Timeline of the Revolution

Explore the people, images, songs, and events of the French Revolution along a single timeline. Drag either band to move through time (or use the buttons below it), hold Ctrl and scroll to zoom, and click any event to see its details, or browse the full chronological list below.

All events in chronological order

939 events.

June 15, 1215 · Magna Carta.
June 15, 1215 · The Magna Carta
King John of England granted the Magna Carta ("the great charter") on 15 June 1215. Leading nobles had demanded confirmation of their liberties and had threatened war if their demands were not met.…
1628 · Petition of Right.
1628 · The Petition of Right
In 1628, the position of Charles I of England had gone from bad to worse. Rash enterprises, lavish and illegal expenditure, and broken promises of better government had almost ruptured relations…
1667-1671 · The Barnyard
As shown here, numerous activities of plantation life were carried out by slaves. This scene includes women and children, who formed a relatively small part of the enslaved population.
1667-1671 · The Indigo Plant Farm
This print depicts and labels the essential components of a plantation producing indigo, a blue dye used for coloring cloth. Slaves are shown here working at different parts of the production process.…
1667-1671 · The Sugar Mill
This depiction of a sugar plantation in Saint Domingue emphasizes the grinding mill and refining vats. An overseer with a gun supervises the slave labor. By 1789 Saint Domingue excelled at sugar…
1685 · The Black Code.
May 6, 1687 · The Code Noir (The Black Code)
The Code noir initially took shape in Louis XIV’s edict of 1685. Although subsequent decrees modified a few of the code’s provisions, this first document established the main lines for the policing of…
1689 · Bill of Rights.
1689 · John Locke, "Of Political or Civil Society"
John Locke (1632–1704) wrote his Second Treatise of Government early in the 1680s and published it in 1690. In it Locke proposed a social contract theory of government and argued against the idea of…
1689 · The Bill of Rights, 1689
In response to policies that threatened to restore Catholicism in England, Parliament deposed King James II and called William of Orange from the Dutch Republic and his wife Mary, who was James’s…
1690 · John Locke, "Of Political or Civil Society."
February 5, 1704 · Robespierre, "On Political Morality"
In this speech to the Convention, delivered on 5 February 1794, Robespierre offered a justification of the Terror. By this date, the Federalist revolt and Vendée uprisings had been by and large…
1709 · Bossuet, "The Nature and Properties of Royal Authority"
Jacques–Benigne Bossuet (1627—1704), bishop of Meaux, was a well–known seventeenth–century peacher who believed that although France had a sizable minority of Protestants, France should have a single…
1709 · ! Poverty Observed: Journal of a Country Priest
Village priests served as community leaders in a variety of respects, including keeping a register of births, marriages, and deaths. One such curate, the abbé Lefeuvre, also included in his register…
1713 · Promulgation of Papal Bull Unigenitus regarding Jansenism.
1715 · Death of Louis XIV and ascension of Louis XV.
1718 · A Bread Riot
Bread was the basic staple of most people’s diets, and variations in the price of bread were keenly felt by the poor, especially by women who most frequently bought bread in the marketplace. Women…
1721 · Montesquieu’s The Persian Letters (1721)
Charles–Louis de Sécondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755), was born into a family of noble judges near Bordeaux. He published The Persian Letters anonymously because he feared that…
1721 · Montesquieu’s Attack on the Nobility
In his Persian Letters, published anonymously and abroad in 1721, Charles–Louis de Sécondat, Baron de Montesquieu, president of the Parlement of Bordeaux and a noble himself, made a scathing critique…
July 24, 1731 · Remonstrance by the Parlement against the Denial of Sacraments in Orléans
In 1713, the Pope had issued a bull entitled Unigenitus, condemning as heretical 101 beliefs held by some French Catholic priests who were known as "Jansenists." To Jansenists, this bull, or…
1733 · Voltaire, "On the Church of England"
Voltaire was the pen name of François–Marie Arouet (1694–1778), an Enlightenment writer known for his plays and histories and his acerbic criticism of the French Catholic Church. Although Voltaire…
1748 · Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws.
1748 · Montesquieu, "The Spirit of the Laws"
In The Spirit of the Laws published in 1748, Montesquieu took a less playful tone. Rather than lampooning French customs as he did in The Persian Letters, he offered a wide–ranging comparative…
1751 · Remonstrance on the Refusal of Sacraments (1751)
In June 1749, the priest of the St.–Etienne–du–Mont parish in Paris, acting on instructions from the Archbishop of Paris, refused the Eucharist and last rites to one of his parishioners who could not…
1751 · Article from the Encyclopedia: "Woman"
The article "Woman" was written by four contributors who considered the question from four angles: medicine and the history of opinions about women’s nature; writings about women’s place in the state…
1753 · Remonstrance by the Parlement against the Denial of Sacraments in Paris (1753)
As the controversy over the refusal of sacraments came to dominate political and religious discussions in Paris, Versailles, and across the kingdom, the magistrates argued all the more strenuously…
1753 · Legislation and Public Police Powers (1753)
Louis–Adrien Le Paige was the leading theoretician of Parlementary claims against the crown in the 1750s. His Historical Letters on the Essential Functions of the Parlement (1753) traced the history…
1754 · Beginning of the Refusal of Sacraments Controversy (to 1756).
1756 · Seven Years War (ending 1763).
1756 · Voltaire, "Internal Government" (1756)
François–Marie Arouet, who wrote under the name Voltaire, was both the best–known and most tireless advocate of the Enlightenment and also a close associate of several European kings and many French…
1756 · Tension between Rich and Poor
The Marquis de Mirabeau, a well–educated nobleman, worried about the migration of French nobles to the cities and the passing of lands into the hands of "new men," wealthy commoners without a sense of…
1757 · "Letter from a Gentleman in Paris to His Friend in London" (1757)
The news of Robert–François Damiens’s attack on the King and his subsequent trial spread rapidly and generated great interest across France and all of Europe. This pamphlet, published in London,…
1757 · Damiens’s Testimony to Parlement
During the course of his trial, Damiens was interrogated over fifty times by the magistrates of the Parlement of Paris and by the King’s prosecutors. The interrogators were concerned above all to…
1757 · Decree of the Parlement of Paris against Robert–François Damiens
After a three–month trial, the magistrates found Damiens guilty of parricide against the person of the King on 26 March 1757. In a final interrogation, Damiens is once again asked about accomplices.…
1757 · Letter from a Patriot Claiming to Prove Damiens Had Accomplices
This pamphlet was one of the many published in France in response to the news of Damiens’s attack on the King. It is written from the standpoint of the so–called patriot party, which opposed the…
1757 · The Sentence against Damiens (1757)
Having found Damiens guilty, the judges ordered him punished in a gruesome public spectacle, with the intention of repressing symbolically, through his body, the threat to order that the judges…
1757 · Apprentices and Masters
Unlike the Marquis de Mirabeau, (see document Tension between Rich and Poor) Jacques Savary sought to promote commerce and those who engaged in it. In this excerpt from his 1757 edition of The Perfect…
1757-00-00 · Damiens Being Broken on the Wheel
This straightforward representation of Damiens gives no hint of sympathy for a would–be royal assassin.
January 5, 1757 · Damiens attempts to assassinate Louis XV.
September 18, 1759 · Parlementary Remonstrance against the Third "Twentieth" Tax
Later in the 1750s, the Parlement turned its attention from religious controversy to royal fiscal policy. With the outbreak of yet another war—the Seven Years’ (or French and Indian) War against…
1762 · Publication of Rousseau’s Emile and Social Contract.
1762 · Rousseau’s The Social Contract
Jean–Jacques Rousseau was the maverick of the Enlightenment. Born a Protestant in Geneva in 1712 (d. 1778), he had to support himself as a music copyist. Unlike Voltaire and Montesquieu, both of whom…
1762 · Jean–Jacques Rousseau, Emile (1762)
Rousseau was the most controversial and paradoxical of the writers of the Enlightenment. Born in Switzerland, he published important works on politics, music, and in Emile, education. He also wrote…
1762 · Madame de Beaumer, Editorial, Journal des Dames (March 1762)
Madame de Beaumer (d. 1766) was the first of three women editors of the Journal des Dames, a newspaper founded in Paris in 1759 to encourage women to write seriously. Little is known about her,…
1763 · Parlementary Remonstrance against Reforms of Royal Debts
In 1763, with the Seven Years’ War having gone badly for France and the treasury facing ever greater shortfalls, the crown issued a series of new edicts on fiscal matters, necessary in large measure…
1764 · Beginning of La Chalotais Affair (ends in 1766).
1764 · Expulsion of Jesuits.
1764 · Voltaire, Selections from the Philosophical Dictionary
Voltaire was the pen name of François–Marie Arouet (1694–1778), an Enlightenment writer known for his plays and histories and his acerbic criticism of the French Catholic Church. This set of…
August 11, 1764 · Parlement of Brittany
Particularly vocal in its resistance to the financial edicts of 1763 was the Parlement of Rennes, which had jurisdiction in the province of Brittany. A series of "remonstrances," issued by this court…
1765 · Voltaire’s Understanding of Inequality
This passage from François–Marie Arouet, pen–named Voltaire, who was perhaps the best–known writer of the eighteenth century, illustrates the spirit of investigation of the Enlightenment. The…
February 2, 1766 · "La Chalotais" Affair
In the spring of 1765, the regional conflict between the Breton Parlement and the King spilled over to a higher level when the Parlement of Paris took up the case of Breton parlementary ally La…
March 3, 1766 · The "Session of the Scourging" (3 March 1766)
The twelve highest royal courts, known as parlements, not only heard civil and criminal suits; they also had the responsibility of discussing and registering royal edicts before their enactment.…
March 3, 1766 · The Duke de Croy Describes the "Session of the Scourging" (3 March 1766)
The twelve highest royal courts, known as Parlements, not only heard civil and criminal suits; they also had the responsibility of discussing and registering royal edicts before enactment.…
August 15, 1769 · Birth of Napoleon Bonaparte.
1770 · Antislavery Agitation: Abbé Raynal, Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (1770)
Abbé Guillaume–Thomas Raynal (1711–96), known by his clerical title [abbé refers to ecclesiastical training], first published his multivolume history of European colonization anonymously in French in…
1770 · Louis XV Asks the Parlements to Desist (1770)
The extended legal confrontation between the Parlement of Brittany and Louis XV lasted from 1765 to 1770 over the right of the central administration to govern directly in a province that had always…
May 7, 1770 · Marriage of dauphin (future Louis XVI) to the Archduchess Marie Antoinette.
1771 · Remodeling of parlements by Maupeou.
February 23, 1771 · Legal system reorganized by Chancellor Maupeou. Parlement of Paris is split up and magistrates are appointed by the government.
February 23, 1771 · Edict Creating "Superior Councils" (23 February 1771)
This edict came at the end of the extended legal confrontation between the parlements and Louis XV. After orders that the judges stop obstructing the work of administration against the actions of the…
1773 · Moreau, "On the Origins of the French Monarchy"
Jacob–Nicolas Moreau wrote this excerpt as part of his Lessons of Morality, Politics and Law (1773) at the request of the aging Louis XV for the instruction of the Dauphin. Throughout the 200–page…
1773 · Moreau, "Principles of Monarchy" (1773)
Jacob–Nicolas Moreau wrote his "lessons of morality, politics and law" for the instruction of the Dauphin. Throughout the 200–page book, Moreau defends the power of the King to rule France without…
May 10, 1774 · Louis XVI becomes king.
