French Republican calendar

TheFrench Republican calendar(French:calendrier républicain français), also commonly called theFrench Revolutionary calendar(calendrier révolutionnaire français), was acalendarcreated and implemented during theFrench Revolution, and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, and for 18 days by theParis Communein 1871, and meant to replace theGregorian calendar.
The calendar consisted of twelve 30-day months, each divided into three 10-day cycles similar to weeks, plus five or sixintercalary daysat the end to fill out the balance of asolar year. It was designed in part to remove all religious androyalistinfluences from the calendar, and it was part of a larger attempt atdechristianisationanddecimalisationin France (which also includeddecimal timeof day,decimalisationof currency, andmetrication). It was used in government records in France and other areas under French rule, includingBelgium,Luxembourg, and parts of theNetherlands,Germany,Switzerland,Malta, andItaly.
TheNational Constituent Assemblyat first intended to create a new calendar marking the "era of Liberty", beginning on 14 July 1789, the date of theStorming of the Bastille. However, on 2 January 1792  its successor theLegislative Assemblydecided that Year IV of Liberty had begun the day before. Year I had therefore begun on 1 January 1789.
On 21 September 1792, theFrench First Republicwasproclaimed, and the newNational Conventiondecided that 1792 was to be known as Year I of the French Republic. It decreed on 2 January 1793 that Year II of the Republic had begun the day before. However, the new calendar as adopted by the Convention in October 1793 made 22 September 1792 the first day of Year I.
Ultimately, the calendar came to commemorate the Republic, and not the Revolution. The Common Era,  commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, was abolished and replaced withl'ère républicaine, the Republican Era, signifying the "age of reason" overcoming superstition, as part of the campaign ofdechristianisation.
The First Republic ended with thecoronation of Napoleon I as Emperoron 11 Frimaire, Year XIII, or 2 December 1804. Despite this, the republican calendar continued to be used until 1 January 1806, when Napoleon declared it abolished. It was briefly used again for a few weeks of theParis Commune, in May 1871.
The prominent atheist essayist and philosopherSylvain Maréchalpublished the first edition of hisAlmanach des Honnêtes-gens(Almanac of Honest People) in 1788.The first month in the almanac is "Mars, ou Princeps" (March, or First), the last month is "Février, ou Duodécembre" (February, or Twelfth). The lengths of the months are the same as those in the Gregorian calendar; however, the 10th, 20th, and 30th days are singled out of each month as the end of adécade(group of ten days). Individual days were assigned, instead of to the traditional saints, to people noteworthy for mostly secular achievements. Later editions of the almanac would switch to the Republican Calendar.
The days of theFrench RevolutionandRepublicsaw many efforts to sweep away various trappings of theAncien Régime(the old feudal monarchy); some of these were more successful than others. The new Republican government sought to institute, among other reforms, a new social and legal system, a new system of weights and measures (which became themetric system), and a new calendar.
Amid nostalgia for the ancientRoman Republic, the theories of theAge of Enlightenmentwere at their peak, and the devisers of the new systems looked to nature for their inspiration. Natural constants, multiples of ten, andLatinas well asAncient Greekderivations formed the fundamental blocks from which the new systems were built.
The new calendar was created by a commission under the direction of the politicianGilbert Rommeseconded byClaude Joseph Ferry[fr]andCharles-François Dupuis. They associated with their work the chemistLouis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, the mathematician and astronomerJoseph-Louis Lagrange, the astronomerJérôme Lalande, the mathematicianGaspard Monge, the astronomer and naval geographerAlexandre Guy Pingré, and the poet, actor and playwrightFabre d'Églantine, who invented the names of the months, with the help ofAndré Thouin, gardener at theJardin des plantesof theMuséum National d'Histoire Naturellein Paris. As therapporteurof the commission, Charles-Gilbert Romme presented the new calendar to theJacobin-controlledNational Conventionon 23 September 1793, which adopted it on 24 October 1793 and also extended itprolepticallyto itsepochof 22 September 1792. It is because of his position as rapporteur of the commission that the creation of the republican calendar is attributed to Romme.
The calendar is frequently named the "French Revolutionary Calendar" because it was created during the Revolution, but this is a slight misnomer. In France, it is known as thecalendrier républicainas well as thecalendrier révolutionnaire. There was initially a debate as to whether the calendar should celebrate the Great Revolution, which began in July 1789, or the Republic, which was established in 1792.Immediately following 14 July 1789, papers and pamphlets started calling 1789 year I of Liberty and the following years II and III. It was in 1792, with the practical problem of dating financial transactions, that the legislative assembly was confronted with the problem of the calendar. Originally, the choice of epoch was either 1 January 1789 or 14 July 1789. After some hesitation the assembly decided on 2 January 1792 that all official documents would use the "era of Liberty" and that the year IV of Liberty started on 1 January 1792. This usage was modified on 22 September 1792 when the Republic was proclaimed and the Convention decided that all public documents would be dated Year I of the French Republic. The decree of 2 January 1793 stipulated that the year II of the Republic began on 1 January 1793; this was revoked with the introduction of the new calendar, which set 22 September 1793 as the beginning of year II. The establishment of the Republic was used as the epochal date for the calendar; therefore, the calendar commemorates the Republic, and not the Revolution.
