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Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Ajaccio, in Corsica. The Bonapartes were a noble family who owned land, vineyards, and a comfortable house, but they were not always well-off. Bonaparte’s father never stopped trying to consolidate his family’s wealth and social standing.
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Louis XV and Empress Maria Theresa decided to marry their respective children. The project came to fruition approximately 12 years later with the marriage of the Duke of Berry, Dauphin of France, aged 15, to Marie-Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria, aged 14. The celebrations got underway on 16 and 17 May in Versailles.
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Louis Auguste became Louis XVI upon the death of his grandfather, Louis XV.
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The American Revolution was a colonial revolt which occurred between 1775 and 1783.
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pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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This violent attack on the government by the people of France signaled the start of the French Revolution.
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Bonaparte alternated between Paris and Corsica. In Ajaccio, he participated in politics, supporting the unification of Corsica with France. This brought him into conflict with Pascal Paoli, who advocated Corsican independence and who was supported by the English.
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the French National Constituent Assembly
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episode in the French Revolution in which King Louis XVI of France, his queen Marie Antoinette, and their immediate family unsuccessfully attempted to escape from Paris in order to initiate a counter-revolution at the head of loyal troops under royalist officers concentrated at Montmédy near the frontier.
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the Directory sent Napoleon to Egypt to combat England’s growing commercial influence in the area. Keeping the expedition secret for as long as possible was crucial; to slow any possible counter-attack by the English Navy, commanded by Admiral Nelson, Napoleon had his ships leave from different ports.
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The Death of Marat is a 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David of the murdered French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat.
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was a targeted group of assassinations and a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots
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the Directory named Napoleon Commander-in-chief of the Armée d’Italie and dispatched him with orders to counter Austrian influence in Italian territory.
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the Directory was a government in decline, corrupt and hated by the French. Some of the Directors solicited Bonaparte’s return from Egypt, who agreed to help them overthrow the government.
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Austria and England were not prepared to accept the emergence in European politics of a Republican France under an ambitious First Consul Bonaparte
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The short-lived French Constitution of 1791 was the first written constitution in France, created after the collapse of the absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime.
