National Convention, French Convention Nationale ,
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.