French coins of the period naturally used this calendar.  Many show the year (French:an) in Arabic numbers, although Roman numerals were used on some issues. Year 11 coins typically have a XI date to avoid confusion with the Roman II.
The French Revolution is usually considered to have ended with thecoup of 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (9 November 1799), thecoup d'étatofNapoleon Bonaparteagainst the established constitutional regime of theDirectoire.
TheConcordat of 1801re-established the Roman Catholic Church as an official institution in France, although not as the state religion of France. The concordat took effect from Easter Sunday, 28 Germinal, Year XI (8 April 1802); it restored the names of the days of the week to the ones from theGregorian calendar, and fixed Sunday as the official day of rest and religious celebration.However, the other attributes of the republican calendar, the months, and years, remained as they were.
The French Republic ended with thecoronation of NapoleonasEmpereur des Français(Emperor of the French) on 11 Frimaire, Year XIII (2 December 1804), but the republican calendar would remain in place for another year.Napoleonfinally abolished the republican calendar with effect from 1 January 1806 (the day after 10 Nivôse Year XIV), a little over twelve years after its introduction. It was, however, used again briefly in theJournal officielfor some dates during a short period of theParis Commune, 6–23 May 1871 (16 Floréal–3 Prairial Year LXXIX).
Years appear in writing asRoman numerals(usually), with epoch 22 September 1792, the beginning of the "Republican Era" (the day theFrench First Republicwas proclaimed, one day after the Convention abolished the monarchy). As a result, Roman Numeral I indicates the first year of the republic, that is, the year before the calendar actually came into use. By law, the beginning of each year was set at midnight, beginning on the day the apparentautumnal equinoxfalls at the Paris Observatory.
There were twelve months, each divided into three ten-day weeks calleddécades. The tenth day,décadi, replaced Sunday as the day of rest and festivity. The five or six extra days needed to approximate the solar ortropical yearwere placed after the final month of each year and calledcomplementary days. This arrangement was an almost exact copy of thecalendar used by the Ancient Egyptians, though in their case the year did not begin and end on the autumnal equinox.
A period of four years ending on a leap day was to be called a "Franciade". The name "Olympique" was originally proposedbut changed to Franciade to commemorate the fact that it had taken the revolution four years to establish a republican government in France.
The leap year was calledSextile, an allusion to the "bissextile"leap yearsof the Julian and Gregorian calendars, because it contained a sixth complementary day.
Each day in the Republican Calendar was divided into ten hours, each hour into 100 decimal minutes, and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds. Thus an hour was 144 conventional minutes (2.4 times as long as a conventional hour), a minute was 86.4 conventional seconds (44% longer than a conventional minute), and a second was 0.864 conventional seconds (13.6% shorter than a conventional second).
Clockswere manufactured to display thisdecimal time, but it did not catch on. Mandatory use of decimal time was officially suspended 7 April 1795, although some cities continued to use decimal time as late as 1801.
The numbering of years in the Republican Calendar byRoman numeralsran counter to this general decimalisation tendency.
The Republican calendar year began the day theautumnal equinoxoccurred in Paris, and had twelve months of 30 days each, which were given new names based on nature, principally having to do with the prevailing weather in and around Paris and sometimes evoking the MedievalLabours of the Months. The extra five or six days in the year were not given a month designation, but consideredSansculottidesorComplementary Days.
Most of the month names were new words coined from French,Latin, orGreek. The endings of the names are grouped by season.-dorcomes fromδῶρον,dō̂ronmeans 'giving' in Greek.
In Britain, a contemporary wit mocked the Republican Calendar by calling the months:Wheezy,Sneezy, andFreezy;Slippy,Drippy, andNippy;Showery,Flowery, andBowery;Hoppy,Croppy, andPoppy.The historianThomas Carlylesuggested somewhat more serious English names in his 1837 workThe French Revolution: A History,namely Vintagearious, Fogarious, Frostarious, Snowous, Rainous, Windous, Buddal, Floweral, Meadowal, Reapidor, Heatidor, and Fruitidor. Like the French originals, they areneologismssuggesting a meaning related to the season.
The month is divided into threedécadesor "weeks" of ten days each, named:
Décadis became official days of rest instead of Sundays, in order to diminish the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. They were used for the festivals of a succession of new religions meant to replace Catholicism: theCult of Reason, theCult of the Supreme Being, theDecadary Cult, andTheophilanthropy. Christian holidays were officially abolished in favor of revolutionary holidays.
The law of 13 Fructidor year VI (August 30, 1798) required that marriages must only be celebrated on décadis. This law was  applied from the 1st Vendémiaire year VII (September 22, 1798) to 28 Pluviôse year VIII (February 17, 1800).
Décades were abandoned at the changeover from Germinal to Floréal year X (20 to 21 April 1802), after Napoleon's Concordat with the Pope.
