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Julius Caesar and the Romans had taken over the area, eventually it became Christianized. The settlement later spread to both the left and right banks of the Seine and the name Lutetia was replaced with Paris. In 987 A.D., Paris became the capital of France.
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It was a small country residence and, according to the Maréchal de Bassompierre, a gentleman would not have been overly proud of the construction. Louis XIII decided to rebuild it in 1631. Construction continued until 1634 and laid the basis of the Palace we know today.
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A marriage between the two royal houses had been planned since the early 1760s, but they got married in about 1770. On 19 April the wedding took place by proxy in Vienna marrying the Dauphin and future Louis XVI, the grandson of Louis XV, to Marie-Antoinette, the youngest daughter of Maria-Theresa of Habsburg.
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The execution of Louis XVI by guillotine, a major event of the French Revolution, took place on 21 January 1793 at the Place de la Révolution in Paris.
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The French Revolution began in May 1789 when the Ancien Régime was abolished in favour of a constitutional monarchy. 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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On 14 July 1789, 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 Women's March on Versailles, also known as the October March, the October Days or simply the March on Versailles, was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution.
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On 20 June 1789, the members of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, voting not to separate and to reassemble wherever necessary, until the Constitution of the kingdom is established.
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The Reign of Terror also known as The Terror, was a period of violence during the French Revolution incited by conflict between two rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of “the enemies of the revolution.”
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Napoléon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814, and again in 1815.
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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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Napoleonic Code, French Code Napoléon, French civil code enacted in March 1804, and still extant, with revisions. It was the main influence on the 19th-century civil codes of most countries of continental Europe and Latin America.
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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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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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The Battle of Waterloo was fought near Waterloo in Belgium, part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands at the time.
