French republican calendar

The French Republican Calendar (French: Calendrier républicain) is a calendar proposed during the French Revolution and adopted by the National Convention, which used it between 1792 and 1806 The design tried to adapt the calendar to the decimal system and eliminate religious references from it; the year began on September 22, coinciding with the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere.

The republican calendar was designed by mathematician Gilbert Romme, a member of the Convention, with the help of astronomers Joseph Jerôme de Lalande, Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre and Pierre-Simon Laplace, although the poet is often credited with notable input Fabre d'Églantine, who gave the names to the months and days.

It was born this way by decree of the French National Convention of October 5, 1793, and the calendar was adopted by the Jacobin-controlled National Convention on October 24, 1793. Its start date was set for September 22, 1792, coinciding with the proclamation of the Republic in the Jeu de Paume. In this way, the calendar began a year before it was finally adopted, the day the new era of France began, to the point that the period from September 1792 to September 1793 was called «Year One of the Revolution». ».

The calendar was of civil application in France and its American and African colonies until Napoleon abolished its official use on January 1, 1806 (in fact, this day corresponded to midnight on the 10th of Snow of the year XIV, that is, on December 31, 1805, a little more than twelve years after it was introduced) as a timely way of removing the marks of the republican.

Napoleon had proclaimed himself Emperor of the French in December 1804 and had created the new imperial nobility during the year 1805. Both concepts were incompatible with the nature of this calendar. In addition, after the abolition of the republican calendar and the return to the Gregorian one, he reconciled with the Catholics and the papacy, from which he obtained a certain tolerance by returning the civil and religious festivities of the Catholic Church; on the other hand, he also considered practical questions, such as the advantages of using the Gregorian calendar, which almost all the rest of Europe used then.

Republican calendar of 1794.

This calendar was reintroduced briefly after the overthrow of Napoleon in 1814, and was also used by the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871.

Creation

On the morning of September 21, 1792, the National Convention met first at the Tuileries Palace in Paris, and then moved to the Salle du Manège, the site of the meetings of the Legislative Assembly. The deputies unanimously approved Abbe Grégoire's bill "The National Convention decrees the abolition of royalty in France", amid prolonged cheers of joy from the public and shouts of "Long live the Nation!".

This vote occurred on the eve of the third anniversary of the adoption of the first article of the Constitution of 1789: «The French government is monarchical; there is no authority in France superior to the Law; the King only reigns through her; and only by virtue of the Laws can he demand obedience ».

The following day, during the morning session, the Convention decreed that all public acts from September 22 would carry forward the date of the first year of the French Republic. It so happens that that day was also the autumnal equinox according to the Paris Observatory. Taking advantage of this coincidence, the revolutionaries later associated this event with the beginning of the Republican era.

Background

Since the beginning of the Revolution, the day after July 14, the newspapers, sensing that a convulsion was taking place, called this year 1789 the first year of Freedom. The old computation could no longer preside over the new times.

In a letter to Mr. de Lalande published on May 17, 1790 in the Gazette nationale or Le Moniteur universel, one can read: «When Julius Caesar When he finished destroying Roman freedom, when he accepted perpetual dictatorship and had himself named emperor, his first concern, as if to mark that disastrous period, was to reform the calendar. Is not the time when France has just regenerated [...] the most favorable time to propose such a change? [...] It is to you, sir, that I think I should submit this idea, as the one most capable of developing and carrying it out».

The author suggests in this letter to set the beginning of the year on the vernal equinox, on March 20 or 21, and for the sake of simplicity, he proposed that «the change begin on April 1, 1789, a new style, and that it be called the Era of Liberty, as one of the members of the National Assembly, Mr. Barère de Vieuzac, did, to whom we owe the < i>Etrennes du citoyen». It is true that the idea was inspired by previous projects.

As early as 1785, Riboud, former royal prosecutor of Bourg-en-Bresse, had published the Étrennes littéraires ou Almanach offert aux amis de l'humanité. In it, the names of great men replace those of the saints of the Church. To celebrate the birthdays of the most illustrious, he instituted parties that commemorated their work or his services. The agricultural festival falls on the day dedicated to Columela; Jean-Jacques Rousseau presides over the festival of sensitive souls, and Scarron that of the pleasant patients. For Newton, it is the great party of the universe.

