Edmond Louis Alexis Dubois-Crancé

Edmond Louis Alexis Dubois-Crancé (14 October 1747 – 28 June 1814) was a French soldier and politician.

Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he was at first a musketeer, then a lieutenant of the Marchaux (guardsmen of the Ancien Régime), and embraced Liberalism. At the start of the French Revolution in 1789, he was elected deputy to the States-General by the Third Estate of Vitry-le-François, and joined the National Assembly (his portrait stands in the foreground in Jacques-Louis David's celebrated sketch of the Oath of the Tennis Court).

In the Constituent Assembly, of which he was named secretary in November, Dubois-Crancé carried out activities in support of military reforms. He aimed for the replacement of the old military system, one of promotions on the basis of aristocratic origin and reliance on mercenaries, replaced by an organization of National Guards in which all citizens should be admitted. In his report, submitted on 12 December 1789, he was the first one to promote the idea of conscription, which he opposed to the recruiting system practiced; however, the document was not adopted. He succeeded in securing the Assembly's vote that any African slave who touched French soil should become free.

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