May 10, 1774 · Death of Louis XV.
August 24, 1774 · Dismissal of Maupeou and Terray. Restoration of parlements.
August 24, 1774 · Turgot, "Letter to the King on Finance" (1774)
In 1774, the newly ascendant Louis XVI appointed as his minister of finance a pro–Enlightenment economist and administrator named Anne–Robert–Jacques Turgot, a baron from a noble family with many…
August 25, 1774 · Turgot’s ministry as Controller–General of France begins. Continues to May 1776.
1775 · The Coronation of Louis XVI from the Gazette of France (1775)
These two articles from the official newspaper of the day describe the coronation of Louis XVI at Reims, the city to which French kings had traveled to be anointed and crowned for a thousand years.…
1775 · Remonstrance of Court of Aides (1775)
The Court of Aides was a special chamber of the Parlement of Paris dealing with taxation. It, too, could issue "remonstrances" to protest against royal edicts that it opposed. In this remonstrance,…
1775 · Turgot, "Memorandum on Local Government" (1775)
In 1774, on the accession of Louis XVI, Anne–Robert–Jacques Turgot was named Controller–General of Finances. In this position, he also became responsible for administrative policies relating to…
1775 · Anecdotes on the Countess du Barry (1775)
Since the royal family’s ability to procreate was crucial to the perpetuation of the reign and thus to the continuity of the monarchy, the obsession shown in pamphlets about the bodies and sexual…
1775 · "Memorandum on Local Government" (1775)
In 1774, on the accession of Louis XVI, Anne–Robert Turgot was named controller general. In this position, he became responsible for royal finances, and hence for administrative policies relating to…
June 11, 1775 · Coronation of Louis XVI.
1776 · Remonstrances of Parlement of Paris against Turgot’s Six Edicts (1776)
In these remonstrances, the magistrates of the Parlement of Paris,recently restored to their position by Louis XVI after having been "exiled" from office by Louis XV in 1771, voice their opposition to…
1776 · Virginia’s Declaration of Rights (1776)
The Declaration of Rights drafted in 1776 by George Mason for the state constitution of Virginia influenced both Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man…
July 4, 1776 · U.S. Declaration of Independence.
July 4, 1776 · Declaration of Independence, 1776
The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), was deeply influenced by the European Enlightenment. He spent many years in Paris and was just as much at home among…
1778 · Franco–American alliance. France declares war on Great Britain. Death of Voltaire and Rousseau.
1781 · Necker, "Account to the King" (1781)
Unlike the British, where the crown’s finance minister gave an annual report to Parliament, the French royal treasury’s accounts were a closely guarded secret. Yet Louis XVI’s second finance minister,…
1781 · Vergennes, "Memorandum against Necker" (1781)
In 1781, after the failure of two successive finance ministers, Turgot and then Necker, to reform the royal bureaucracy, and after the death of his politically astute first minister Maurepas, Louis…
1781 · Fictional Attack by "Terray" on Turgot (1781[?])
In the 1780s, following the fall of the reform–minded Turgot and Necker ministries, traditionalists felt certain that they had seen the last of the crass, pro–commerce ideas that these men and their…
1783 · Historical Essays on the Life of Marie–Antoinette, of Austria (1783)
Although by law, political power could not pass through the Queen’s body (only male heirs could succeed to the throne in France), there was great political interest in the body of Louis XVI’s Queen,…
1783 · The Saint–Marcel Neighborhood
The writer Louis–Sébastien Mercier recorded in his Portrait of Paris detailed and witty commentaries on many aspects of life among the common people. In this article on the Saint–Marcel neighborhood,…
1784 · Beaumarchais’s Understandings of Inequality
Like his predecessors of earlier generations, playwright Pierre–Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais—who became an important figure of the late Enlightenment because of the controversy surrounding his work…
1785 · Affair of the Diamond Necklace.
1785 · Oh Richard, Oh, My King!
This aria from the Gretry opera, Richard the Lion–Hearted, was adopted by royalists during the early years of the Revolution. The song’s accusation that the king had been abandoned by all but his most…
1785 · Curious Proposal of the Women of the Maubert Marketplace (1785)
As a result of the "libels" against the court and especially the Queen, asense was spreading that the monarchy was not fulfilling its obligations inruling over France. Demonstrating that sentiment,…
1786 · "Memorandum to Her Majesty the Queen Concerning the Diamond Necklace Affair" (1786)
Controversy surrounding the Queen reached a fever pitch in 1785–86 in what was known as the "diamond–necklace affair." A court schemer, Jeanne de la Motte, wove a complex web of intrigue, in which she…
August 20, 1786 · Calonne presents reform proposals to Louis XVI.
1787 · Lamoignon, "The Principles of the French Monarchy" (1787)
On 19 November 1787, the King convoked the Parlement of Paris to enforce registration of an edict allowing the indebted royal treasury to borrow an additional 420 million livres. When the King…
1787 · Protests of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Committees of the Assembly of Notables (1787)
To consider Calonne’s proposed reforms, the Assembly of Notables broke up into committees, each of which issued a report. In these reports, the Notables expressed general agreement with some reform…
1787 · Calonne, "Programs of Reform," Address to Assembly of Notables (1787)
In 1783, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a provincial noble, became royal finance minister. At first, he, like Vergennes, saw no need to rationalize the royal treasury or to appease the Parlements.…
1787 · Arthur Young Views the Countryside
Arthur Young, an Englishman, traveled across France on the eve of the Revolution recording his impressions of life there, particularly those aspects that seemed to him to compare unfavorably with his…
February 22, 1787 · The First Assembly of Notables. Raising taxes is discussed and rejected.
February 22, 1787 · Calonne, "Programs of Reform," Address to Assembly of Notables (1787)
In 1783 Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a provincial noble, became royal finance minister. At first, he, like Vergennes, saw no need to rationalize the royal treasury or to appease the Parlements. By…
April 1787 · Etienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne replaces Calonne as Controller–General of Finances.
May 25, 1787 · Assembly of Notables dissolved.
August 1787 · Exile of Parlements of Paris and Bordeaux.
October 1787 · Parlements reseated.
1787 · Edict of Toleration, November 1787
Calvinists had a long and tumultuous history in France. They first gained the right to worship according to their creed in 1598 when King Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes to end the wars of…
November 19, 1787 · Edict grants toleration to Protestants.
November 19, 1787 · Royal Session in the Parlement of Paris.
1787-1810 · Liberty
In this spectacularly vivid rendition of Liberty, she holds the Phrygian cap of freed slaves on a pike. That, combined with her colorful pants, suggests aggressive liberty. Yet the scrolls in her…
1788 · Founding the Society of the Friends of the Blacks.
1788 · Louis XVI’s Reply to the Parlement of Paris (1788)
The fiscal and administrative reforms issued as royal decrees in the autumn of 1787 were opposed vociferously by the Parlements. To force their registration, the King held a "royal session" on 19…
1788 · Royal Decree Convoking the Estates–General and the Parlementary Response (1788)
The "Princes of the Blood" were the King’s brothers and cousins, who traditionally served as both the King’s closest advisers and as his leading opponents in politics. In late 1788, on behalf of the…
1788 · Royal Decree Convoking the Estates–General and the Parlementary Response (1788)
By the fall of 1788, parlementary opposition to royal reforms had brought about a stalemate, with the Parlements refusing all reforms to the tax system. To gain the Parlement of Paris’s acceptance of…
June 7, 1788 · Revolt in Grenoble: the mob demands the reinstatement of the local parlement. Uprising also in Brittany.
July 21, 1788 · The assembly of the three orders of Dauphiné at Vizille.
August 8, 1788 · The Estates–General are convoked for 1 May 1789.
August 24, 1788 · Jacques Necker, a Swiss citizen and a Protestant, replaces Loménie de Brienne with the title of Director General of Finances; he attempts once again to solve the financial crisis and to devise a plan for a successful meeting of the Estates–General.
September 25, 1788 · Parlement of Paris demands the "forms of 1614."
October 5, 1788 · Second Assembly of Notables (dissolved 12 December 1788).
December 27, 1788 · With the consent of the king, Necker agrees to the doubling of the Third Estate’s representation at the forthcoming meeting of the Estates–General: the Third Estate will now have as many deputies as the other two orders put together.
1789 · Linguet, "Attack on the Nobility" from Annales politiques (1789)
Simon–Henri Linguet was one of the most active and irascible old regime figures. Among his many careers, he was a lawyer (who was disbarred in 1775) and a journalist (who was forced to give up his…
1789 · Zalkind–Hourwitz, Vindication of the Jews (1789)
In 1789, 40,000 Jews lived in France, most of them in the eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. In some respects, they were better treated than Calvinists under the laws of the monarchy; Jews…
1789 · Sieyès, "What Is the Third Estate?" (1789)
Emmanuel–Joseph Sieyès was born at Fréjus, 3 May 1748. He was educated at a Jesuit school, became a licentiate of the canon law, and was appointed vicar–general by the bishop of Chartres. He first…
1789 · The Abolition of Negro Slavery or Means for Ameliorating Their Lot, 1789
The passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, explicitly cited in this pamphlet, did not go unnoticed by those who favored abolition of the slave trade and eventual emancipation of…
1789 · Motion Made by Vincent Ogé the Younger to the Assembly of Colonists, 1789
Vincent Ogé presented the views of his fellow mulatto property owners to a meeting of the white planter delegates who had come to Paris from Saint Domingue, the largest and wealthiest French colony.…
1789 · "The Royal Orgy" (1789)
In 1789, with the collapse of old regime censorship as well as a sense of liberation from traditional moral constraints, printed libels against the Queen became both more common and more intense. An…
1789 · Description of the Royal Menagerie (1789)
A common theme in libels was to compare the royal family to animals. This pamphlet parodies the Queen and her entourage as animals in a zoo, emphasizing how the courtly way of life at Versailles…
1789 · Abbé Grégoire, "Memoir in Favor of the People of Color or Mixed–Race of Saint Domingue" (1789)
Baptiste–Henri Grégoire was a parish priest who was elected to the National Assembly by the clergy of Lorraine. He championed the rights of minorities both before the Revolution and in the…
1789 · Roster of Membership in the Society of Friends of Blacks, 1789
Jacques Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of Blacks in 1788 to agitate against the slave trade and slavery itself. Brissot modeled the Society on the London Committee for the Abolition of the…
1789 · Cahiers—A Parish Cahier
The cahiers de doléances ["lists of grievances"] drawn up by each assembly in choosing deputies to the Estates–General are the best available source of the thoughts of the French population on the eve…
1789 · Three Cahiers from Orléans
The cahiers de doléances ("list of grievances") drawn up by each assembly in choosing deputies to the Estates–General are the best available source of the thoughts of the French population on the eve…
1789 · Cahiers from Rural Districts: Attack on Seigneurial Dues
The petitions from rural communities decried the abuse of seigneurial dues that peasants owed to lords in exchange for which they were supposed to receive protection and supervision. But by 1789, as…
1789 · Execrable Human Traffick, or The Affectionate Slaves
This reproduction of a painting by George Morland (1789) has lurid colors and shows the sale of a slave. The artist suggests that friends or relatives are being separated, as one of the slaves is…
1789-1790 · The Crushed Aristocracy
This image uses the classical figures of an angel and a cherub to celebrate the achievements of Louis XVI on the base of a statue. The words state that he has destroyed the "aristocracy" and…
1789 · New Square of the Bastille
1789 · Awakening of the Third Estate
With the Bastille being destroyed in the background, a member of the Third Estate breaks his shackles. Here, the clergy and nobility recoil in fear, thereby emphasizing the conflict between the…
1789 · Departure of the Three Orders for Versailles
Although 14 July 1790 was a high point in the aspiration for unity, the preparation for the Estates–General set the stage for later problems. In this image, representatives of each of the three orders…
1789-1792 · With the Help of Mr. de la Fayette, the French Nation Defeats Despotism
Here, as in the preceding image, Lafayette’s role is praised. A warlike liberty stands with him over a defeated despotism at his feet. Revolutionaries often represented despotism as a multiheaded…
1789 · Farewell Bastille
This hand–colored engraving equates the taking of the Bastille with the rise of the Third Estate against the clergy and nobility. A commoner in a black hat sporting a tricolor cockade plays the…
1789 · I Was Sure We Would Have Our Turn
Class solidarity was never universal, as this print celebrates the victory of the peasantry over the nobility and clergy. The two defeated orders, linked together to create a horse, support the…
1789 · Through Me You Are All Brothers
This image shows the three orders unified by religion. The Virgin standing at right in a cloud holds a cross from which rays emanate to three figures representing the clergy, nobility, and Third…
1789 · Long Live Liberty
Cartoonists extrapolated more and more on a new Louis as the Revolution went along. Here, a rather rumpled King, dressed more like a shopkeeper than a monarch, opens a cage to let liberty out. Many…
1789 · We Must Hope That It Will Soon Be Over
A common complaint of rural petitions was the abuse of seigneurial dues owed by peasants to lords supposedly in exchange for protection and supervision. This image demonstrates the view that peasants…
1789-1790 · Opening of the Club of the Revolution: Circus Act
This engraving depicts a revolutionary club as a circus act complete with dancing dogs and clowns, all celebrating "the law and the King." This image might have been visual propaganda on behalf of…
1789 · The Calculating Patriot
The Terror, which many justified then as now as an unfortunate necessity, raised enormous anxieties. A hostile cartoon equates the Revolution with severed heads.
