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On July 14, 1789, a peasant uprising culminated in the storming of the Bastille, the armory-prison that had become a symbol of the tyranny of the ancien régime. -
Painting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, by Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier, ca. 1789. Adopted less than two months after the storming of the Bastille. -
Free blacks challenge the French white ruling class in Haiti who refused to acknowledge the National Assembly's new law that entitles all men born of free parents to be considered full citizens in the colonies. -
In the end, L'Ouverture won. In 1801, he was declared governor general for life with wide-ranging powers, though independence had not yet been declared. The French sent another military force, this time with secret orders to reestablish slavery.
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The Reign of Terror, which took place from the summer of 1793 to the summer of 1794, was the most violent episode of the French Revolution. The Reign of Terror took place during a period sometimes referred to as the Montagnard Dictatorship
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Toussaint Louverture led a successful slave revolt and emancipated the slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti). -
With full popular support behind him, Napoleon I proclaims himself emperor of the French. -
After a crushing defeat at the Battle of Calderón Bridge on January 17, 1811, Hidalgo fled north, hoping to escape into the United States. He was caught on March 21 and executed by a firing squad on July 30, 1811, at age 58. -
Simón Bolívar leads his army into the Orinoco region of Venezuela and establishes the temporary capital of Angostura. From there, he surprises the Spanish by attacking New Grenada. -
On July 26, 1822, Bolívar and San Martín conferred at Guayaquil in Ecuador. San Martín then left Ecuador, apparently resigned to Bolívar's dominance, and went into exile.