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Excessive spending and poor harvests lead to a financial crisis in France
This financial crisis was caused by war debt and resulted in food and job shortages which led to the poor and oppressed people of France becoming angry with the government. -
The Great Fear in the countryside
a fear of vagabonds and outlaws at a time when peasants were revolting and not paying taxes -
King Louis XVI calls the Estates General
This represented the decline of absolute monarchy in France it resulted from attempts to enact a general tax and form provincial assemblies to help administer it. This assembly claimed that tax changes required approval of the Estates General, so the king reluctantly assembled it. -
First and Second Estates join the Third Estate in the newly formed National Assembly
The National Assembly was the result of the reformed Estates General that gave more equal representation to the three estates. -
The Tennis Court Oath
The delegates of the third estate swore this oath, pledging not to disband until they had written a new constitution on how to handle representation in France. -
The storming of the Bastille
Several hundred people marched to the Bastille in search of weapons and gunpowder and killed the governor, stuck his head on a pike, and paraded through the streets. This uprising saved the National Assembly by breaking the power monopoly of the royal army. -
The National Assembly adopts the Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen
This declaration guaranteed equality before the law, representative government, and individual freedom, and was used as propaganda throughout France and around the world. -
The Women's March on Versailles
7000 women marched from Paris to Versailles to demand action. These women were armed and some even resorted to violence to achieve their goal of feeding their families -
The Constitution of 1791 sets up a constitutional monarchy in France
The king was still the head of the government, but the National Assembly was given all law-making power. -
The Legislative Assembly declares war on Austria
Revolutionaries wanted war because they believed it would spread the ideas of the revolution throughout the world. -
Robespierre's Reign of Terror
Robespierre led a despotic rule and did not give the people the voice they requested. He used violence to achieve his aims and the guillotine became a symbol of the Revolution. -
Louis XVI is executed at the guillotine
Was a culmination of the revolutionary spirit in France and ended the first phase of the revolution -
The Directory is installed
The new legislative assembly after the Reign of Terror that promoted French military expansion and reinforced widespread disgust with war and starvation.