-
The Estates General
A general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the clergy (First Estate), the nobles (Second Estate), and the common people (Third Estate). -
Period: to
The French Revolution
-
Storming of the Bastille
Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and dismantle the Bastille, a royal fortress that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs. This dramatic action signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, a decade of political turmoil and terror in which King Louis XVI was overthrown and tens of thousands of people, including the king and his wife Marie Antoinette, were executed. -
Declaration of the rights of man and the citizen
The Declaration was directly influenced by Thomas Jefferson, working with General Lafayette, who introduced it.Influenced also by the doctrine of "natural right", the rights of man are held to be universal: valid at all times and in every place, pertaining to human nature itself. It became the basis for a nation of free individuals protected equally by law. It is included in the preamble of the constitutions of both the Fourth French Republic (1946) and Fifth Republic (1958) and is still current -
The Flight to Varennes
The Flight to Varennes served as a major journee because it showed the National Assembly as well as the French people, that Louis XVI could no longer be trusted. While the Assembly had every intention of creating a limited or constitutional monarchy, after June 1791, such an idea became increasingly suspect. What follows here is an extract from Louis' "Declaration of the King Addressed to All the French About His Flight from Paris. -
The New Constitution
King Louis XVI accepted the new constitution. -
The Attack on the Tuileries
The attack on the Tuileries resulted in the fall of the French monarchy after storming the Tuileries Palace by the National Guard of the Insurrectional Paris Commune and revolutionary fédérés from Marseilles and Brittany. King Louis XVI and the royal family took shelter with the Legislative Assembly, which was suspended. -
Execution of King Louis XVI
The execution of King Louis XVI took place on the Revolution Square, in paris. Louis was arrested, interned in the Temple prison with his family, tried for high treason before the National Convention, convicted in a near-unanimous vote (while no one voted 'not guilty,' several deputies abstained), and condemned to death by a slight majority. His execution made him the first victim of the Reign of Terror. -
The Law of Suspects
It was a decree passed by the Committee of Public Safety on 17 September 1793, during the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. It marked a significant weakening of individual freedoms that led to "revolutionary paranoia" that swept the nation. -
Marie Antoinette
Seven months after the execution of the King, shortly after the declaration of "Revolutionary Government," the Convention turned to the rest of the royal family. Fearing that Marie Antoinette and her son, the nominal King, would provide rallying points for royalists within France and abroad, a Revolutionary Tribunal indicted Marie Antoinette and her children for treason. -
Heberists
They favoured the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793 and the Reign of Terror; but, once the Revolutionary government of Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety was fully in power, it found the rebellious Hébertists too threatening. Hébert and 17 of his friends were at last arrested, brought to trial, convicted of conspiracy, and guillotined on March 24, 1794. The movement managed weakly to survive as Hébert’s disciples continued to urge a revolution in France’s religious. -
Robespierre overthrown in France
Maximilien 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. -
13 Vendemiaire
13 Vendemiaire is the name given to a battle between the French revolution troops and Royalist forces in the street of Paris. The battle was largely responsible for the rapid advancement of Republican General Napoleon Bonaparte's career. -
National Convention
An assembly that governed France from September 20, 1792, until October 26, 1795, during the most critical period of the French Revolution. The National Convention was elected to provide a new constitution for the country after the overthrow of the monarchy (August 10, 1792). The Convention numbered 749 deputies, including businessmen, tradesmen, and many professional men.