1789 · Abuses to Suppress
This print depicts the Third Estate—represented by the peasant at the rear of the chariot, the worker leading the horse, and the merchant driving—delivering to the National Assembly a petition listing…
1789 · The Joyous Accord
This allegorical image represents the sentiments of social unity that the National Assembly sought to promote through the Festival of the Federation of 14 July 1790. This festival, though technically…
1789-1799 · Clock Faces
1789 · Marie Antoinette as a Serpent
The Queen, never popular to begin with in France, also bore the brunt of popular anger in 1792, as seen in these images of the King, Queen, and elsewhere the entire royal family, as animals. One…
January 1789 · Publication of What is the Third Estate? by the Abbé Sieyès. He claims that the Third Estate is essentially the Nation.
1789 · "What Is the Third Estate?" by Emmanuel Sieyès
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès was born at Fréjus on 3 May 1748. He was educated at a Jesuit school, became a licentiate of canon law, and was appointed vicar–general by the bishop of Chartres. He first came…
January 1, 1789 · Petition of Women of the Third Estate to the King (1 January 1789)
Little is known about women’s grievances or feelings in the months leading up to the meeting of the Estates–General in November 1789. They did not have the right to meet as a group, draft grievances,…
January 1, 1789 · "Petition of Women of the Third Estate to the King" (1 January 1789)
Little is known about women’s grievances or feelings in the months leading up to the meeting of the Estates–General. They did not have the right to meet as a group, draft grievances, or vote (except…
February 1789 · Election of representatives to the Estates–General. One of the traditions of the Estates–General was to request cahiers de doléances or lists of grievances from the realm. In accordance with this tradition, the drawing up of the cahiers had been officially decreed on 24 January. (The cahiers number in the thousands and constitute one of our richest sources of historical information about late eighteenth–century France.)
March 6, 1789 · Attack on Seigneurial Dues
The petitions from rural communities focused in part on the abuse of seigneurial dues owed by peasants to lords for which, in principle, they received protection and supervision. But by 1789, these…
April 28, 1789 · The Réveillon Riot (28 April 1789)
The "manufactory" owned by Jean–Baptiste Réveillon in the Saint–Antoine neighborhood of Paris made decorative wallpaper, a lucrative luxury item that required highly skilled (and generally well–paid)…
May 1789 · The New World and the Old: An American at the Opening of the Estates–General (May 1789)
On 5 May 1789, the deputies of all three orders convened before the King as the Estates–General. In attendance, among other visiting foreign dignitaries, was the American Gouverneur Morris, who…
May 1789 · A Woman’s Cahier
This grievance was signed by a certain Madame B*** B*** whose identity is unknown. The provenance appears to be Normandy. Another version of this text, located and republished in the late nineteenth…
May 5, 1789 · Deliberations of the Estates–General begin at Versailles.
June 1789 · "The King of the Third Estate" (June 1789)
The King’s decision to accept the idea of a "National Assembly" and to order the deputies of all three orders to debate and vote as a single body met with sharp opposition within the royal entourage,…
June 13, 1789 · Three Poitevin curés decide to join the Third Estate, leaving the Chambers of the Clergy.
June 17, 1789 · Accepting the proposition of the delegate Abbé Sieyès, the Third Estate proclaims itself "The National Assembly." It invites the other two Orders to join in this new body of the nation.
June 19, 1789 · A few liberal nobles and many clergy join the movement of the Third Estate.
June 20, 1789 · Tennis Court Oath: After being locked out of their meeting room, deputies of the Third Estate assembled on a tennis court and swore not to separate until a constitutional regime was established.
June 23, 1789 · Louis XVI makes various proposals for reform but continues to demand that each Estate be able to cast one vote. The Third Estate rejects this proposal.
June 23, 1789 · The King Speaks to the "National Assembly": Royal Session of 23 June 1789
On 17 June, the deputies of the Third Estate, locked out of the Estates–General meeting hall in Versailles, convened in an empty tennis court, where they swore an oath. In it, they expressed their…
June 27, 1789 · The King concedes and orders the Nobles and the Clergy to join the National Assembly.
July 1789 · The Mayor of Paris on the Taking of the Bastille
Jean Sylvain de Bailly, mayor of Paris and leader of the National Assembly, recorded his views of what was going on in Paris in the uprising of mid–July. Here we see the efforts of the delegates and…
July 5, 1789 · Fears for the Bastille: A General’s Concern
In this excerpt from a letter of 5 July 1789, the Marshal de Broglie, head of the royal army who led a conservative faction at court, expresses his fears that amid the current unrest, the royal…
July 7, 1789 · The National Assembly appoints a committee of thirty members to draft a constitution.
July 9, 1789 · The National Assembly proclaims itself the Constituent National Assembly, with full authority and power to decree laws; their primary task is to draw up and adopt a constitution.
July 11, 1789 · Necker is dismissed.
July 11, 1789 · Desmoulins on His Own Role
Camille Desmoulins, an aspiring journalist and author of an anti–aristocratic pamphlet, had been closely following political events. Like many observers, he interpreted Necker’s dismissal as evidence…
July 12, 1789 · Demonstrations and speeches take place at the Palais–Royal.
July 12, 1789 · Street Demonstrations of Support for Necker (12 July 1789)
Gouverneur Morris, an American in Paris, wrote about the street protests that followed the King’s dismissal of the royal minister of finance, the popular Jacques Necker. Many Parisians considered…
July 13, 1789 · The electors of Paris form a standing committee and a citizens’ militia.
July 14, 1789 · The Fall of the Bastille.
July 14, 1789 · Parisian Riots on 14 July
As demonstrations spread across Paris on the morning of 14 July, Pierre–Victor Besenval, commander of the royal soldiers stationed in the capital, contemplated ordering his men to suppress the…
July 14, 1789 · A Conqueror of the Bastille Speaks
Having assembled at the traditional protest place in front of the City Hall, known as place des grèves (meaning sandbar, which it was, but which has come to mean "strike"), the crowd set off in search…
July 14, 1789 · A Defender of the Bastille Explains His Role
The soldiers stationed at the fortress did not see themselves as resisting the Revolution so much as keeping watch on a rather insignificant outpost that had nothing at all to do with the major events…
July 14, 1789 · Victims on Display
Meaningless violence was precisely how the Duchess of Gontaut viewed the events of July 14th, especially the murder of the military governor of the Bastille and of the mayor of Paris, whose heads were…
July 14, 1789 · Attack on the Bastille
This engraving of the attack highlights the heroism of the people charging determinedly into the billowing clouds and firing relentlessly in the face of strong resistance emanating from the fortress.
1789-1791 · The Third Incident of 14 July 1789
This engraving from the Berthault series depicts Stanislas Maillard bravely climbing on a plank over the dry moat surrounding the fortress to accept from one of the soldiers Launay’s "capitulation" of…
1789-1791 · The Seventh Incident of 14 July 1789
Upon returning to City Hall, the now heavily armed crowd stormed that building as well, arresting the "Provost of Markets" (or mayor) and his son–in–law, another municipal official. Both men were…
1789 · Taking of the Bastille
This painting emphasizes the populace’s participation in the storming of the Bastille, showing the urban population fighting under a red banner with muskets, swords, and pikes against the royal…
1789-1791 · Taking of the Bastille
This color print emphasizes the populace’s participation in the storming of the Bastille, showing the urban population fighting under a red banner with muskets, swords, and pikes against the royal…
1789 · Taking of the Bastille
The "bravery of the citizens united against" the royal army, as the text suggests, enabled them to conquer in four hours a fortress that had defeated invasions since 1368.
July 15, 1789 · Revolutionary municipalities and citizens’ guards are formed throughout the provinces. Process continues through August.
July 15, 1789 · The Great Fear. Following the fall of the Bastille, peasants in many places in France revolted in order demolish the remnants of "feudalism."
July 16, 1789 · Necker is recalled. Troops advancing toward Paris and Versailles are withdrawn.
July 17, 1789 · The Prince de Condé and the Comte d’Artois emigrate.
1789 · Demolition of the Bastille
This watercolor painting illustrates the "demolition" of what the text refers to as the "horrible prison" of the Bastille. As workmen tear down the spires on the roof, ordinary people rip stones off…
1789 · The Day of 21 July 1789; Scaling and Pillaging of the Hotel de Ville in Strasbourg
More common than clashes by workers against employers were protests over the rising price of bread. This color drawing depicts events at the City Hall of Strasbourg on 21 July 1789. Notice that the…
July 22, 1789 · Foulon de Doué and Bertier de Sauvigny are murdered in Paris.
1789 · Punishment of Foulon
Like the preceding image, this engraving reveals the aftermath of the seizure of the Bastille. Here the crowd parades the severed head of the offial, Foulon.
August 4, 1789 · The National Assembly abolishes most feudal privileges, including tax exemptions, tithes, obligatory labor on roads, and the payment of seigneurial dues.
August 4, 1789 · 4 August Decrees
In late July 1789, as reports of several thousand separate yet related peasant mobilizations poured into Paris from the countryside, a majority of them against seigneurial property, the deputies of…
August 11, 1789 · Decree of the National Assembly abolishing the Feudal System.
