was the principal author of the Constitution of Year III. After the
fall of Robespierre and the overthrowing of the Revolutionary Government on 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), the
Thermidorian Convention refused to apply the
Constitution of June 1793, also known as the Constitution of the First Year. The Thermidorians decided instead to draft the Constitution of Year III, intended to be more liberal, moderate, and favourable to the bourgeoisie than that of the First Year. On 4 Floréal Year III (23 April 1795), the Convention delegates the task of drafting a new Constitution to a commission composed of 11 of its members, including
Boissy d'Anglas, future
Second Consul Cambacérès,
Daunou,
Merlin de Douai, and the
Abbé Sieyès. A decree (
décret) of 15 Floréal had declared the position of a member of the Constitutional Commission incompatible with being a member of the
Committee of Public Safety. Following this decree, Cambacérès, Merlin, and Sieyès opted to remain members of the Committee, and were replaced by Baudin, Durand-Maillane, and Lanjuinais. While discussing the project, Sieyès wished to implement a control of the
constitutionality of laws, by creating a "Constitutional Jury" (
French: Jury Constitutionnaire"). Despite defending this idea in June 1795, it was not implemented, but would later become the basis of the
Conservative Senate (
Sénat conservateur) of the
Consulate. The day after the close of debates, the first day of Fructidor An III, deputy
Baudin des Ardennes presented a report on "the means of ending the Revolution", in which he recommended that two-thirds of the seats on the
Conseil des Anciens and the
Conseil des Cinq-Cents be reserved for members of the
former Convention, amount to 500 of the 750 elected. To justify this "decree of two-thirds" (
French: Décret des deux-tiers), he explained that "the fall of the Constituent Assembly taught you well enough that (electing) an entirely new legislature to set in motion a constitution that has not yet been tried is an infallible means of having it overthrown". The decree was passed, along with the constitution, on 5 fructidor an III (August 22, 1795). The decree and constitution were then each submitted to
a plebiscite and approved on a low turnout, and adopted by the decree of 1st Vendémiaire, An IV (September 23, 1795), proclaiming the French people's acceptance of the constitution presented to them by the National Convention. The royalists responded to the two-thirds decree with the
insurrection of 13 Vendémiaire (October 5, 1795). The Thermidorians thus retained the Republic, but re-established two-tier
census suffrage out of distrust of universal suffrage. == Territorial Modifications ==