The French Republican Calendar

Have you ever finally gotten your hands on some obscure-but-potentially-important source document from Europe and, after wading through the combined obstacles of foreign language and careless handwriting, finally find the critical date - and it's something like "26 Fructidor 11"? Or Brumaire? Or Pluviôse?

If so, then you've run head on into the peculiar creature known as the French Republican Calendar. I won't go into the history of this calendar or the reasoning behind it - these are covered quite well in an an article at Wikipedia. I just want to share with you the information you need in order to convert these alien-seeming dates into the Gregorian calendar with which most of us are most familiar.

One method is to go to the previously mentioned Wikipedia article and find the Current Date and Time table. There, along the bottom of the table, find the link for the year you're interested in. Using the example 26 Fructidor 11, the year is 11, so you'd click the XI link. Next, scroll down to the table for the month (Fructidor, in this example). Then, in the table for that month, find the table cell with your day number. So, 26 Fructidor year 11 translates to 13 September 1803.

Or, to make things even easier on yourself, try Steven Morse's French Calendar Conversions in One Step!