August 11, 1789 · Decree of the National Assembly Abolishing the Feudal System, 11 August 1789
The abolition of the feudal system, which took place during the famous night session of 4–5 August 1789, was precipitated by the reading of a report on the misery and disturbances in the provinces.…
August 11, 1789 · Decree of the National Assembly Abolishing the Feudal System (11 August 1789)
The abolition of the feudal system, which took place during the famous night session of 4–5 August 1789, was precipitated by the reading of a report about the misery and disturbances in the provinces.…
August 26, 1789 · The National Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
August 26, 1789 · Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 26 August 1789
Once they had agreed on the necessity of drafting a declaration of rights, the deputies of the National Assembly still faced the daunting task of composing one that a majority could accept. The debate…
September 1789 · Grievance List (September 1789)
The free blacks and mulattos, many of them substantial property owners and slaveholders, sent delegates to the National Assembly in France with a list of their stated grievances and demands. This list…
September 11, 1789 · King given suspensive veto on legislation.
September 12, 1789 · First appearance of Jean–Paul Marat’s L’Ami du peuple (The Friend of the People), an eight–page daily newspaper–pamphlet, one of the most influential and radical publications of the Revolution.
September 29, 1789 · Thouret, "Report on the Basis of Political Eligibility" (29 September 1789)
Jacques–Guillaume Thouret (1746–94), a lawyer from Rouen, spoke for the Constitutional Committee of the National Assembly that included, among others, Sieyès and Rabaut Saint–Etienne. His report…
October 1789 · View from the Top: the October Days
In this letter to a friend, Madame Elizabeth, Louis XVI’s younger sister, takes an upbeat approach to the October march on Versailles. Even though the demonstrations clearly threatened the royal…
October 1789 · Women Testify Concerning Their Participation in the October Days (1789)
The commission investigating the events of October 1789 also interrogated many women who had participated. Most of them denied any role in the violence, but they did explain their mixture of political…
October 1789 · Women's Petition to the National Assembly
This petition was addressed to the National Assembly sometime after the October 1789 march of women on Versailles. The authors were clearly well acquainted with the Declaration of the Rights of Man…
October 3, 1789 · Royalists Desecrate the Revolutionary Cockade (3 October 1789)
Military officers in several regiments of the royal army favored a military strike to dispel the National Assembly, but by the fall of 1789 they saw clearly that this order would not be given. Their…
October 5, 1789 · October days: The Women’s March Upon Versailles. Parisians, led by a large number of women, march upon Versailles and force the royal family back to Paris, where they take up residence at the Tuileries. Louis XVI is considered by many a "Prisoner" in Paris. The Assembly, still in Versailles, declares, in the spirit of constitutional monarchy, its inseparability from the king. Its meetings are transferred to a hall close to the Tuileries.
October 5, 1789 · The October Days (1789)
In the fall of 1789, speeches filled the air in Versailles, and a river of pamphlets and newspapers flooded Paris; however, grain remained in short supply. On 5 October, several hundred women staged a…
October 5, 1789 · October Days: The Warning from the People
In response to the news that royal soldiers had desecrated a symbol of national rejuvenation, the revolutionary cockade, Marat published in his newspaper, The Friend of the People, the following…
October 5, 1789 · October Days: An Alternate View
A Revolutionary activist named Fournier, known as "the American" because he had been born in the French colony of Guadeloupe, here recalls his own role as a National Guardsman in the October Days as…
October 5, 1789 · Stanislaus Maillard Describes the Women’s March
Stanislas Maillard, a National Guardsman and "veteran" of the taking of the Bastille, here testifies at a police court, on the events of 5–6 October. Notice that he ultimately supports the activism of…
October 5, 1789 · Stanislas Maillard describes the Women’s March to Versailles (5 October 1789)
Stanislas Maillard was a national guardsman known for having taken a leading role in the attack on the Bastille. In 1790 he testified before a commission established by the court in Paris to…
1789 · Memorable Day at Versailles, 5 October 1789
This engraving marks success and reconciliation among revolutionaries, as men and women, as well as soldiers and civilians, relax together.
1789 · Vanguard of Women going to Versailles
Publicity about political machinations, coupled with the continued high price of bread, mobilized market women and encouraged many men to support them. They hoped to fetch the King and his family to…
1789 · A Memorable Day at Versailles
1789-1791 · The Fourth Incident of October 5, 1789
1789 · To Versailles, To Versailles!
The women who arrived, though lightly armed, were no shrinking violets. They insisted that the royal family return to Paris where, in fact, they would find themselves under virtual house arrest.
1789 · Triumph of the Parisian Army and the People
Returning home from the October march to Versailles, the women and the guardsmen display the heads of troops who confronted the marchers. Note the use of tree branches, symbolizing support for the…
1789 · Arrival of the Royal Family in Paris on 6 October 1789
When the revolutionaries, led by thousands of women, marched to Versailles, they triumphantly seized and then brought the king to Paris, where he would live in the midst of his people. Here this image…
October 22, 1789 · Robespierre, "Speech Denouncing the New Conditions of Eligibility," 22 October 1789
Few deputies opposed the property requirements for voting and holding office. One of the few who did, Maximilien Robespierre (1758–94), a lawyer from Arras in northern France, made a reputation for…
November 2, 1789 · All church property is expropriated.
November 21, 1789 · Aristocratic Values
This 1789 article from the Révolutions de Paris, a leading radical newspaper, argues that the Revolution has not been achieved, because all of the changes to date could still be reversed. Moreover, it…
December 1789 · France’s administration reorganized with the establishment of departments, districts, cantons, and communes.
December 12, 1789 · The Clergy as a Target: A Political Problem
Camille Desmoulins, an influential populist writer, here attacks the distinction between "active" and "passive" citizenry based on personal wealth, by pointing out that Christ himself would have been…
December 19, 1789 · The Assembly issues treasury notes called assignats based on the value of nationalized church property. The first issue is of four hundred million.
December 23, 1789 · Abbé Maury, "Speech," 23 December 1789
Although he himself came from a family that had been forced to convert from Calvinism to Catholicism by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Abbé Jean–Siffrein Maury (1746–1817) made his…
December 23, 1789 · Clermont–Tonnerre, "Speech on Religious Minorities and Questionable Professions" (23 December 1789)
On 21 December 1789, a deputy raised the question of the status of non–Catholics under the new regime; his intervention started a long debate that quickly expanded to cover Jews, actors, and…
December 24, 1789 · Letter from Monseron de l’Aunay to the Marquis de Condorcet, President of the Society of Friends of the Blacks (24 December 1789)
This letter appears in the Journal of Paris as part of a debate over a performance of a play by Olympe de Gouges, the noted feminist, that concerns the abolition of the slave trade. The letter is…
1790 · Viefville des Essars, On the Emancipation of the Negroes (1790)
This project to free the slaves in the French colonies was presented to the National Assembly. The defensive tone and rhetorical structure that emerge in the course of this document demonstrate the…
1790 · Rules of the Jacobins
In contrast to Le Chapelier’s fears that all clubs, even the Jacobins, actually subverted the political process, the Jacobins saw themselves as ensuring the proper functioning of the constitution and…
1790 · Condorcet, "On the Admission of Women to the Rights Of Citizenship" (1790)
Condorcet took the question of political rights to its logical conclusions. He argued that if rights were indeed universal, as the doctrine of natural rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Man…
1790 · The Revolutionary Tribunal’s Use of the Guillotine
This description of the proceedings of the revolutionary tribunal, and of the physical setting of the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine stood, by an unsympathetic English observer gives the…
1790 · Patience Monsignor Your Turn Will Come
Cartoons attacked the refractory clergy. Here, fat, overfed, and underworked clergy are squeezed down to an appropriate size. As elsewhere, visual images mocked the clergy by depicting them as subject…
1790 · National Assembly Relinquishes All Privileges
This image, part of a series produced to show the most important events of the Revolution, focuses on 4 and 5 August 1789, when the system of privileges came to an end. This legal structure,…
1790 · Monks Learning to Exercise.
This image ridicules monks for contributing nothing to society, either economically or demographically, by depicting a group of them being taken from the monastery and drafted into the army, where…
1790 · Image of the King at the Festival of Federation
Having lived through a tumultuous year, France’s political leaders, new and old, perceived the need to foster a sense of unity among the people. The King’s more liberal ministers in particular hoped…
1790 · They Had Them Too Long
This image demonstrates the necessity of nationalizing church property. It shows a peasant cutting the fingers off a priest’s hands; a nobleman cannot bear to watch, but has no qualms about putting on…
1790 · The Third Estate Marrying Priests with Nuns
The National Assembly also eliminated monasteries, since monks and nuns had increasingly become figures of ridicule. This image depicts the dissolution of the religious orders, rather than the…
1790 · The Great Nausea of Monsignor
This engraving focuses on expurgating the clergy, this time with vomiting as the intended method. Here, the cleric spits up the unfair advantages enjoyed in the old regime.
1790 · The Welcoming of a Marquis in Hell
The image points out the destruction of the nobility, depicting the arrival in Hell of a "marquis" and several other "aristocrats," described in the legend as "conspirators" and "traitors."
1790 · Removal of the Parlements
The physical eviction of the black–robed magistrates in front of a female audience has a somewhat ambiguous message. On the one hand, noting the female figure on the dias in the back, this image could…
1790 · Ah! Monsignor! It seems that they want us to give everything back, yet while in the game I had advised you to play trumps.
Not uncommonly, revolutionary prints invoked excretory humor directed toward those priests who would not swear allegiance to the Revolution. Revolutionaries eliminated on their enemies; the latter…
1790-1792 · Louis as a Drinker
The arrest of the King prompted an outpouring of sentiment against Louis. Like his grandfather, Louis XV, whose early reputation as "Louis the Well–Loved" faded by the end of his long reign, Louis XVI…
1790 · The Triumph of Liberty
In this extraordinary painting stands a formidable and powerful figure of liberty with her pike and cap. As the title of this work suggests, Liberty appears here as a warrior surveying the field of…
January 7, 1790 · Activities of the Jacobins
The Englishman Arthur Young, who was in France during the early stages of the Revolution, recorded his observations. In this letter from mid–January 1790, he describes a Jacobin club meeting, which he…
January 18, 1790 · A Female Writer’s Response to the American Champion or a Well–Known Colonist
Better known for her defense of the rights of women, Olympe de Gouges defended the rights of the downtrodden in general. Here she points out the cruelty of slavery and expresses the hope that the…
January 28, 1790 · "Petition of the Jews of Paris, Alsace and Lorraine to the National Assembly" (28 January 1790)
When the Jews of Paris and the eastern provinces presented their case to the National Assembly, they leaned heavily on the precedent of granting full rights to the Protestants and on the language of…
February 4, 1790 · An Attempt at Conciliation: The Royal Address of 4 February 1790
On 4 February 1790, the Marquis de Favras was executed for plotting to spirit the King out of France and stage a coup against the Constituent Assembly. The exposure of this plot generated such…
February 5, 1790 · Society of the Friends of Blacks, "Address to the National Assembly in Favor of the Abolition of the Slave Trade" (5 February 1790)
The Society of the Friends of Blacks rested their case for the abolition of the slave trade on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the belief that political rights should be granted…
March 8, 1790 · Barnave, "Speech for the Colonial Committee of the National Assembly" (8 March 1790)
Here Antoine–Pierre Barnave, a well–connected and influential lawyer from Grenoble, represented those interests that wanted to hold onto France’s rich colonial possessions. He wanted to treat the…
1790-05-00 · It’ll Be Okay
Popular during the early years of the Revolution, this song’s lively tune and repetitive chorus expressed revolutionaries’ hopefulness about the future. Singers manipulated its malleable lyrics to…
May 1790 · Desmoulins: A Radical’s View of the Constitutional Monarch (May 1790)
In the spring of 1790, there was much debate in the Constituent Assembly and in the press over who should have the power to declare war or peace under the new constitution—the King or the legislature?…
May 10, 1790 · A Royal History
This 1790 article from the Journal Universel, a leading radical newspaper, recounts the long desperate history of the monarchy that ironically led the revolution.
