The French Revolution  

The French Revolution

End of the 18th century in France saw a radical political and social upheaval, influenced by the ideals of the Enlighentment, that had a lasting impact on the whole world.

No comments | 1789 - 12. December 1799

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The French Revolution

20 events | No comments | 1789 - 12. December 1799

1789

The ancien régime

In 1774 the king of France Louis XV passed away. He had been on the throne for nearly sixty years, since succeeding his great-grandfather Louis XIV, the Sun King at the age of five in 1715. During most of that time the royal finances had been in a...

1789

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1789-05-05

The estates general

The composition of the proposed estates general was a controversial topic during the autumn of 1788. The aristocratic Paris parlement argued that the arrangement should have been as on the previous occasion, in 1614, when each estate had an equal...

5. May 1789

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1789-06-20

Oath of the Tennis Court

Deadlock ensued when the third estate declared that they would not take any action unless the nobles and clergy support their notion of forming one body of delegates. This deadlock was broken in a dramatic gesture on June 17, when the third estate...

20. June 1789

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1789-07-14

Fall of Bastille

In Paris the recent months had been a time of great political excitement, in the lengthy and complicated process of choosing local representatives of the third estate for the estates general. But these events coincided with economic deprivation,...

14. July 1789

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1789-08-27

Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen

In Versailles the Constituent Assembly set about its business with commendable speed, given urgency by news of peasant violence and destruction of property in many parts of France. This sudden and unexpected rural uprising was the result of panic...

27. August 1789

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1789-10-06

Capture of the King

Meanwhile, a group of small entrepreneurs was the first to flex its muscles. The market women of Paris led a march to Versailles to put their views, in forcible fashion, to the king himself. The immediate intention of the Paris mo that marched the...

6. October 1789

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1790-02

Clubs and charters

One of the striking features of the French Revolution was the part played by political clubs. In France, home of the Enlightenment and the most intellectual of European nations, it was predictable that the great issues of the years following 1789 would...

February 1790

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1791-06-20

Flight to Varennes and the Champ de Mars massacre

In the spring of 1791, the royal family, trying to depart in carriages to spend Easter at their palace in St Cloud, were physically prevented from leaving the Tuileries by members of the National Guard, backed up by a noisy street demonstration...

20. June 1791

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1792-04-20

Declaration of Revolutionary Wars

After his ignominious return from Varennes, Louis XVI had little option but to accept the detailed constitution devised, after two years of painstaking committee work, by members of the Constituent Assembly...

20. April 1792

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1792-08-10

Summer frenzy

The summer months of 1792 brought a blend of excitement, alarm and escalating violence – most of it orchestrated by the rival revolutionary groups jockeying for power in Paris. The sense of excitement was evident in the writing of the Marseillaise just...

10. August 1792

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1792-09-21

National Convention, the Republic and execution of the king

The Parisian deputies in the new Convention were mainly Jacobins (Robespierre and Danton were elected as the first two deputies for the city), but the largest party was still the Girondins. They sat on one side of the assembly: opposite to them were...

21. September 1792

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1793-06-02

Factional rivalry

With the stage cleared by the death of the king, France lapsed into a vivid and extreme example of political in-fighting – a process often described as lethal and in this case literally so. With the guillotine waiting in the Place de la Révolution (the...

2. June 1793

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1793-08-01

Civil unrest

The French national economy lurched ever deeper into crisis. Since 1789 the Assembly had issued paper currency (assignats) to boost the economy and to enable citizens to buy the property of the church, appropriated in that year by the state...

1. August 1793

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1794-04-05

The terror

During the winter of 1793 the number of victims of the guillotine in France's cities rose dramatically. The October total (including the Girondin leaders) was 180, followed by 500 in November, 3380 in December and 3500 in January...

5. April 1794

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1795-08-22

Thermidorian rule

Politically the events of Thermidor resulted in power returning from the committee of public safety to the full Convention. The moderates (or Thermidorians, as they became known from their victory in this month's confrontation) now had the practical...

22. August 1795

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1795-10-05

The guns of Vendémiare

On 3 October, royalists in Paris declared a rebellion against the National Convention after they were excluded from a new government, the Directory. Paul Barras, a leader of the Thermidorian Reaction, knew of Napoleon Bonaparte's earlier military...

5. October 1795

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1797-09-04

The Directory

The four years of the Directory, with occasional changes of personnel among the five Directors, saw the moderates or Thermidorians (in effect the bourgeoisie) trying to hold the ring between the real opposing forces of the revolutionary conflict – the...

4. September 1797

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1799-11-09

Coup of the 18 Brumaire

One of the great survivors of the years of revolutionary turmoil, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (author of the pamphlet about the third estate in 1789), was appointed a Director in May 1799. He had already concluded that France's political chaos required...

9. November 1799

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1799-12-12

The Consulate

The new provisional trio of consuls consisted of two of the previous five directors, Sieyès and Roger Ducos (both of them party to the plot), and one newcomer – Napoleon Bonaparte. Over the next month an appointed committee wrangled ceaselessly about...

12. December 1799

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1799-12-13

Legacy of the French Revolution

Historians widely regard the French Revolution as one of the most important events in human history, and the end of the early modern period, which started around 1500, is traditionally attributed to the onset of the French Revolution in 1789...

13. December 1799

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