Pierre Daunou

Pierre Claude François Daunou (French: [donu]; 18 August 1761 – 20 June 1840) was a French statesman and historian of the French Revolution and Empire.

He was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer. After a career in the school of the Oratorians there, he joined the order in Paris in 1777. He was professor in various seminaries in 1780–1787, after which he was ordained. He was already known in literary circles by several essays and poems, when the Revolution opened a wider career. He entered the revolutionary milieu. A supporter of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, he refused an offer of high office in the Catholic church that was intended to reverse his position.

Elected to the National Convention by the Pas-de-Calais département, he associated himself with the Girondists, but strongly opposed the death sentence on King Louis XVI. Daunou took little part in the Girondist clash with The Mountain, but was involved in the events of his party's overthrow in the summer of 1793, and was imprisoned for almost a year.

In December 1794 he returned to the Convention, and was the principal author of the Constitution of the Year III that established the Directory at the end of the Thermidorian Reaction. It is probably because of his Girondinism that the Council of the Ancients was given the right of convoking the Council of Five Hundred outside Paris, an expedient which made possible Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état (the 18 Brumaire in 1799).

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