TheRoman Catholic Churchused acalendar of saints, which named each day of the year after an associatedsaint. To reduce the influence of the Church,Fabre d'Églantineintroduced a Rural Calendar in which each day of the year had a unique name associated with therural economy, stated to correspond to the time of year. Everydécadi(ending in 0) was named after an agricultural tool. Eachquintidi(ending in 5) was named for a common animal. The rest of the days were named for "grain, pasture, trees, roots, flowers, fruits" and other plants, except for the first month of winter, Nivôse, during which the rest of the days were named after minerals.
The following pictures, showing twelve allegories for the months, were illustrated by French painterLouis Lafitte(1779–1828), and engraved bySalvatore Tresca[fr](1750–1815).
Five extra days – six inleap years– were national holidays at the end of every year. These were originally known asles sans-culottides(aftersans-culottes), but after year III (1795) asles jours complémentaires:
Below are the Gregorian dates each year of the Republican Era (Ère Républicainein French) began while the calendar was in effect.
Leap years are highlighted
The Republican Calendar was abolished in the year XIV (1805). After this year, there are two historically attested calendars which may be used to determine dates. Both calendars gave the same dates for years 17 to 52 (1808–1844), always beginning on 23 September, and it was suggested, but never adopted, that the reformed calendar be implemented during this period, before the Republican Calendar was abolished.
Leap years are highlighted
For this calendar, Delambre's revised method of calculating leap years is used.  Other methods may differ by one day. Time may be cached and therefore not accurate. Decimal time is according to Paris mean time, which is 9 minutes 21 seconds (6.49 decimal minutes) ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. (This toolcalibrates the time, if calibration is desired.)
Leap yearsin the calendar are a point of great dispute, due to the contradicting statements in the establishing decreestating:
and:
These two specifications are incompatible, as leap years defined by the autumnal equinox in Paris do not recur on a regular four-year schedule. It was erroneously believed that one leap day would be skipped automatically every 129 years,on average, but actually five years would sometimes pass between leap years, about three times per century. Thus, the years III, VII, and XI were observed as leap years, and the years XV and XX were also planned as such, even though they were five years apart.
A fixed arithmetic rule for determining leap years was proposed byJean Baptiste Joseph Delambreand presented to the Committee of Public Education byGilbert Rommeon 19 Floréal An III (8 May 1795). The proposed rule was to determine leap years by applying the rules of the Gregorian calendar to the years of the French Republic (years IV, VIII, XII, etc. were to be leap years) except that year 4000 (the last year of ten 400-year periods) should be a common year instead of a leap year. Shortly thereafter, Romme was sentenced to the guillotine and committed suicide, and the proposal was never adopted, althoughJérôme Lalanderepeatedly proposed it for a number of years. The proposal was intended to avoid uncertain future leap years caused by the inaccurate astronomical knowledge of the 1790s (even today, this statement is still valid due to the uncertainty inΔT). In particular, the committee noted that the autumnal equinox of year 144 was predicted to occur at 11:59:40 pmlocal apparent timein Paris, which was closer to midnight than its inherent 3 to 4 minute uncertainty.
The calendar was abolished by an act dated 22 Fructidor an XIII (9 September 1805) and signed byNapoleon, which referred to a report byMichel-Louis-Étienne Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'AngélyandJean Joseph Mounier, listing two fundamental flaws.
The report also noted that the 10-day décade was unpopular and had already been suppressed three years earlier in favor of the seven-day week, removing what was considered by some as one of the calendar's main benefits.The 10-day décade was unpopular with laborers because they received only one full day of rest out of ten, instead of one in seven, although they also got a half-day off on the fifth day (thus 36 full days and 36 half days in a year, for a total of 54 free days, compared to the usual 52 or 53 Sundays). It also, by design, conflicted with Sunday religious observances.
Another criticism of the calendar was that despite the poetic names of its months, they were tied to the climate and agriculture ofmetropolitan Franceand therefore not applicable toFrance's overseas territories.
The "Coup of 18 Brumaire" or "Brumaire" was thecoup d'étatofNapoleon Bonaparteon 18 Brumaire An VIII (9 November 1799), which many historians consider to be the end of the French Revolution.Karl Marx's 1852 essayThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapartecomparesthe coup d'état of 1851ofLouis Napoléonunfavorably to his uncle's earlier coup, with the statement "History repeats ... first as tragedy, then as farce".
Another famous revolutionary date is9 Thermidor An II(27 July 1794), the date the Convention turned againstMaximilien Robespierre, who, along with others associated withthe Mountain, wasguillotinedthe following day. Based on this event, the term "Thermidorian" entered theMarxistvocabulary as referring to revolutionaries who destroy the revolution from the inside and turn against its true aims. For example,Leon Trotskyand his followers used this term aboutJoseph Stalin.
Émile Zola's novelGerminaltakes its name from the calendar's month of Germinal.
The seafood dishLobster Thermidorwas named after the 1891 playThermidor, set during the Revolution.
The French frigates of theFloréalclassall bear names of Republican months.