The Abbé Sieyès, is a politician known for his actions during the French Revolution in 1789. He was present at the opening of the Estates General and brought the Third Estate, the Nobles and the Clergy together. He was a member of the National Constituent Assembly and led reform projects following the Constituent work.

In particular, he actively participated in the work of the Convention on the reform of the administrative map. On September 7, 1789, he proposed to adopt a division of France into 81 squares. Each of these 72km squares represents a new department, itself divided into 9 districts of 9 square cantons each. The rapporteur Thouret largely took up the work of Robert de Hesseln whose topographic grid of France presented had caused a scandal and was quickly abandoned. The idea of this territorial grid was to allow the citizens of the department to be able to go to the chief town in less than a day’s travel. Nevertheless, this totally arbitrary division, which divided the kingdom into a mosaic of 81 square departments, did not take into account the constraints of the relief (coastline, relief, marshes), nor the density of occupation, nor the communication routes, nor any history of the places. But the use of a scientific and geometrical process to wipe out the past shows the will to create a new progressive country, equal in its components.