June 18, 1790 · October Days: Deposition of a Marcher
The commission investigating the October Days took testimony from twenty–five women who had participated, including Marie–Rose Barré, a twenty–year old unmarried lace–worker, whose testimony is…
June 19, 1790 · All aristocratic, hereditary titles are abolished.
June 19, 1790 · Abolition of Nobility
The major principle underlying the 4 August decree found legislative expression in the decree of 19 June 1790, which legally abolished the nobility, all its privileges, and, as the excerpt…
July 1790 · Condorcet, "On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship," July 1790
Condorcet took the question of political rights to its logical conclusions. He argued that if rights were indeed universal, as the doctrine of natural rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Man…
July 12, 1790 · Adoption of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
July 14, 1790 · The first anniversary of the Revolution is celebrated on the fields of the Champ de Mars, the Festival of the Federation.
1790-07-14 · Te Deum for the Federation of July 14, 1790 at the Champ de Mars
A hymn written by Joseph Gossec to celebrate national unity on the first anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. Combining old and new, Gossec set a traditional Latin text to music scored for wind…
1790 · General Federation of the French
This image provides a visual overview of the Festival of Federation of 14 July 1790. Commemorating the fall of the Bastille one year earlier, this massive military parade of troops from all regions of…
September 1790 · A Left–Wing Newspaper Links the Revolution to the Abolition of Slavery (September 1790)
During the explosion of newspaper publishing after 1789, the Revolutions of Paris consistently supported radical positions, including the abolition of slavery in articles like this one entitled "No…
September 20, 1790 · National Assembly Debate on Clubs (20 September 1791)
The "Champ de Mars Massacre" inaugurated a brief period of political repression directed at the popular movement and dramatized the growing tension between the claims of political activism and the…
October 1790 · Louis XVI secretly explores a possible coalition with foreign powers to end the Revolution.
October 1790 · A Left–Wing Newspaper Continues the Attack on Slavery (October 1790)
In this article, the influential newspaper The Revolutions of Paris asks if Africans and their descendants are "Born to Slavery?" as part of a general consideration of the situation in the French…
October 23, 1790 · Populace Awake
In the view of the most radical commentators, such as those writing for the newspaper Révolutions de Paris, the Revolution had to be the work of more than just the deputies of the National Assembly;…
November 1790 · Publication of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.
November 1790 · Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
Born in Ireland, Edmund Burke (1729–97) immediately opposed the French Revolution, warning his countrymen against the dangerous abstractions of the French. He argued the case for tradition,…
November 20, 1790 · The King Seeks Foreign Assistance (20 November 1790)
Despite a show of support for the Revolution, by the fall of 1790, the royal family and its entourage increasingly felt that the changes of the past eighteenth months had cost them their dignity and…
November 27, 1790 · All public officials and priests are required to sign an oath of loyalty to the new French nation.
November 27, 1790 · Clubs for the People
By creating a fictional man named Jacques who must go to his workshop every day so he can support his family, yet who also wants to do his patriotic duty by following political events, the Révolutions…
November 28, 1790 · Ex–Nobles Targeted in the Press—Military Nobility
One of the targets of the left was the officer corps. Recruited from the aristocracy, the military leadership was, of course, suspect. When early battles went poorly, suspicion, justifiable or not,…
December 29, 1790 · Marat: The King Is a Friend of the People (29 December 1790 and 17 February 1791)
Through his newspaper, the Friend of the People, Jean–Paul Marat was one of the leading radical voices of the early years of the Revolution. Yet he also thought France had to have a king; his…
December 30, 1790 · Etta Palm D’Aelders, "Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favor of Men, at the Expense of Women" (30 December 1790)
Like many female activists, the Dutch woman Etta Palm D’Aelders did not explicitly articulate a program for equal political rights for women, though that would no doubt have been her ultimate aim.…
1791 · Rights of Man
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) played a vital role in mobilizing American support for their own independence, and he leapt to support the French revolutionaries when Edmund Burke attacked. Elected deputy to…
1791 · The Tennis Court Oath at Versailles by Jacques–Louis David
This amazingly rich sketch by Jacques–Louis David is one of the most famous works from the French revolutionary era. The thrust of the bodies together and toward the center stand for unity. The…
1791 · Louis Rides a Pig
Equestrian skills were expected of a monarch. But portraying the King mounted on a pig was most unflattering. Linking royalty to animals was a theme that emerged after the flight to Varennes.
1791 · Slaves and Free Blacks in Saint Domingue
This engraving pairs images of slaves and free blacks in four categories: dress, deportment, entertainment, and access to water. Although there are differences between the pairs, these are not as…
1791 · The Counterrevolution
This cartoon mocks all the leading figures of the "Counterrevolution," including the former royal family and its blood relatives, plus the clergy, the nobility, and specific individuals, such as…
1791-1795 · An Ordinary Guillotine
The guillotine was first introduced as a humane, efficient, and above all modern form of execution in April 1792; during the radical phase of the Republic, it would become the symbol of the Terror.…
1791 · Active Citizen/Passive Citizen
This cartoon mocks the distinction between active and passive citizens. Many revolutionaries hated this difference, essentially dividing those with property from those without. The propertied (active)…
1791 · King and Queen as Two–headed Monster
The Queen, never popular to begin with in France, also bore the brunt of popular anger in 1792, as seen in images of the King and Queen as animals. This reversal from old regime portrayals of the…
1791 · The Roman Aristocrat
The fattened clergyman and the well–bedecked nobleman go off unbothered while the figure in the foreground assesses carefully the value of a commoner. This complex image also includes a pig—likely a…
1791 · Louis as Pig
The Queen, never popular to begin with in France, also bore the brunt of popular anger in 1792, as seen in these images of the King, the Queen, and elsewhere the entire royal family, as animals. One…
1791-1792 · Refractory (Clergy) Going to the Promised Land
Many refractory clergy left France to join other detractors, as this print shows, or wishfully encourages. However, this is an ambiguous image, which leaves open the possibility that rather than…
January 3, 1791 · Priests refusing to take the oath are barred from exercising their ministry in public.
February 12, 1791 · Prudhomme, "On the Influence of the Revolution on Women" (12 February 1791)
Louis–Marie Prudhomme founded the Révolutions of Paris, one of the best–known radical newspapers of the French Revolution. In this editorial, he responds to women’s criticisms of the Revolution and…
February 27, 1791 · Letter from Rabaut de Saint–Étienne to the Minister of the Interior (27 February 1791)
In this document, Jean–Paul Rabaut de Saint–Étienne, a Protestant pastor from Nîmes who had been a deputy to the National Assembly and who would later be elected to the National Convention, warns the…
March 12, 1791 · Beware the Wealthy Bourgeoisie
The term "bourgeoisie" had many meanings in eighteenth–century France, from the most literal sense of "citizens of a city" to a more sociological meaning of talented and cultivated members of the…
April 1791 · Fear of Aristocratic Politics
In this article from April 1791, Fréron, a journalist allied to the radical Jean–Paul Marat, focuses on foreign enemies.
April 7, 1791 · Marat Attacks the Nobility
In this article, Marat characteristically expresses his concern that, although new governmental institutions had been created, they remained under the control of aristocratic influences, hostile to…
May 7, 1791 · Debate on colonies and civil status of free coloreds begin.
May 15, 1791 · Black inhabitants of French colonies who are born of free parents are declared equal in civic rights with whites.
June 1791 · Desmoulins Attacks the Queen (June 1791)
This article appeared in the newspaper Revolutions of France and Brabant, under the headline: "Horrible maneuvers of the Austrians at the Tuileries Palace to bring civil war to France . . ." and…
1791 · Fleeing by Design or the Perjurer Louis XVI
Another engraving of the King’s arrest portrays the guard apprehending Louis and his family in their flight from Paris in June 1791. From Varennes, the royal family is brought back to Paris…
June 14, 1791 · Worker unions and strikes are prohibited by the Le Chapelier Law.
June 14, 1791 · Le Chapelier Law
In the spring of 1791, as the National Assembly worked on political and social reforms, workers in Paris took economic matters into their own hands by staging a series of strikes and demonstrations…
June 20, 1791 · Attempting to flee France, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and their children are arrested at Varennes and brought back to Paris. The Constituent Assembly suspends the King’s authority until further notice.
June 20, 1791 · The King Flees Paris (20 June 1791)
After 14 July, some of the King’s entourage had urged him to flee so that he would not have to approve a new Constitution. Aristocrats such as the Baron de Breteuil and the Marquis de Bouillé, along…
1791 · 20 June 1791, Anonymous Drawing
In this depiction of the King’s arrest, the Queen risks her body to save her son, the crown prince.
June 21, 1791 · The Flight to Varennes (21–23 June 1791)
After a late start, the royal family followed a circuitous route through a series of small towns in the countryside. However, things started to go awry near the city of Châlons, where the loyal…
1791 · Image of the King’s Departure
This engraving depicts the King, his wife, and his children meeting at half–past midnight on 21 June 1791, about to board a carriage in which they will flee secretly from Paris toward the border. The…
1791 · Arrest of the King at Varennes, 22 June 1791
These images, all engraved and widely circulated years after the event, show four different moments of the arrest. Each successive image renders the scene increasingly dramatic. The first, a woodcut…
June 25, 1791 · Press Reports of the King’s Flight: Révolutions de Paris (25 June 1791) and Père Duchesne (1791)
The news of the King’s flight and subsequent arrest provoked strong responses in the press, most of which attacked Louis as a traitor and questioned the National Assembly’s acceptance of his excuse…
June 27, 1791 · Louis Apologizes (27 June 1791)
Louis’s unsuccessful flight polarized opinion on the powers the King should have under the new constitution. For the first time, some deputies seriously proposed doing away with the monarchy…
July 5, 1791 · "The Padua Circular" (5 July 1791)
Even after the aborted flight of the royal family in June 1791, Emperor Leopold von Habsburg of Austria, brother of Marie Antoinette, continued his efforts to organize a coalition of French émigré…
July 6, 1791 · The Emperor Leopold II appeals to other monarchs to join with him in demanding respect for the liberty and honor of Louis XVI.
July 8, 1791 · Voltaire’s remains moved to the Pantheon.
July 10, 1791 · Leopold II’s Padua Circular.
July 14, 1791 · Champ de Mars: Petitions of the Cordelier and Jacobin Clubs
In the aftermath of the King’s failed flight in June 1791, the more radical clubs circulated petitions calling on the National Assembly to depose the King rather than grant him executive power as a…
July 15, 1791 · The Massacre of the Champ de Mars [Parade ground], in the Révolutions de Paris
On 15 July 1791, the Jacobins held a demonstration on the Champ de Mars in Paris to gain signatures for their petition. A contingent of National Guard soldiers, led by General Lafayette, fired on the…
July 16, 1791 · Reinstatement of Louis XVI.
