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King Louis XIV wanted to show his overwhelming wealth. King Louis decided to build a grand palace of Versaille. -
King Louis hoped to extract more control of the government from the nobility and to distant himself from the population of Paris. He also wanted to escape the turmoil Paris was subject to. -
King Louis XVI at age 15 and Marie Antoinette at age 14 got married. Marie was an Austrian Princess and the two got married to create an alliance between the two countries. -
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen came into existence in the summer of 1789. Born of an idea of the Constituent Assembly, which was formed by the assembly of the Estates-General to draft a new Constitution, and precede it with a declaration of principles. -
The French Revolution was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates-General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799.
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The Tennis Court Oath was a commitment to a national constitution and representative government, taken by delegates at the Estates-General at Versailles. It has become one of the most iconic scenes of the French Revolution. -
The Storming of the Bastille was an event that occurred in Paris, France, on the afternoon of 14 July 1789, when revolutionaries stormed and seized control of the medieval armory, fortress, and political prison known as the Bastille. At the time, the Bastille represented royal authority in the center of Paris. -
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 -
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 period of the French Revolution was a series of much state-sanctioned violence and mass executions. At least 300,000 suspects were arrested; 17,000 were officially executed, and perhaps 10,000 died in prison or without trial.
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Coup of 18–19 Brumaire, (November 9–10, 1799), 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. -
Napoleon I, also called Napoléon Bonaparte, was a French military general and statesman. Napoleon played a key role in the French Revolution (1789–99), served as first consul of France (1799–1804), and was the first emperor of France (1804–14/15).
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Enacted on March 21, 1804, 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 May 18, 1804, 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. He placed the crown on his own head, and then crowned Josephine Empress. -
Napoleon failed to conquer Russia in 1812 for several reasons: faulty logistics, poor discipline, disease, and not the least, the weather. Napoleon would advance his army along several avenues and converge them only when necessary. The slowest part of any army at the time was the supply trains. -
After Napoleon Bonaparte's disastrous campaign in Russia ended in defeat, he was forced into exile on Elba. He retained the title of the emperor — but of the Mediterranean island's 12,000 inhabitants, not the 70 million Europeans over whom he'd once had dominion.
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The Battle of Waterloo, in which Napoleon's forces were defeated by the British and Prussians, marked the end of his reign and of France's domination of Europe
