French Revolutions

After the French Revolution it was decided that the new Republic demanded a new calendar. Although the traditional names are secular rather than religious, originating from Roman gods and emperors (or plain old numbers, in the case of October, November and December), they were regarded as inextricably linked to the old order.

Being a revolutionary calendar it naturally broke all the rules. This was more than just a rebrand. Although the calendar was introduced over a year after the Revolution it was backdated, and time itself started again from the establishment of the Republic on 22 September 1792. This meant that the new calendar began in Year II rather than Year I.

The new year began on or around the autumn equinox, and each of the 12 months was radically renamed. The task was assigned to the French poet Fabre d'Eglantine. Gone were the mythical designations and instead a system that combined logic with lyricism was introduced, which named the months after crops and the weather. The autumn months were vendémiaire – wine harvest; brumaire – mist; frimaire – hoar frost; the winter months: nivose – snow; pluviose – rain; ventose – wind; Spring became germinal – shoots; floréal – flowers; prairial – fields; and Summer messidor – harvest; thermidor – heat; fructidor – fruits. Of course it wasn't beyond the bounds of possibility that thermidor could be wet or nivose rainy rather than snowy. Perhaps aware that the weather was beyond the control of even the Republic, Fabre d'Eglantine decided that the months should also be distinguished by their endings, so in Autumn, the months ended in –aire; in Winter in –ose; in Spring in –al; and the summer months ended in –dor, from the Greek for "gift", but to a French ear this also suggested d'or or "golden".

Irregularity had no place in the Republic's calendar. The new months were assigned 30 days each. However, this of course left a surplus of 5 days (6 in a leap year) which needed to be used up, otherwise the calendar would gradually fall out of sequence with the rotation of the earth and therefore with the seasons themselves. Ingeniously, these were turned into public holidays falling at the end of thermidor, called jours complémentaires. The five days were dedicated to Virtue, Genius, Work, Opinion and Rewards, with the sixth (every 4 years) dedicated to the Revolution.

The recalibration did not stop there and it was further decreed that each of these 30-day months would be broken into décades of 10 days each. Initially it was suggested that each décade should be numbered 1-10. These would replace the pagan days of the week. However, rather than using French, a mixture of Latin and French was applied, creating the days Primidi, duodi, tridi, quartidi, quintidi, sextidi, septidi, octodi, nonidi, decadi, and starting again at Primidi. However, using decades in this strict sense would have meant that dates would have required a number, a decade, and a month, as well as a year. Ultimately this was thought to be too cumbersome to be practical, so it was decided that the dates would remain numbered 1-30 after all. However, although the décade remained the unit equivalent of the seven day week with decadi "replacing" Sunday as the day of rest, not everyone was delighted with the elongated republican week.

The same decree that remodelled the calendar also suggested the decimalization of time itself. However, while metric units like the centimetre have survived more or less intact, decimal time was less popular and although decimal-clock faces are still seen today, few people found a decimal day of 10 hours, with each hour lasting 100 minutes, practical or desirable.

The system outlasted the Republic itself, though it was finally revoked by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Gregorian calendar was reintroduced after an absence of over 12 years. Nowadays, the only two dates which French school children still learn in the republican format are 9 thermidor (27 July 1794), when Robespierre was disavowed and sent to prison to be guillotined the next day, and 18 brumaire (9 November 1799), the date of Bonaparte's Coup d'état. Sadly the system also outlasted Fabre d'Eglantine, his execution by guillotine was recorded as "16 Germinal year II" (5 April 1794), less than a year after the system was introduced.