July 17, 1791 · The Massacre of the Champ de Mars.
August 17, 1791 · Women at the Jacobins
An observer of Jacobin club meetings in 1791, in the passage below, describes somewhat disorderly debates, in which speakers are shouted down from the rostrum and women participate openly. This is…
August 22, 1791 · Slave rebellion begins in Saint Domingue.
August 27, 1791 · The Declaration of Pillnitz. The rulers of Austria and Prussia agree to combine forces against the French Revolution. They insist that England participate before they will act.
August 27, 1791 · "The Declaration of Pillnitz"
In response to the "Padua Circular," King Louis’s brother, the Count of Artois, a leader of the émigré nobles, expressed his support for Emperor Leopold II of Austria. Leopold, in conjunction with…
September 1791 · Olympe de Gouges, The Declaration of the Rights of Woman (September 1791)
Marie Gouze (1748–93) was a self–educated butcher’s daughter from the south of France who, under the name Olympe de Gouges, wrote pamphlets and plays on a variety of issues, including slavery, which…
September 1791 · Olympe de Gouges, The Declaration of the Rights of Woman (September 1791)
Marie Gouze (1748–93) was a self–educated butcher’s daughter from the south of France who under the name Olympe de Gouges wrote pamphlets and plays on a variety of issues, including slavery, which she…
September 3, 1791 · The Constitution of 1791 is proclaimed.
September 8, 1791 · Marie Antoinette’s View of the Revolution (8 September 1791)
Fears about Marie Antoinette’s intentions and actions were not baseless. Although inexperienced in the new style of politics, Marie Antoinette did see a need for help from abroad if the monarchy was…
September 14, 1791 · Louis XVI accepts the constitution.
September 14, 1791 · Louis Accepts the Constitution (14–25 September 1791)
Even after the debacle of the flight to Varennes, the King’s brothers—the Counts of Provence and of Artois—continued to plot from exile for a military strike that would dispel the National Assembly…
September 27, 1791 · Jews in all regions of France are granted full citizenship (those in the Midi had been granted citizenship on 28 January 1790).
September 27, 1791 · "Admission of Jews to Rights of Citizenship," 27 September 1791
After several tumultuous discussions about the Jewish communities still excluded from political rights, the National Assembly finally voted to regularize the situation of all the different Jewish…
September 28, 1791 · Abolition of slavery in France, but not in the colonies.
1789-1792 · Mr. de Lafayette, Commander of the Paris National Guard, Receives the City’s 'Sword for the Defense of Liberty'
During the Revolution the most visible connection between America and France was Lafayette, who had volunteered for service in the American Revolution and had been mentored by Washington and…
October 1, 1791 · First session of the new Legislative Assembly under the Constitution of 1791.
October 12, 1791 · The Pennsylvania Gazette: Magnitude of the Insurrection (12 October 1791)
The magnitude of the insurrection quickly became clear as alarmed observers related that considerable armies were being raised to fight the rebels. It is noteworthy that such reports even to northern…
October 20, 1791 · Brissot calls for war.
November 9, 1791 · Louis XVI vetoes decrees against émigrés, and refractory priests proposed by the Legislative Assembly.
November 29, 1791 · The Assembly Complains to the King about the Émigrés
Having received news of the alliance of Prussia and Austria with émigré French nobles against the Revolution, the Legislative Assembly considered itself threatened by invasion. Fearing that the King,…
1792 · The Marseillaise (War Song for the Army of the Rhine)
Composed by Joseph Rouget de Lisle when he learned that France had declared war on Austria, the Marseillaise quickly became the anthem of the republican Revolution. it remains the French national…
1792 · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
The English writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) argued against both Burke and Rousseau, defending the notion of natural rights, particularly rights for women, such as equal education. She insisted…
1792 · Louis as a Drunkard
This image of Louis, already altered by commoner attire and a Phrygian cap, added a raised bottle. This transformation could scarcely have been anticipated even a year or two into the Revolution.
1792 · Image of the King on Trial
When he was charged, the King could have simply refused to participate on the grounds that the extant Constitution promised his immunity. But this defense, he knew, was useless and he elected to stand…
1792 · The King Accepting the Constitution amid the National Assembly, 14 September 1791
The Estates–General, reborn as the National Assembly, finished its work by completing a new constitution. This document provided for an executive—the King—as well as a legislative body. Suffrage was…
1792 · Nine Emigrants Go to the Guillotine
In a woodcut that appeared in Révolutions de Paris, the guillotine is used before a crowd of soldiers and patriotic onlookers, to execute nine "émigrés" who had tried to fell France and thus…
1792 · Massacre of the Prisoners
Yet another image from the newspaper R*volutions de Paris shows crowds massacring refractory clergy and prisoners. These panels reveal similar occurrences at the police prisons of the Chatelet and the…
1792 · Massacre of the Priests
This image, also reproduced from the newspaper R*volutions de Paris, shows crowds massacring refractory clergy and prisoners. The panels depict the former convent of the Carmelites (where 163 were…
1792 · Massacre of the Prisoners of St. Germain Abbey
In one of the most widely reported incidents of the September massacres, a "jury" of twelve "commissioners" was formed spontaneously in the Saint–Germain Abbey to judge the refractory clergy held…
1792 · Place Vendôme, The Greatest of Despots Overthrown by Freedom
1792 · Louis XVI, King of the French
This fascinating print, likely produced before the King’s flight from Paris, takes the Louis XVI of the old regime and makes him a revolutionary with the addition of the Phrygian cap. While the…
1792-1799 · Game of the Great Men, Minot the Elder
Revolutionaries redesigned playing cards in order to eliminate references to royalty (kings, queens, jacks) and replace them with great men and abstract virtues.
1792 · Procession of Refractory Clergy
Of particular interest in this caricature of refractory clergy here are the long noses, traditionally used to caricature Jews, that suggest the refractory clergy were not of the people. This image…
January 1792 · Inflation intensifies. Food riots occur in Paris. Both continue until March.
January 8, 1792 · Report by the Jacobin Society of Besançon on Refractory Priests
A Jacobin club in Besançon in the Franche–Comté on the eastern borders of France sent this report to the Jacobin Club of Paris on 8 January 1792. The club sees the continuing presence of those who did…
February 1792 · Women’s Participation in Riots over the Price of Sugar, February 1792
This fragment from a memoir by Charles Alexandre shows the anger of women when confronted by a sugar shortage. They readily attributed the shortage to hoarding by greedy merchants. This document also…
March 1, 1792 · Death of Emperor Leopold II. His son Francis II succeeds him.
March 9, 1792 · Proclamation of the Department of the Seine–et–Oise (9 March 1792)
Despite the radical measures taken by the National Assembly, such as the abolition of nobility and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, social conflicts continued to manifest themselves after the…
March 10, 1792 · Louis XVI removes the Count of Narbonne, Minister of War. All of his other ministers resign. Louis forms a new government, composed mostly of Jacobins.
March 28, 1792 · Kersaint, "Discussion of Troubles in the Colonies" (28 March 1792)
This speech by a former noble who had served as a naval officer reveals the deep ambivalence of the deputies about moving too quickly to emancipate the slaves. Caught between the planters who…
April 20, 1792 · France declares war on the King of Hungary and Bohemia (the Austrian Francis II). Prussia joins with Austria.
April 25, 1792 · First use of the guillotine.
May 16, 1792 · The Pennsylvania Gazette: Blame Now Falls (16 May 1792)
Blame now falls, at least according to the author of this letter, on the "blood–thirsty aristocracy," which has created dissensions among the French. The author also expresses alarm at the thought of…
June 1792 · A Girondin View: Roland Calls on the King to Declare War
In the spring of 1792, the Legislative Assembly—particularly its Executive Committee, dominated by Girondins—took a more aggressive attitude toward Austria, repeatedly arguing that France needed to…
June 20, 1792 · Crowds invade the Tuileries to insist on removal of King.
1792-06-20 · Image of the Attack of 20 June 1792
By the spring of 1792, the Revolution was in crisis on several fronts—in April, war had been declared on the Habsburg Empire, uprisings were taking place in provincial cities, and the Legislative…
June 27, 1792 · Address of the Commune of Marseilles (27 June 1792)
In late spring 1792, a group of militant journalists and section leaders began planning an uprising that they hoped would lead to the summoning of a new assembly for the specific purpose of rewriting…
June 28, 1792 · The Brunswick Manifesto (declared on 25 July) is distributed throughout Paris. The Duke of Brunswick, commanding general of the Austro–Prussian Army, in an inflammatory declaration, warns Parisians to obey Louis XVI. It threatens them with violent punishment if they do not. The Assembly is offended and orders the sections of Paris to ready themselves. The Manifesto creates both fear and anger in Paris.
June 30, 1792 · Singing Rouget de Lisle’s War Hymn of the Army of the Rhine or La Marseillaise, a battalion of National Guards from Marseilles arrives in Paris. Plans are made by a revolutionary committee to proceed toward the overthrow of the king.
July 1792 · The Queen at the Opera (July 1792)
Since the seventeenth century, French monarchs had been great patrons of the theater and opera, which they regularly attended in Versailles and Paris. Such performances had been occasions to appear…
July 5, 1792 · Mobilization for War (5 July 1792)
Although a small minority in the Legislative Assembly when it convened in September 1791, the Girondins succeeded in passing a resolution in favor of war with "the King of Bohemia and Hungary,"…
1793 · Transportation of Voltaire to the French Panthéon, 8 July 1792
Although Voltaire’s contribution to the Revolution has been much debated, the revolutionaries themselves had absolutely no doubt of his significance. After 1789 he was much in vogue, in that his plays…
July 11, 1792 · Decree of "Country in Danger."
July 25, 1792 · Paris sections remain in permanent session.
July 27, 1792 · Properties of émigrés confiscated.
1792-08-00 · The Carmagnole
Sharing its name with a popular dance, this song heaps scorn upon the queen (Madame Veto), believed to be a traitor, and the "aristocrats" who support her. Like "It’ll Be Okay", the simple tune of the…
August 3, 1792 · Petition from 47 out of 48 Paris sections demands deposing the King.
August 3, 1792 · Parisian Petitions to Dethrone the King (3 August 1792)
Just after the Festival of 14 July, leaders of some of the more radical Parisian sections drafted, on behalf of the French nation, a petition calling on the Legislative Assembly to take emergency…
August 3, 1792 · Proceedings of the Quinze–Vingts Section
In late July and early August 1792, amid ongoing rancor over the King’s role in the government and fears that he would betray the nation to the invading Prussians, various Parisian sections began…
August 9, 1792 · A "Revolutionary commune" usurps the municipal government of Paris.
August 10, 1792 · The Fall of the Monarchy. Popular assault on the Tuileries; Louis XVI deposed.
August 10, 1792 · The Attack on the Tuileries (10 August 1792)
In early August, the Legislative Assembly was deadlocked, unable to decide what to do about the King, the constitution, the ongoing war, and above all the political uprisings in Paris. On 4 August,…
August 10, 1792 · The "Second Revolution" of 10 August 1792
The popular demonstration of 10 August 1792, occurred because the Legislative Assembly could not decide what to do about the King, the constitution, the ongoing war, and above all the political…
August 10, 1792 · The Journée of 10 August 1792
In early August, the Legislative Assembly was deadlocked, unable to decide what to do about the King, the constitution, the ongoing war, and above all the political uprisings in Paris. On 4 August,…
1792 · Foundation of the Republic, August 10, 1792
One of the sharper engagements of 10 August between the revolutionaries and the royal defenders occurred on the palace’s steps. The caption emphasizes the revolutionaries’ point of view.
