Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès was a French Catholic abbé whose 1789 pamphlet What Is the Third Estate? became the political manifesto of the Revolution, driving the transformation of the Estates-General into the National Assembly in June of that year. He held offices through the Consulate and the First Empire, refusing a position in the Directory in the mid-1790s but joining as a director in 1799. That November, he was among those who instigated the Coup of 18 Brumaire, installing Napoleon Bonaparte in power. He survived the entire arc of revolutionary France — from spark to empire — and lived until…