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Since 1979, the Palace of Versailles has been listed as a World Heritage and is one of the greatest achievements in French 17th century art. Louis XIII's old hunting pavilion was transformed and extended by his son, Louis XIV, when he installed the Court and government there in 1682. -
By moving his court and government to Versailles, Louis XIV hoped to extract more control of the government from the nobility and to distance himself from the population of Paris. Wishing to escape the turmoil Paris was subject to. -
Their common desire to destroy the ambitions of Prussia and Great Britain and help secure a definitive peace between them led them to seal their alliance with a marriage: in 1770, Louis XV formally asked the hand of Maria Antonia for his eldest surviving grandson, future Louis XVI. Louis was 15 and Marie was 14 when first married. -
The Marquis de Lafayette, with the help of Thomas Jefferson, composed a draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and presented it to the National Assembly on July 11, 1789 -
The French Revolution was a period of major social upheaval that began in 1787 and ended in 1799. It sought to completely change the relationship between the rulers and those they governed and to redefine the nature of political power.
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In the Tennis Court Oath, the National Assembly swore not to stop meeting until France had a constitution. This commitment to imposing a constitution on France was a threat to the power of the monarch. -
On the morning of July 14, 1789, hundreds of Parisians stormed the Bastille, a state prison, seizing 250 barrels of gunpowder and freeing its prisoners. The storming of the Bastille was a pivotal moment in the French Revolution, the violent result of a multitude of social, economic, and political crises. -
Tens of thousands of Parisian women and men marched on Versailles on 5–6 October 1789, seeking better provisioning, the royal family's return to Paris, and the resolution of constitutional debates. Though marching with weapons, women intervened to deter mass violence in conditions that might have led to civil war. -
Ultimately unwilling to cede his royal power to the Revolutionary government, Louis XVI was found guilty of treason and condemned to death. He was guillotined on January 21, 1793. -
The Reign of Terror, also called the Terror, was a period of state-sanctioned violence and mass executions during the French Revolution. Between Sept. 5, 1793, and July 27, 1794, France's revolutionary government ordered the arrest and execution of thousands of people. -
Coup of 18–19 Brumaire, 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. -
The resulting Civil Code of France marked the first major revision and reorganization of laws since the Roman era. The Civil Code (renamed the Code Napoleon in 1807) addressed mainly matters relating to property and families. -
On the 2nd of December 1804 Napoleon crowned himself Emperor Napoleon I at Notre Dame de Paris. According to legend, during the coronation he snatched the crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII and crowned himself, thus displaying his rejection of the authority of the Pontiff. -
Napoleon crowned himself Emperor Napoleon I at Notre Dame de Paris. According to legend, during the coronation he snatched the crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII and crowned himself, thus displaying his rejection of the authority of the Pontiff.
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The only major battle of the campaign, at Borodino on 7 September 1812, ended with a territorial gain for Napoleon but at a very high cost. Napoleon's army eventually reached a Moscow abandoned and destroyed by the Russian army based on the scorched-earth policy. -
The coalition invaded France and captured Paris, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in April 1814. He was exiled to the island of Elba, between Corsica and Italy. In France, the Bourbons were restored to power. Napoleon escaped in February 1815 and took control of France. -
Waterloo ended the wars that had convulsed Europe since the French Revolution. It also ended France's attempts, whether under Louis XIV or Napoleon, to dominate the continent. Waterloo inaugurated a general European peace that, apart from the brief interruption of the Crimean War, lasted until 1914.