyès worked to make the third estate the dominant force in French political and social reform.
Between 1789 and 1795, Sieyès served in several of a series of elected national legislatures—the Estates-General, the National Assembly, and the National Convention. As a legislator, Sieyès was a moderate liberal and specialized in constitutional questions.
In 1799, Sieyès was elected to a five-man Directory, which had begun ruling France in 1795. As a Directory member, Sieyès helped engineer a coup d’état (revolt against the government) as a means of ending the turmoil of the French Revolution. The coup brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power and ended the revolution. Sieyès was born on May 3, 1748, in Fréjus. He died on June 20, 1836.
