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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. After taking over the building, the mob massacred the staff and freed the prisoners. -
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, as the radical Montagnard faction dominated the French National Convention (the revolution's fourth legislature) and thereby controlled France's government. -
The following year, the Spanish Empire trembled when Emperor Napoleon I touched off the Peninsular War and appointed his brother ruler of Spain. In Spanish America, confusion resulted. -
Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla was the author of the "Grito de Dolores" ("Cry from Dolores"), the passionate speech that ignited Mexico's independence drive on September 16, 1810. Leading a rebellion of Indian peasants and mestizos (people of a mixed-race background) against Spanish colonial rule, Hidalgo became wildly popular. He badly frightened the colony's white elite, who joined forces to defeat his army in 1811.