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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. -
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 1789 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 20 June 1789, the deputies of the Third Estate met there at the time of the Estates General, since the Menus-Plaisirs hotel, their usual meeting place, had been closed by order of the king. On that day, they took an oath not to separate until they had endowed France with a written constitution. -
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. -
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen came into existence in the summer of 1789, born of an idea of the Constituent Assembly, which was formed by the assembly of the Estates General to draft a new Constitution, and precede it with a declaration of principles. -
The March on Versailles. 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. -
In November 1792, a secret cupboard containing proof of Louis' counter-revolutionary beliefs and correspondence with foreign powers was discovered in Tuileries Palace. He was brought to trail for treason and executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793. -
The Reign of Terror, also called the Terror, was a period of state-sanctioned violence and mass executions during the French Revolution. Between Sept. 5, 1793, and July 27, 1794, France's revolutionary government ordered the arrest and execution of thousands of people. -
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. -
Enacted on March 21, 1804, the resulting Civil Code of France marked the first major revision and reorganization of laws since the Roman era. The Civil Code (renamed the Code Napoleon in 1807) addressed mainly matters relating to property and families. -
He revolutionized military organization and training; sponsored the Napoleonic Code, the prototype of later civil-law codes; reorganized education; and established the long-lived Concordat with the papacy.
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However, at the ceremony, Napoleon surprised everyone by not allowing the Pope to crown him. Instead, he placed the crown on his own head, and then crowned Josephine Empress. -
The fierce Battle of Borodino, seventy miles (110 km) west of Moscow, was a narrow French victory that resulted in a Russian general withdrawal to the south-east of Moscow. -
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.