In 1788, which he calls «The first Year of the reign of Reason», Maréchal, sublibrarian of the Mazarin Library, took up the same idea, but developed it in a completely different way when publishing his Almanach des Honnêtes Gens , in which, rejecting the Gregorian calendar and choosing March 1 as the beginning of his own to respect the order of the months of the old Roman calendar, he replaced the saints with famous people, thus prefiguring the future revolutionary calendar; the work was sentenced to be burned by the Parliament of Paris and its author was interned for three months.

Revolutionary Eras

So astronomers were asked to get to work, but in reality there was a lot of trial and error before the "Age of the French" was fixed.

Some claimed that the date of the opening of the Estates General of 1789 in Versailles should be taken, that is, May 5; others preferred June 17, the day the Third Estate declared itself a "National Assembly"; others, finally, requested June 20 (the oath of the Ball Game).

Le Moniteur universel, the first number of which dates precisely from the day the Estates General was opened and which has been published daily since November 24, 1789, includes for the first time after the date of the day, July 1, 1790, the words «Second Year of Freedom; an era of Freedom that for this newspaper begins with the storming of the Bastille, when it titles two weeks later «1^{er day of the 2nd Year of Freedom» in its issue of July 14, 1790.}

We had to wait for the Legislative Assembly to approve the decree of January 2, 1792 for the beginning of the era of Liberty to be officially set on January 1, 1789: «All public, civil, judicial and diplomats will bear the inscription of the era of freedom", arguing that "the whole year should be honored for having given birth to Freedom".

After the Parisian insurrection of August 10, 1792, the Revolution honored equality, "because the most perfect equality," Collot d'Herbois declared before the Legislative Assembly on August 5, 1792, "is the basis of our political principles. The tribute to equality, together with freedom, altered for a time the presentation of calendar dates. For the first time, on August 21, 1792, Le Moniteur universel used the triple computation «Tuesday, August 21, 1792, the fourth year of Liberty, and the first of Equality».

Then, on September 22, 1792, at the opening of the session of the Convention, the deputy of Paris Billaud-Varenne requested «that as of yesterday, instead of dating the acts the fourth year of the freedom, etc., is dated the first year of the French Republic". Two days later, "The 1st year of the French Republic" replaces the "4th year of Liberty and the first of Equality" in the title of the Moniteur.

Three months later, on December 20, 1792, the Convention commissioned its Public Instruction Committee to submit to it as soon as possible «a report on the advantages that the concordance of its republican era with its republican era should bring to France. the common era. Therefore, initially there was no question of excluding the "common era" (the Gregorian calendar) in favor of a single calendar (the republican calendar).

The Romme Commission

A commission was created, made up of the deputy for Puy-de-Dôme Romme and the deputy for Ardennes Ferry, who asked that Dupuis join them and that Romme be the rapporteur. As such, he is generally credited with creating the republican calendar. The commission surrounded itself with members of the Academy of Sciences and associated Guyton-Morveau, Lagrange, Lalande, Monge and Pingré to their work. The parallelism between the weights and measures commission and the calendar commission is striking; In both cases, the ideologues and politicians surround and supervise the scientists, the objectives of some being very different from those of the others.

In fact, this working group, no doubt at the initiative of its rapporteur, abandoned the idea of a concordance between the Gregorian calendar and the Republican era in favor of calendar reform, and the report requested by the Convention was never published. drafted. The gestation of the project will last nine months, and on September 17, 1793 Romme was able to present the work of the commission to the Committee of Public Instruction, which opened the discussion on the 19th; he then presented them to the Convention on September 20, 1793.

Romme develops in his report the principles and motivation of the new division of time. Relying on revolutionary rhetoric, he finds amazing formulas that mark the ideological goals of the reform.

«Le temps ouvre un nouveau livre à l'histoire; et dans sa marche nouvelle, majestueuse et simple comme l'égalité, il doit graver d'un burin neuf les annales de la France régénérée41. [...] Le 21 septembre, le dernier de la monarchie et qui doit être le dernier de l'ère vulgaire, les représentants du peuple français réunis en Convention nationale ont ouvert leur session et ont prononcé l'abolition de la royauté.
Le 22 septembre ce décret fut proclamé dans Paris, le 22 septembre fut décrété le premier de la République, et le même jour à 9 heures 18 minutes 30 secondes du matin le soleil est arrivé à l'équinoxe vrai, en entrat dans le signe de la balance. Ainsi l'égalité des jours aux nuits était marquée dans le ciel, au moment même où l'égalité civile et morale était proclamée par les représentants du peuple français comme le fondement sacré de son nouveau gouvernement. »

