French Constitution of 1793

The French Constitution of 1793, formally the Acte constitutionnel of 24 June 1793 and also called the Constitution of the Year I or the Montagnard Constitution, was the second constitution ratified during the French Revolution under the First Republic. It was designed by the Montagnards, principally Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Saint-Just, to replace the constitutional monarchy of 1791 and the Girondin constitutional project. With sweeping plans for democratization and wealth redistribution, it promised a sharp break from the more moderate goals of the earlier Revolution. Its radical provisions were never implemented, because the government suspended it, ostensibly to use emergency war powers during the French Revolutionary War. Those same powers allowed the Committee of Public Safety to carry out the Reign of Terror, and once that period ended, the constitution was discredited by its association with the fallen Robespierre. In the Thermidorian Reaction it was discarded in favor of the more conservative Constitution of 1795.