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The declaration defines a single set of individual and collective rights for all men. Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, these rights are held to be universal and valid in all times and places. For example, "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights."
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Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and dismantle the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs. -
Paris granted French citizenship to landowners, which included some affranchise and excluded some whites, leading to civil war. A general slave revolt in August started the revolution. Its success pushed France to abolish slavery in 1794, and the Haitian Revolution outlasted the French Revolution.
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The Reign of Terror, also called the Terror, was a period of state-sanctioned violence and mass executions during the French Revolution. France's revolutionary government ordered the arrest and execution of thousands of people.
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Toussaint Louverture led a successful slave revolt and emancipated the slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti). A formidable military leader, he turned the colony into a country governed by former black slaves as a nominal French protectorate and made himself ruler of the entire island of Hispaniola. -
With the aid of the British, the rebels scored a major victory against the French force there, and on November 9, 1803, colonial authorities surrendered. In 1804, General Dessalines assumed dictatorial power, and Haiti became the second independent nation in the Americas. -
Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor, and made Josephine Empress. His coronation ceremony took place on December 2, 1804, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, with incredible splendor and at considerable expense. -
After a crushing defeat at the Battle of Calderón Bridge on January 17, 1811, Hidalgo fled north, hoping to escape into the United States. But was caught later on.
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Returning to Venezuela, he established a third republic in 1817 and then crossed the Andes in 1819 to liberate New Granada. Bolívar and his allies decisively defeated the Spanish in New Granada in 1819, Venezuela and Panama in 1821, Ecuador in 1822, Peru in 1824, and Bolivia in 1825 -
Bolívar himself led multiple expeditionary forces against the Spaniards, and between 1819 and 1822 he successfully liberated three territories—New Granada (Colombia and Panama), Venezuela, and Quito (Ecuador)—from Spanish rule.