"Time opens a new book to history; and in its new march, majestic and simple as equality, it must record with a new chincel the annals of regenerated France. [...] On 21 September, the last of the monarchy and which must be the last of the common era, the representatives of the French people gathered in the National Convention opened their meeting and pronounced the abolition of royalty.
On 22 September this decree was proclaimed in Paris, on 22 September the first of the Republic was decreed, and on the same day at 9 hours, 18 minutes and 30 morning the sun came to the true equinox, entering the sign of Libra. This marked the equality of days and nights in heaven, at the same time when the representatives of the French people proclaimed civil and moral equality as the sacred foundation of their new government. »

Then the report presents the architecture of the new proposed calendar with a year whose beginning is fixed on the day of the autumnal equinox, a leap year every 4 years, with a new nomenclature of twelve months, each of 30 days, divided into 3 parts of 10 days called decades, with an annual total of 36 decades, and to end the year whose duration does not change, 5 days added and a sixth on leap-year; a decimal division of the day, hour, etc. is also added. Romme's presentation on September 20 is completed with a draft decree.

The National Convention

The debate began in the Convention in the following fifteen days, reflecting the division between their factions, since they touched the very symbols of the Republic. Bentabole, deputy from the Lower Rhine and friend of Marat, undoubtedly reflecting the feeling of fatigue, considered on the same October 5 "that the National Convention, by setting the French era, has already done enough and that it must stop." He finds it useless and even dangerous to change the subdivisions of time and its denomination.

"When Muhammad," he declares, "conqueror and lawgiver, gave another era to the peoples under his power, his goal was to separate them from the rest of men and inspire in them a superstitious respect for the cult he prescribed for them. Our objective —he concludes— is contrary to that of that impostor; we want to unite all peoples through fraternity […] I ask that we postpone the rest of the project». Lebon, deputy for Pas de Calais, opposes the postponement: "If fanaticism could strengthen his empire by this means, why not use it to found freedom?"

A Northern deputy, Duhem, argues that the calendar should be drawn less for France than for all nations. "I vote," he says, "for naming the divisions of time by their numerical order." Romme agrees to suppress the revolutionary names or rather replace them with moral names. "The first day," he says, developing his project, "is that of the spouses." "Every day is the day of the spouses", answers not without malice the deputy of Seine-Inférieure Antoine-Louis Albitte. The Convention then adopts the moral denominations.

Lebon immediately underlines the ridiculousness of these names and advises abandoning them: "Besides," he pleads, "the difficulty of overloading the memory with so many names will cause the old ones to be preserved and their purpose will be lost." And he asks his companions to withdraw the decree.

Reconsidering its decision, the Convention reconsiders and decides to withdraw its first decree adopted moments before to return to the ordinal denomination of months, days and decades.

The revolutionary calendar

The decree of the National Convention relating to the era of the French was published on October 5, 1793. The republican calendar came into force the day after the decree, October 7, after the number of the newspaper (which always corresponds to the day in the Gregorian year), Le Moniteur universelle replaces the Gregorian date mentioned until then by the republican date of the day, "The 16th of the first month". Then, the next day, its numbering changes to become that of the day in the current Republican year.

But the drawbacks arise, as soon as you want to use it. The people, almost always dominated and governed by the imagination, find it too abstract. Writing official minutes becomes laborious. Is it possible to expose yourself to writing phrases like this: "the second day of the second decade of the second month of the second year of the Republic?"

On October 18, 1793, a new commission of the Convention was created in charge of studying a new nomenclature of months and days, and a new name appears (the others were already part of the Committee of Public Instruction). The nomenclature proposed by Romme cannot compete with the sonority and powerful poetry imagined by Fabre d'Églantine and approved by the Convention on October 24.

El Monitor Universal formalizes these innovations on the 29th heading «Octodi, first decade of Brumaire» where, after "In the year 2 of the Republic» from previous newspapers, «an e indivisible” since October 26, now reads double reckoning (Republican date plus “old-style” embellished Gregorian date).