1792 · Rare Animals; or, the Transfer of the Royal Family from the Tuileries to the Temple. Champfleury, 1792
Here the events of 10 August were expressed by reducing the royal family to animals. Driven from their palace to prison, the family became no more than a group of barnyard animals. Contrast these…
August 10, 1792 · 10 August 1792
This print shows the attack on the Tuileries Palace, which housed the royal family. Although the place was well–defended, many troops simply defected. When the artillery quit, the King and his family…
1792 · Siege of the Tuileries
This hand–tinted engraving depicts the storming of the Tuileries Palace by what appear to be small groups of well–organized soldiers of the Marseilles National Guard. The positive image of the…
August 11, 1792 · The Legislative Assembly elects an Executive Council of six ministers to oversee the national election of representatives to the Convention. The Assembly also authorizes the arrest throughout France of suspected enemies of the Revolution. Royalist newspapers are prohibited.
August 13, 1792 · The royal family is imprisoned.
August 14, 1792 · Distribution of communal land except for forest land. Sale of émigrés’ properties.
August 15, 1792 · In the West of France, Jean Cottereau, known as Jean Chouan, declares for the King and resists a call for volunteers. The revolt of the Chouans, to be connected to a larger revolt in the West against the Republic, begins.
August 19, 1792 · Defection of Lafayette. Lafayette deserts the army and flees to Austria. General Dumouriez takes command of the Armies of the North. Prussian armies, including French émigrés, invade France.
September 2, 1792 · The September Massacres continue through 7 September.
1792-09-02 · September 2 and 3, 1792
September 3, 1792 · The September Massacres
In late summer 1792, news reached Paris that the Prussian army had invaded France and was advancing quickly toward the capital. Moreover, rumors circulated that the Prussians would find ready support…
September 3, 1792 · A British Observer of the September Massacres
A British diplomat in Paris here describes, in dispatches back to London, the goings–on in Paris in early September, in light of news of advances by the Duke of Brunswick’s Prussian forces toward the…
September 20, 1792 · Legislature legalizes divorce.
September 20, 1792 · The French Army defeats the Prussians at Valmy. Goethe witnessed this battle and said of it: "On this day begins a new era in the history of the world."Last session of the Legislative Assembly.
September 22, 1792 · Republic proclaimed.
September 28, 1792 · Georges Danton, one of the most influential of the revolutionary orators, declares at the Convention that the French Revolution is a revolution against all kings.
November 6, 1792 · French victory at Jemappes against Austria.
1792 · French Victory at the Battle of Jemmappes
This engraving first appeared in the newspaper Révolutions de Paris and shows the French General Charles–François Dumouriez entering the city of Mons after having led French forces to their first…
November 13, 1792 · Saint–Just (13 November 1792)
The first debate over the fate of Louis XVI concerned whether the Convention could try the King at all, and if so, for what crimes. The Constitution of 1791 had promised Louis "inviolability," meaning…
November 19, 1792 · The Convention declares its willingness to help all subjected peoples achieve their liberty.
November 21, 1792 · Paine (21 November 1792)
An Englishman acclaimed as a hero of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine had been elected to the Convention by radicals in Paris. However, his international perspective and Anglo–American background…
December 1, 1792 · Jacques Roux, a radical leader, makes one of several speeches in radical "sections" of Paris. Roux will become the leader of the Enragés, who demanded that the "aristocracy of the rich" as unfavorably as the nobility who had been stripped of their privileges in 1789. Jacques Roux and the Enragés would be attacked by the Girondists and the Jacobins, who both defended a central principle of the French Revolution, the right of property.
December 3, 1792 · Condorcet (3 December 1792)
Jean–Antoine Nicolas Condorcet, formerly a marquis, circulated a pamphlet that was a Girondin response to Saint–Just. Although he too endorsed a trial of the King, he emphasized the necessity of…
December 3, 1792 · Marat (3 December 1792)
As a journalist, Marat had for the first few years of the Revolution supported the monarchy as an institution. Yet he opposed Louis personally; in this text, published in his newspaper, Journal of the…
December 3, 1792 · Robespierre (3 December 1792)
Maximillien Robespierre, a leading Jacobin deputy in the Convention, had originally opposed the trial, believing that to try the King was to imply the possibility of his innocence. Nevertheless, once…
December 6, 1792 · Critics of Robespierre
The passage below, excerpted from the newspaper the French Patriot of 6 December 1792, is hostile to Robespierre. It suggests Robespierre’s appreciation for the importance of political symbolism, in…
December 10, 1792 · Opening of Louis XVI’s trial by the National Convention.
December 12, 1792 · A Positive American View
Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson on Benjamin Franklin, was a supporter of Jefferson’s Republican Party. His sympathetically summarized the situation in France during the period when Louis XVI was put…
December 21, 1792 · Members in the English House of Commons urge taking up of arms against France to protect Louis XVI from the Convention.
1792 · French Liberty. British Slavery. Published December 21, 1792.
December 27, 1792 · Saint–Just’s Speech on the King’s Fate (27 December 1792)
By late December, the Convention was in the process of trying the King. Louis agreed to testify in his own defense. He justified the decisions of 1789–91 by pointing out that he had still been King…
December 28, 1792 · Robespierre’s Second Speech (28 December 1792)
As part of his defense, Louis’s lawyers had suggested the King should be judged not by the representatives of the people in the Convention but by the people themselves through a referendum. The…
1793 · Patriotic Song on the Unveiling of the Busts of Marat and Le Pelletier (1793)
This song illustrates the fluid boundary between "high" and "popular" musical forms. Althought these lyrics were set to a new composition by Joseph Gossec, they could also be sung to a tune already…
1793 · Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from the Constitution of the Year I (1793)
The National Convention drew up this new declaration of rights to attach to the republican constitution of 1793. The constitution was ratified in a referendum, but never put into operation. It was…
1793-00-00 · Provincial Painting—Minatures
Surrounded by her children, this woman represents conventionality and respectability.
1793-1794 · Madame Sans–Culotte
Emerging from urban revolutionary politics was a workers’ movement called the sans–culottes, a reference to the attire of male artisans. Unlike their wealthier compatriots, they did not wear knee…
1793 · Louis XVI, King of France
Another old regime vision of monarchy.
1793 · The Blood of the Murdered Crying for Vengeance
Yet another English image promising that the death of Louis will bring havoc on the Revolution. This engraving indicates that the very blood of the King requires vengeance.
1793 · Noble Act of 500,000 Republicans
The revolutionary wars, which would continue in one form or another until Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, were different from other conflicts in early modern Europe. In this struggle that emerged in 1792,…
1793 · Day of 10 August 1792
This engraving gives a ground–eye view of the action; far from an orderly operation, the "day" appears chaotic and menacing, as the inspired people face what appear to be cannons being fired by royal…
1793-1795 · Arrest of Louis Capet at Varennes, June 22, 1791
This print shows an angry crowd of fervent revolutionaries breaking down doors to arrest the King.
1793-1794 · The Good Sans–Culotte
Male and female sans–culottes were supposed to embody frugality, thrift, hard work, and, above all, honest devotion—whether to pets, the nation, or fellow comrades.
1793 · The Republic
Under the monarchy, the king was the country’s symbolic center. Removing him and establishing a republic made necessary not only a new constitution but also a new set of symbols. Here the…
1793-1794 · An Example of Heroic Courage
In this rendition of an incident from the Vendée rebellion, an ordinary woman is shown standing up to the rebels. It comes from a series of heroic images of the Revolution and shows that women could…
1793 · Louis Arrives in Hell
In classical mythology, the journey to Hell involved crossing the river Styx. Revolutionary cartoonists often invoked this image when describing the fate of their enemies. This is no exception. See…
1793 · Allegory of Truth
Female revolutionary figures stood for all kinds of qualities and virtues, in this case, "Truth." Women figures appeared so prominently in paintings and engravings because French nouns for the…
1793 · Hell Broke Loose, or, The Murder of Louis
In this English image, as the King’s head is about to fall into the executioner’s basket, bats out of Hell emerge, symbolizing the Revolution. At the same time, God’s favor seems to fall on Louis…
1793 · Wallpaper: Unity, Indivisibility
1793 · The Contrast, 1793 British Liberty/French Liberty
In this color print from 1793, the height of the Terror, two circular drawings appear next to each other, contrasting two types of liberty. English liberty exists, as the figure suggests, but based on…
1793 · Tyranny Tremble
A very potent image associating the revolutionary war with an attack on tyrants. Contemporaries would have understood the target, "tyrants," to be the monarchs.
1793 · A Democrat, or Reason and Philosophy
This cartoon by the popular British caricaturist James Gillray depicts the British politician Charles James Fox as a sans–culotte. Wearing a cockade in his wig and a bandage on his forehead, the…
1793-1794 · Liberty
Even before the Revolution, the French had used a woman in a toga to symbolize liberty. By July 1789 this symbol had become quite common and would only grow more familiar over the revolutionary…
1793-1794 · Equality
At the beginning of the Revolution, the term "equality" meant an end to the legal differences that had characterized the Old Regime. For example, all individuals would be subject to the same regimen…
1793-1794 · Fraternity
Using a woman to represent "Fraternity" seems ironic at best, although theoretically the term might mean the community of humanity. In actuality, when the revolutionaries considered "community," they…
1793-1794 · Reason
To contemporaries who subscribed to the Enlightenment, the term "reason" was to be contrasted to superstition. Even though Christians, too, believed in reason, they also wanted to make room for the…
January 3, 1793 · Thomas Jefferson on the French Revolution
Although deeply sympathetic to the French in general and the revolutionary cause in particular, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) deplored the excesses of violence that took place even before the…
January 16, 1793 · Death sentence for Louis XVI.
January 20, 1793 · Louis XVI and His Family (20 January 1793)
Not shown in this or other scenes here is the fact that between the King’s two visits he ate a last meal. At this time he was denied, as was custom, a knife to avoid suicide. Louis was angered that…
January 21, 1793 · Execution of Louis XVI.
January 21, 1793 · Execution of the King (21 January 1793)
After voting unanimously to find the King guilty, the deputies held a separate vote on his punishment. By a single vote, Louis was sentenced to death, "within twenty–four hours." Thus, on 21 January…
January 21, 1793 · Son of Saint–Louis Going Up to Heaven . . .
Many scholars would argue that Louis XVI’s finest moment came from his bravery at his execution. Even when he was forbidden from saying a last few words to those gathered to see him executed, he…
January 21, 1793 · A Positive View?
This composition of the scene, in which a helpless Louis seems to be looking upward to heaven with his confessor, communicates humility. The executioners are relatively passive, leaving the King and…
1794 · The Execution of Louis XVI
1793 · The Tragic End of Louis XVI
As 80,000 crowded into the square to watch the execution of Louis XVI, they cannot have been unaware that the guillotine sat where a statue of Louis XV had been. Here Sanson, the executioner, snatches…
February 1793 · Attacks on shops and food riots occur during a time of great scarcity. Continue through March.
February 1, 1793 · The Convention declares war on Great Britain and the Netherlands.
