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Versailles was known as the stomping grounds for royal families and was where the last king of France was born.
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The future Louis XIV first came to Versailles in October 1641, when his father Louis XIII sent him and his brother here to escape a smallpox epidemic that had reached the Palace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
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15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821
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In 1770 the Dauphin Louis, future Louis XVI, married Marie Antoinette de Habsbourg-Lorraine, Archduchess of Austria. Together they had four children.
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a period of violence during the French Revolution incited by conflict between two rival political factions,and marked by mass executions from the guillotine.
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The French Revolution began in May 1789 when the Ancien Régime was abolished in favor of a constitutional monarchy. Its replacement in September 1792 by the First French Republic led to the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793 and an extended period of political turmoil
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The Tennis Court Oath was significant because it showed the growing unrest against Louis XVI and laid the foundation for later events, including the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the storming of the Bastille.
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a state prison on the east side of Paris, known as the Bastille, was attacked by an angry and aggressive mob. The prison had become a symbol of the monarchy's dictatorial rule, and the event became one of the defining moments in the Revolution that followed.
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the French National Constituent Assembly issued the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen) which defined individual and collective rights at the time of the French Revolution.
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The Women's March on Versailles was an important event at the start of the French Revolution. It gave the revolutionaries confidence in the power of the people over the king. In 1789 France, the main food of the commoners was bread. A poor French economy had led to a scarcity of bread and high prices.
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a coup d'état that overthrew the system of government under the Directory in France and substituted the Consulate, making way for the despotism of Napoleon Bonaparte. The event is often viewed as the effective end of the French Revolution.
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The Napoleonic Code made the authority of men over their families stronger, deprived women of any individual rights, and reduced the rights of illegitimate children. All male citizens were also granted equal rights under the law and the right to religious dissent, but colonial slavery was reintroduced.
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Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor, and made Josephine Empress. His coronation ceremony took place on December 2, 1804, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, with incredible splendor and at considerable expense.
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In the summer of 1812 Napoleon gathered his fearsome Grande Armée, more than half a million strong, on the banks of the Niemen River. He was about to undertake the most daring of all his many campaigns: the invasion of Russia.
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Napoleon's forces were defeated by the British and Prussians, marked the end of his reign and of France's domination in Europe.
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Exiled to the island of Elba, he escaped to France in early 1815 and raised a new Grand Army that enjoyed temporary success before its crushing defeat at Waterloo against an allied force under Wellington on June 18, 1815. Napoleon was subsequently exiled to the island of Saint Helena off the coast of Africa.
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One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI was executed by the guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris.