The decree that gives the calendar its final form was published on the 4th of Frimario year II (November 24, 1793), the day of the medlar. Abolish the "common era" for civil use and define September 22, 1792 as the first day of the "era of the French", the first year being the year I. For subsequent years, the first day of the year is the true equinox on the Paris meridian. The astronomers were in charge of determining the moment of the phenomenon and a few days later a decree established the beginning of the year.

For Marc de Vissac, this calendar is revolutionary only in name.

“It would be childish to question the ingenious combination of the republican calendar, along with the audacity of spirit of those who conceived it. But we are also forced to point out that this conception, grand as it is, was nothing more than a collection of reminiscences. Romme and his colleagues searched, found and appropriated it; They didn't invent anything."

“The division into twelve months was universal and one of the oldest. The division of the month into decades had existed in Athens. The five added days are already in the Egyptian year. The franciade is a slavish copy of the ancient Olympiad. The Tyrians already dated the recovery of their freedom ».

«And as for taking the autumnal equinox as the initial time of the year, it was to return to the usage of the Chaldeans, the Persians, the Syrians, the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians; it was to return to the Seleucid era.”

«Of the festivities decreed, the Opinion is not the most original, which was nothing more than renewing the Day of Triumph of the Romans, when the soldier, positioned behind the chariot, could exhale freely whatever his mind suggested. hatred and their joy».

The months of the year

In the republican calendar, the years always began at the autumnal equinox, it had twelve months of thirty days each. The months are divided into three decades of ten days (the weeks disappear). They do not coincide exactly with the months of the Gregorian calendar, as the count of the months always begins with the astronomical beginning of the seasons, as is also done with the Greek zodiac. The names of the months adopt denominations of natural phenomena and agriculture:

A copy of the French Republican Calendar at the Lausanne Historical Museum.

Autumn (ending -ary, -air):

• Vendimiario (Vendémiaire)Latin vindemia, 'vendimia'), from 22, 23 or 24 September.
• Brumario (Brumaire)French brume, 'bruma'), from 22, 23 or 24 October.
• Frimario (Frimaire)French Friedfrom 21st, 22nd or 23rd November.

Winter (ending -oso, -ôse):

• Nivoso (NivôseLatin nivosusfrom December 21, 22 or 23rd.
• Flood (Pluviose)Latin rainfrom 20, 21 or 22 January.
• Ventous (Ventôse)Latin Ventosusfrom 19, 20 or 21 February.

Spring (ending -al):

• Germinal (from Latin) germ, 'semilla'), from March 20th to 21st.
• Floreal (Floréal)Latin floss, 'flor'), from 20 or 21 April.
• Pradial (Prairial)French prairie, 'pradera'), from 20 or 21 May.

Summer (ending -idor):

• Mesidor (Messidor)Latin Meis, 'cosecha'), from June 19th or 20th.
• Termidor (Thermidor, of the Greek Thermosfrom July 19th to 20th.
• Fructidor (from Latin) fructus, 'fruta'), from 18 or 19 August.

Most month names are neologisms derived from similar words in French, Latin, or Greek. The endings of the names are grouped according to the season.

Each of the ten days of the decades are simply called primidi, duodi, tridi, quartidi, quintidi, sextidi, septidi, octidi, nonidi, decadi .

The five days (six in leap years) needed to complete the year were used as national holidays at the end of each year. At first these days were known as les Sans-Culottides, but after the year III (1795) they were known as les jours complémentaires or complementary days:

• Feast of the VirtueSeptember 17 or 18.
• Talent FestivalSeptember 18 or 19th.
• Feast of WorkSeptember 19th or 20th.
• Feast of OpinionSeptember 20 or 21st.
• Feast of Rewards21 or 22 September.
• Party of the Revolutionon 22 or 23 September (in leap years).

Leap years in the republican calendar were a highly contentious point, due to the requirements to start the year on the autumnal equinox, as well as to add a day every four years (as in the Gregorian calendar). Although years III, VII, and XI were considered leap years, and years XV and XX were also planned as such, an algorithm for determining leap years after year XX was never developed, because the calendar was abolished. See as a reference the report and draft decree presented by G. Romme, on Floreal 19, year III:

An intercalation rule will lift all the drawbacks. The astronomers propose to us leads to three indispensable corrections: one every four years, the second every four hundred years; the third every thirty-six centuries, or more convenience, every four thousand years. Calling franciades these three successive periods, the whole system of French computing is contained in these six results:

• Ten days form a decade;
• Three decades form a month;
• Twelve months and five days form one year;
• Four years and one day form a Franciscan;
• A hundred simple franciades, less than three days, form a secular Franciscan;
• Ten secular Franciscans, but one day they form a milar franciade.

