National Convention
,
assembly
that governed
France
from September 20, 1792, until October 26, 1795, during the most critical period of the
French Revolution
. The National
Convention
was elected to provide a new constitution for the
country
after the overthrow of the monarchy (August 10, 1792). The Convention numbered 749 deputies, including businessmen, tradesmen, and many professional men. Among its early acts were the formal abolition of the monarchy (September 21) and the establishment of the republic (September 22).
The struggles between two opposing Revolutionary factions, the
Montagnards
and the
Girondins
, dominated the first phase of the Convention (September 1792 to May 1793). The Montagnards favoured granting the poorer classes more political power, while the Girondins favoured a bourgeois republic and wanted to reduce the power of
Paris
over the course of the Revolution. Discredited by a series of defeats in the war they promoted against the anti-Revolutionary European
coalition
, the Girondins were purged from the Convention by the popular insurrection of May 31 to June 2, 1793.
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The Montagnards controlled the Convention during its second phase (June 1793 to July 1794). Because of the war and an internal rebellion, a revolutionary government with dictatorial powers (exercised by the
Committee of Public Safety
) was set up. As a result, the democratic constitution approved by the Convention on June 24, 1793, was not put into effect, and the Convention lost its legislative initiative; its role was reduced to approving the Committee’s suggestions.
Reacting against the Committee’s radical policies, many members of the Convention participated in the
overthrow
of the most prominent member of the Committee, Maximilien Robespierre, on 9 Thermidor, year II (July 27, 1794). This
Thermidorian Reaction
corresponded to the final phase of the Convention (July 1794 to October 1795). The
balance of power
in the assembly was then held by the moderate deputies of The Plain (La Plaine). The surviving Girondins were recalled to the Convention, and the leading Montagnards were purged. In August 1795 the Convention approved the constitution for the regime that replaced it, the bourgeois-dominated
Directory
(1795?99).