[1] With sweeping plans for democratization and wealth redistribution, the new document promised a significant departure from the relatively moderate goals of the Revolution in previous years.

Those same emergency powers would permit the Committee of Public Safety to conduct the Reign of Terror, and when that period of violent political combat was over, the constitution was invalidated by its association with the defeated Robespierre.

On 15–17 April the Convention discussed the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1793, a French political document that preceded that country's first republican constitution.

On 2 June 1793 after an insurrection and the fall of the Girondins the National Convention chose Louis Saint-Just and several other deputies to serve on a committee that would draft a new governmental system for the recently established Republic.

[6][7] Employing universal male suffrage, the vote was a resounding popular victory for the new constitution, which received the approval of 1,784,377 out of approximately 1,800,000 voters.

Citizens sentenced to corporal or dishonourable punishment, or who had accepted offices or favors "which do not proceed from a democratic government" would lose their citizenship, which could be suspended if you were under investigation or being held in contempt of court.

It specified that no citizen would be exempt from taxation and established regulations for military leadership and conduct and foreign relations.

"[9] From the moment of its acceptance, it was made meaningless, first by the Convention itself, which had been charged to dissolve itself on completion of the document, then by the construction of the working institutions of the Terror.

It declared the Republic's respect for "loyalty, courage, age, filial love, and misfortune".

[14] By mid-September the Jacobin Club suggested that the Constitution should not be published, on the argument that general will was missing, although an overwhelming majority favoured it.

[15] In light of France's internal and external conflicts, the National Convention found sufficient reason to maintain itself as the effective national government, operating in permanent session under emergency powers, until peace was achieved, and postponed the Constitution's implementation.

The document represents a fundamental and historic shift in political priorities, one which contributed much to later democratic institutions and developments.