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Palace of Versailles, Baroque palace southwest of Paris built chiefly under Louis XIV. It was the principal residence of the French kings and the seat of government from 1682 to 1789, with some 1,000 courtiers and 4,000 attendants residing there. -
Upon its completion in 1682, Louis moved in, and changed the capital from Paris to Versailles to escape the turmoil Paris was subject to. He invited all of the aristocracy to live with him on the grounds, not because he liked them, but because he could control them. -
A marriage between the two royal houses had been planned since the early 1760s, but only came about in 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. -
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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On June 20, 1789, the Tennis Court Oath was taken. There, the men of the National Assembly swore an oath never to stop meeting until a constitution had been established. -
The Storming of the Bastille (French: Prise de la Bastille [pʁiz də la bastij]) occurred in Paris, France, on 14 July 1789, when revolutionary insurgents attempted to storm and seize control of the medieval armoury, fortress, and political prison known as the Bastille. -
The "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" was written in August 1789 during the French Revolution, adopted by the National Constituent Assembly, and outlined the fundamental rights of French citizens, including liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression, essentially establishing the principle of equality before the law for all men; it served as a preamble to the new French constitution and was heavily influenced by Enlightenment ideals. -
Concerned over the high price and scarcity of bread, women from the marketplaces of Paris led the March on Versailles on October 5, 1789. This became one of the most significant events of the French Revolution, eventually forcing the royals to return to Paris. -
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, or simply the Terror (la Terreur), was a climactic period of state-sanctioned violence during the French Revolution (1789-99), which saw the public executions and mass killings of thousands of counter-revolutionary 'suspects' between September 1793 and July 1794. -
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 Bonaparte, after rising to power during the French Revolution, declared himself Emperor of the French in 1804, establishing a vast empire across much of Europe through military conquest; his reign was marked by significant legal reforms like the Napoleonic Code, but also by authoritarian rule, censorship, and the suppression of dissent.
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Napoleonic Code, French Code Civil, French civil code enacted by Napoleon in 1804. It clarified and made uniform the private law of France and followed Roman law in being divided into three books: the law of persons, things, and modes of acquiring ownership of things. -
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. -
Of the roughly 600,000 troops who followed Napoleon into Russia, fewer than 100,000 made it out. Napoleon's invincible Grand Army had been destroyed. The Russian Army now flooded into central Europe, taking up Prussia and Austria as allies, and soon the German nationalists rose up in battle as well. -
On April 11, 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and one of the greatest military leaders in history, abdicates the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba. -
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on 18 June 1815 between Napoleon's French Army and a coalition led by the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blücher. The decisive battle of its age, it concluded a war that had raged for 23 years, ended French attempts to dominate Europe, and destroyed Napoleon's imperial power forever.