What is "french republican calendar"

Calendar \Cal"en*dar\, n. [OE. kalender, calender, fr. L. kalendarium an interest or account book (cf. F. calendrier, OF. calendier) fr. L. calendue, kalendae, calends. See Calends.]

1. An orderly arrangement of the division of time, adapted to the purposes of civil life, as years, months, weeks, and days; also, a register of the year with its divisions; an almanac.

2. (Eccl.) A tabular statement of the dates of feasts, offices, saints' days, etc., esp. of those which are liable to change yearly according to the varying date of Easter.

3. An orderly list or enumeration of persons, things, or events; a schedule; as, a calendar of state papers; a calendar of bills presented in a legislative assembly; a calendar of causes arranged for trial in court; a calendar of a college or an academy.

   Note: Shepherds of people had need know the calendars of tempests of state.
   --Bacon.

   Calendar clock, one that shows the days of the week and month.

   Calendar month. See under Month.

   French Republican calendar. See under Vend['e]miaire.

   Gregorian calendar, Julian calendar, Perpetual calendar. See under Gregorian, Julian, and Perpetual.

The French Republican Calendar , also commonly called the French Revolutionary Calendar (calendrier révolutionnaire français), was a calendar created and implemented during the French Revolution, and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, and for 18 days by the Paris Commune in 1871. The revolutionary system was designed in part to remove all religious and royalist influences from the calendar, and was part of a larger attempt at decimalisation in France (which also included decimal time of day, decimalisation of currency, and metrication).