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It was a small country residence and, according to the Maréchal de Bassompierre, “a mere 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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In 1661, he began expanding it into his personal palace. Upon its completion in 1682, Louis moved in, and changed the capital from Paris to Versailles to escape the turmoil Paris was subject to.
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Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755, Archduchess Marie Antoinette was the 15th and last child of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and the powerful Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa. 2. She was only 14 years old when she married the future Louis XVI.
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On 20 June 1789, the members of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath (French: Serment du Jeu de Paume), voting "not to separate and to reassemble wherever necessary, until the Constitution of the kingdom is established". It was a pivotal event in the French Revolution.
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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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On 26 August 1789, the French National Constituent Assembly issued the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen) which defined individual and collective rights at the time of the French Revolution.
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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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One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris. On January 21, he walked steadfastly to the guillotine and was executed.
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The Reign of Terror (September 5, 1793 – July 28, 1794), also known as The Terror, was a period of violence during the French Revolution incited by conflict between two rival political factions, the Girondins (moderate republicans) and the Jacobins (radical republicans), and marked by mass executions
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In 1799, a popular Napoleon launches a Coup d'Etat (sudden seizure & overthrow) on the weak and corrupt Directory.
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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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Napoleonic Code, French Code Napoléon, French civil code enacted on March 21, 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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Defeat: Napoleon's Russian Campaign (New York Review Books Classics) Paperback – October 21, 2008. In the summer of 1812 Napoleon gathered his fearsome Grande Armée, more than half a million strong, on the banks of the Niemen River.
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Exiled to the island of Elba, he escaped to France in early 1815 and raised a new Grand Army that enjoyed temporary success before its crushing defeat at Waterloo against an allied force under Wellington on June 18, 1815. Napoleon was subsequently exiled to the island of Saint Helena off the coast of Africa.
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The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815, near Waterloo in Belgium, part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands at the time