The days of the year

Instead of associating a saint with each day, as is the case in the Catholic Gregorian calendar, each day is associated with a plant, mineral, animal (days ending in 5) or tool (days ending in 0).

Autumn

Winter

Spring

Summer

Abolition

The calendar was abolished for many reasons. It was a calendar out of line with the lunar cycle and the Catholic Church also opposed it for its attempt to remove the Christian influence from the calendar. In calendars, its development is understood in the choice of an appropriate long cycle (year), which coincides with the solar cycle, and a short one (week or month, depending on the calendar), which matches the lunar cycle. In this line, its big problem was its complete mismatch with the lunar: weeks (months) of 10 (30) days gain 2 days for each lunar cycle. For example, this calendar was incompatible with the secular rhythms of crops, fairs, and agricultural and livestock markets that are governed mainly by a combination of the equinoxes (governed by the solar cycle) and the lunar cycles. The concept of a 7-day week is of lunar origin (4 weeks is a lunar cycle) and is already present in the Babylonian calendar (6th century BC).

The ten-day workweek was also unpopular because it gave workers fewer days off, one in ten, rather than one in seven.

Conversion to the Gregorian calendar

The calendar was abolished as of January 1, 1805. After that date, opinions seem to differ on the method by which leap years would have been determined if the calendar were still in effect. There are several hypotheses for converting Gregorian calendar dates, of which these three appear to be the most significant:

• The leap years continue to vary in order to ensure that every year the autumn equinox falls on 1 Vendimiario, as was the case of the year I of the year XIV.
• The bisiest year would have increased after 15 years to 20 years, after a biased year had fallen in each divisible year by four (so in 20, 24, 28...), except for the years of the end of the century, according to the fixed rules proposed by Romme. This simplifies the conversions between Gregorian and Republican calendars, as the extra Republican day would normally follow a few months after February 29, at the end of each divisible year by four.
• The bisy years would have followed with a fixed rule, every four years from the last (years 15, 19, 23, 27...) with the extra day added the year before the divisible by four, except the years of the end of the century.
• From the year 20, the four-year divisible years would be bisister years, except for the years divisible by 128. Observation: this rule was first proposed by Von Mädler, not before the end of the centuryXIX. The date of the Republican New Year remains the same (September 23) in the Gregorian calendar, every year 129 to 256 (1920-2047 AD).

The following table shows the relationship between various republican and Gregorian years by method:

References to the calendar

Perhaps the most famous date in this calendar was immortalized by Karl Marx in the title of his writing Louis Bonaparte's 18th Brumaire (1852) in which he made his famous observation: « History repeats itself; the first time as a tragedy, the second as a farce». This text by Marx compared the beginning of Napoleon Bonaparte's regime with that of his less fortunate nephew Louis Napoleon.

Another reference is the film Messidor, directed by Alain Tanner.

Émile Zola's novel titled Germinal, as well as the dish "lobster alla thermidor" take their name from the months of the republican calendar.

The adjective «Thermidorian» (referring to the Thermidorian Convention and the Thermidorian reaction) was coined as a result of the overthrow of the Jacobin government and the Regime of Terror on 9 Thermidor of the year III (27 July 1794), the date the Convention arrested the top Jacobin leader, Maximilien Robespierre, and the eve of his execution.

One of the chapters of the graphic novel The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, by Neil Gaiman, refers to the month of Thermidor, focusing its plot on the death of Robespierre. The word Thermidor also designates a Spanish-made watch brand, built between the years 1960-2010.

It should be noted that, although the main objective was to remove all religious influences from the calendar in order to make it universal, the calendar was particularly specific to France and the northern hemisphere, since the names of the months were descriptive of the typical climate of that month and could be quite inaccurate in other parts of the world. The clearest example is that of a thermidor with a cold climate in parts of the southern hemisphere or a warm snowy in the French colonies.

There are various conversion tables and programs, created mostly by genealogists. Some enthusiasts in France continue to use the calendar, more out of historical nostalgia than functionality.

The legal texts that were adopted while the republican calendar was official and are still in force in France have kept the original dates.