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Publication of Hobbes Work- Social Contract
the social contract is a theory or model, originating during the Age of Enlightenment, that typically addresses the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual, Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate, in exchange for protection of their remaining rights. -
Formation of the National Assembly
During the French Revolution, the National Assembly was a revolutionary assembly formed by the representatives of the Third Estate of the Estates-General; thereafter it was known as the National Constituent Assembly, though popularly the shorter form persisted. -
Tennis Court Oath
The members of the French Estates-General for the Third Estate, who had begun to call themselves the National Assembly, took the Tennis Court Oath, vowing "not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established." It was a pivotal event in the early days of the French Revolution. -
Bastille is Stormed
The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, France. The medieval fortress, armory, and political prison in Paris known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the center of Paris. The prison contained just seven inmates at the time of its storming but was a symbol of abuses by the monarchy; its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution. -
Declaration of the Rights of Man
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen passed by France's National Constituent Assembly in August 1789, is a fundamental document of the French Revolution and in the history of human and civil rights. The Declaration was directly influenced by Thomas Jefferson, working with General Lafayette, who introduced it. -
Women's March
An angry mob of nearly 7,000 working women – armed with pitchforks, pikes and muskets – marched in the rain from Paris to Versailles in what was to be a pivotal event in the intensifying French Revolution. -
First use of the Guillotine
Convicted felon Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier became the first person to be executed by the guillotine. While the guillotine became known as a ruthlessly efficient killing machine, its eponym was actually motivated by humanitarian impulses -
Execution of King Louis XVI
The execution of Louis XVI, by means of the guillotine took place in Paris. It was a major event of the Revolution. He was convicted in a near-unanimous vote, and condemned Louis XVI to death by a large majority. -
Establishment of Committee of Public Safety
The Committee of Public Safety formed the de facto executive government in France during the Reign of Terror (1793–94), a stage of the French Revolution. The Committee of Public Safety succeeded the previous Committee of General Defence and assumed its role of protecting the newly established republic against foreign attacks and internal rebellion. -
Republican calendar began
A calendar created and implemented during the French Revolution, and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, and for 18 days by the Paris Commune in 1871. The revolutionary system was designed in part to remove all religious and royalist influences from the calendar, and was part of a larger attempt at decimalisation in France -
Robespierre Killed
Maximilian Robespierre, the architect of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, is overthrown and arrested by the National Convention. As the leading member of the Committee of Public Safety from 1793, Robespierre encouraged the execution, mostly by guillotine, of more than 17,000 enemies of the Revolution. -
Establishment of the Directory
The Directory was a five-member committee which governed France from 1795, when it replaced the Committee of Public Safety, until it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup of 18 Brumaire and replaced by the Consulate. It gave its name to the final four years of the French Revolution. -
Napoleon Becomes Emperor for the First Time
Napoleon wanted to establish legitimacy of his Imperial reign, with its new royal family and new nobility. Therefore, he designed a new coronation ceremony that was unlike the ceremony used for the kings of France. In the traditional coronation, kings underwent a ceremony of consecration rather than a coronation; in consecration, anointment was conferred by the archbishop of Reims in Notre-Dame de Reims. -
Napoleonic Code Started
It was drafted by a commission of four eminent jurists and entered into force on 21 March 1804. The Code, with its stress on clearly written and accessible law, was a major step in replacing the previous patchwork of feudal laws. Historian Robert Holtman regards it as one of the few documents that have influenced the whole world. -
Continental System
The Continental System or Continental Blockade was the foreign policy of Napoleon I of France in his struggle against Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. As a response to the naval blockade of the French coasts enacted by the British government on 16 May 1806, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree on 21 November 1806, which brought into effect a large-scale embargo against British trade. The embargo was effective intermittently. It ended on 11 April 1814 after Napoleon's first abdication. -
Napoleon Exiled
Napoleon launched an invasion against the Russians that eventually ended with his troops retreating from Moscow and much of Europe uniting against him. In 1814, Napoleon’s broken forces gave up and Napoleon offered to step down in favor of his son. When this offer was rejected, he abdicated and was sent to Elba. In March 1815, he escaped his island exile and returned to Paris, where he regained supporters and reclaimed his emperor title, Napoleon I. -
Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on sunday, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. A French army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition: an Anglo-led Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington, and a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, Prince of Wahlstatt. -
Napoleon's Death
By the time Napoleon died on the Island of St Helena in 1821 at the age of 52 he was a very sick man but the nature of the illness that killed him has never been established for certain. Some doctors have argued that he died of cancer, others that he was poisoned by one of his retainers. Still others have argued that his death was hastened accidentally by toxic vapors in his house on St Helena from wall paper dyed with arsenic.
