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Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, commonly referred to as Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651. Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan.
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A book in which Rousseau theorized about the best way to establish a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society. It helped inspire political reforms or revolutions in Europe, especially in France.
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Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. He was the second of eight surviving children born to Carlo Buonaparte (1746-1785), a lawyer, and Letizia Romalino Buonaparte (1750-1836).
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Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were barely in their teens when they married. In the days of the European monarchies, marriage was less a matter of personal inclination than political expediency.
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Louis Auguste became Louis XVI upon the death of his grandfather, Louis XV. Only 20 years old at the time, Louis XVI was immature and lacked self-confidence.
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As a boy, Napoleon attended school in mainland France, where he learned the French language and went on to graduate from a French military academy in 1785. He then became a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment of the French army.
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The Tennis Court Oath was a pledge that was signed in the early days of the French Revolution. It was an important revolutionary act that displayed the belief that political authority came from the nation's people and not from the monarchy.
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The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, France, on the afternoon of 14 July 1789. The medieval armory, fortress, and political prison are known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the center of Paris.
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The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, set by France's National Constituent Assembly in 1789, is a human civil rights document from the French Revolution. The Declaration was drafted by the Abbé Sieyès and the Marquis de Lafayette, in consultation with Thomas Jefferson.
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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. The march began among women in the marketplaces of Paris who, on the morning of 5 October 1789, were near rioting over the high price and scarcity of bread.
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The execution of Louis XVI by means of the guillotine, a major event of the French Revolution, took place on 21 January 1793 at the Place de la Révolution in Paris. The National Convention had convicted the king in a near-unanimous vote and condemned him to death by a simple majority.
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The Committee of Public Safety was created in April 1793 by the National Convention. It formed the provisional government in France during the Reign of Terror, a phase of the French Revolution.
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After a year of harsh rule by Robespierre, many of the revolutionary leaders had had enough of the Terror. He was executed, along with many of his supporters, by guillotine on July 28, 1794.
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In 1796, Napoleon commanded a French army. The army defeated the larger armies of Austria, one of his country’s primary rivals, in a series of battles in Italy.
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The following year, the Directory, the five-person group that had governed France since 1795, offered to let Napoleon lead an invasion of England. Napoleon determined that France’s naval forces were not yet ready to go up against the superior British Royal Navy.
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In October 1815, Napoleon was exiled to a remote, British-held island. The island is named Saint Helena, it is in the South Atlantic Ocean.
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Napoleon died on May 5, 1821, at Saint Helena, at age 51, most likely from stomach cancer. During his time in power, Napoleon often posed for paintings with his hand in his vest, leading to some speculation after his death that he had been plagued by stomach pain for years.