February 21, 1793 · Food riots in Paris.
February 24, 1793 · Decree conscripting 300,000 men.
February 24, 1793 · A Deputation of Women Citizens Demands Action on Food Prices (24 February 1793)
In the rioting over prices of February 1793, women appealed first to the authorities, showing that they intended to communicate directly with their representatives in the municipal government of…
February 24, 1793 · Police Reports on Disturbances over Food Supplies (February 1793)
The reports of the Paris police provide firsthand information about conditions in the city and about the leading role of women in food disturbances.
February 24, 1793 · Regulations of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women (9 July 1793)
The regulations demonstrate that women wanted to be taken seriously as political participants; they wanted their club to be like the clubs set up by men.
March 1793 · Royalist and Catholic revolt begins in the Vendée and elsewhere in western France.
March 7, 1793 · The Convention declares war on Spain.
March 9, 1793 · A revolt attempted by the Enragés in Paris fails.
March 10, 1793 · Revolutionary Tribunal created.
March 18, 1793 · Austrian victory at Neerwinden.
March 21, 1793 · Revolutionary Armies decreed; committees of surveillance are created in each commune. They are charged with investigating those suspected of being enemies or traitors to the nation.
April 1793 · Marat’s Impeachment
A leading voice on behalf of greater popular participation and for social policies that would benefit the poor, the journalist Jean–Paul Marat used his radical newspaper The Friend of the People to…
April 1793 · Guyomar, "The Partisan of Political Equality between Individuals" (April 1793)
Pierre Guyomar wrote the pamphlet excerpted here during the war–torn and hungry spring of 1793, at the height of popular political mobilization that restated arguments made by Condorcet three years…
April 5, 1793 · General Dumouriez, the hero of Valmy, deserts to the Austrians. After several important defeats, General Dumouriez had proclaimed the Convention primarily responsible for them. Like Lafayette before him, Dumouriez had also attempted to urge his army to march with him upon Paris, where he would dissolve the Convention, but the army refused. After being summoned to Paris, Dumouriez flees to the enemy. This treason would bring in its path great suspicion of his allies in the Convention, the Girondins.
April 6, 1793 · Committee of Public Safety created by the Convention, attempting to deal with the radical movements of the Enragés, food shortages and riots, the revolt in the Vendée and in Brittany, recent defeats of its armies, and the desertion of its commanding general. This committee is charged with carrying out a policy of "terrorizing" all of France’s enemies within and without.
April 21, 1793 · Robespierre, at the Jacobin Club, proposes a new version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
April 23, 1793 · Marat is arrested but almost immediately liberated by the Revolutionary Tribunal, an event which further intensifies the antagonism between the Girondins and Jacobins.
April 29, 1793 · "Federalist" uprising begins.
April 29, 1793 · Discussion of Citizenship under the Proposed New Constitution (29 April 1793)
In the discussion of a new constitution in April 1793, Jean–Denis Lanjuinais spoke for the constitutional committee. He admitted that the question of women’s rights had aroused controversy.
May 4, 1793 · First Maximum decreed.
May 19, 1793 · Women at the Cordeliers
Popular clubs in Paris, unlike electoral assemblies, were not limited to men, at least in the early months of the Republic. One of the most active and radical clubs composed entirely of women, the…
May 31, 1793 · Uprising against the Girondins begins when sans–culottes demonstrate against the Girondin faction in the National Convention.
May 31, 1793 · Prudhomme’s Description of the Coup against the Girondins (31 May–2 June 1793)
Throughout the spring of 1793, radicals in the Convention, in the Paris Commune, and in the sections struggled for power against Jean–Pierre Brissot and his allies, known as the "Girondins." They…
June 1793 · Expulsion of the Girondins
Throughout the spring of 1793, radicals in the Convention, in the Paris Commune, and in the sections struggled for power against Brissot and his allies, known as the "Girondins." They differed over…
June 2, 1793 · A second demonstration against the National Convention as an institution.
June 10, 1793 · "Constitution of 1793"
The primary task of the Convention, when seated in the fall of 1792, had been to draft a new, republican constitution. Only after the purge of the Girondins, however, did the Convention complete this…
June 24, 1793 · Constitution of 1793 is accepted by the Convention to be voted on in a national referendum.
June 25, 1793 · Manifesto of the Enragés
Jacques Roux, a former priest turned radical revolutionary, became the leading voice for a group known as the "Enraged," because they expressed constant anger at the unfairness shown toward the…
July 13, 1793 · Charlotte Corday assassinates Marat.
1793 · Assassination of J. P. Marat
An arrested Corday is hustled out of the door, while the inquest begins. The expired Marat, ghastly pale, looks much more realistic than in the David rendition of his death. Also, the bath in the…
1793 · Assassination of Marat
This engraving, like the preceeding image, portrays Marat’s assassination at the hands of Corday. In both images, Marat appears serene, a reminder that Marat’s supporters saw him as a Christ…
1793-1794 · In Memory of Marat, Friend of the People, Assassinated 13 July, 1793
A leading voice on behalf of greater popular participation and social policies that would benefit the poor, the journalist Jean–Paul Marat used his radical newspaper the Friend of the People to…
1793-1794 · Bust of Marat
After Marat’s death, his defenders glamorized him, forgetting both his physical deformities and his vitriolic calls for more and more heads. One common approach was to give him secular sainthood (a…
1793-07-14 · The Death of Marat
This famous depiction of Marat’s assassination (1793) is by the unofficial (and sometimes official) artist of the French Revolution, Jacques–Louis David, a leading exponent of the neoclassical style.…
July 14, 1793 · The Assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday
In the fall of 1793, the radical journalist was confined to his bathtub by a paralyzing skin disease he had contracted while hiding from the police in the sewers. He nevertheless continued to pour out…
1793 · A Second Jean d'Arc, or the Assassination of Marat by Charlotte Cordé of Caen in Normandy on Sunday July 14 1793
To those who considered Marat insincere and dangerous in his unrelenting populism, the true martyr was Charlotte Corday, who had come to Paris from Caen—a city then serving as a base for the…
July 17, 1793 · The Pennsylvania Gazette: White Refugees (17 July 1793)
Many American cities met the emergency needs of an influx of white refugees who fled the uprising.
July 26, 1793 · Decree against Profiteers
In July 1793, faced with a restive populace angered by continuing shortages of food in Paris, the Convention followed the lead of the sections in blaming the high price of bread on "profiteers" in the…
August 1793 · Agents in Saint Domingue abolish slavery.
August 1, 1793 · Adoption of the metric system.
August 4, 1793 · The Constitution is ratified by 1,880,000 votes to 17,000.
1793-08-10 · Song of the Marseillaise of the Federation of 10 August, Year II
One of many hymns that was composed by rhyming new lyrics to the wildly popular tune of the "Marseillaise," this song was performed at a festival celebrating the first anniversary of the republican…
August 23, 1793 · Decree of levée en masse (universal obligation to national service).
August 25, 1793 · The Vendée—Description of the Counterrevolution
The first groups of "brigands" formed in the west in mid–1792, in response most immediately to the call to all citizens to volunteer for the army. In this letter, a local government official,…
September 1793 · Revolutionary Armies in the Provinces: Toulouse (September 1793)
At the demand of patriots in Paris and the provinces, the National Convention sent irregular units to the countryside and to cities where resistance to the Revolution had appeared. In this report from…
September 1793 · Citoyenne Lacombe’s "Report to the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women Concerning What Took Place 16 September at the Jacobin Club"
Claire Lacombe, an actress and one of the leaders of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, published a pamphlet to counter charges made against her and the club. By September 1793 the…
September 5, 1793 · Parisian insurrection secures further radicalization of the war–effort by the Convention; "terror" is henceforth the order of the day.
September 5, 1793 · "Terror Is the Order of the Day"
Responding to pressure from the sections, the Convention voted on 5 September 1793, to declare that "Terror is the Order of the Day," meaning that the government, through internal "revolutionary…
September 8, 1793 · French victory at Hondschoote over an English–Hanoverian army.
September 17, 1793 · Passage of the Law of Suspects.
September 17, 1793 · The Law of Suspects
This law, passed on 17 September 1793, authorized the creation of revolutionary tribunals to try those suspected of treason against the Republic and to punish those convicted with death. This…
September 21, 1793 · All women are required by the Convention to wear the tricolored ribbon, insignia of the Republic.
September 29, 1793 · General Maximum introduced.
September 29, 1793 · The Maximum
In September 1793 the Convention furthered its role as the guarantor of the basic right to subsistence of all citizens by instituting price maximums on all essential consumer goods, especially…
October 1793 · The Calendar
A reformed calendar was a goal of the revolutionaries who sought to remake not only the political system and the social order, but also the very experience of life. To rid the calendar of the malign…
October 5, 1793 · Introduction of the revolutionary calendar.
October 14, 1793 · The Queen’s Defense (14 October 1793)
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…
October 16, 1793 · Marie Antoinette is guillotined.
October 16, 1793 · French victory at Wattignies against Austria.
October 16, 1793 · Execution of the Queen (16 October 1793)
At the conclusion of the trial, the Queen was found guilty and sentenced to death. The newspaper of record, The Moniteur describes the Queen’s response to the verdict and her execution the next…
October 16, 1793 · Execution of the Queen (16 October 1793)
At the conclusion of her trial, the Queen was found guilty and sentenced to death. The newspaper of record, the Moniteur, reports the Queen’s response to the verdict and her execution the next morning…
1794 · Execution of Marie Antoinette (16 October 1793) at the Place de la Révolution
This postcard in English and French does show the broader scene at the execution of the Queen. Before the guillotine stands Marie Antoinette with Sanson, the same executioner who had dispatched her…
October 29, 1793 · Discussion of Women’s Political Clubs and Their Suppression, 29–30 October 1793
On 29 October 1793, a group of women appeared in the National Convention to complain that female militants had tried to force them to wear the red cap of liberty as a sign of their adherence to the…
October 29, 1793 · Discussion of Women’s Political Clubs and Their Suppression, October 29–30, 1793
On 29 October 1793, a group of women appeared in the National Convention to complain that women militants had tried to force them to wear the red cap of liberty as a sign of their adherence to the…
October 29, 1793 · Discussion of Women’s Political Clubs—Amar
In a follow–up to Fabre d’Eglantine’s speech on 29 October, Jean–Baptiste Amar proposed an official decree on 3 October forbidding women to join together in political associations. A deputy tried to…
October 30, 1793 · Women’s clubs suppressed.
October 31, 1793 · A number of Girondins are executed. Others had fled to the provinces.
November 10, 1793 · Festival of Reason in Notre–Dame.
November 17, 1793 · Chaumette, Speech at City Hall Denouncing Women’s Political Activism (17 November 1793)
When a group of women appeared at City Hall wearing red liberty caps, Pierre–Gaspard Chaumette denounced them and all political activism by women. He held out the examples of Madame Roland and Olympe…
November 22, 1793 · The first churches are closed in and around Paris following earlier efforts in the provinces.
December 1793 · One hundred livres–assignats worth forty–eight livres in metal currency.
December 4, 1793 · Law of 14 Frimaire on Revolutionary Government enacted. Institutes formally revolutionary government.
December 4, 1793 · The Pennsylvania Gazette: Free blacks and mulattos flee (4 December 1793)
Free blacks and mulattos also fled the uprising. Mulattos could own slaves and plantations, and many of them did. Free blacks often manned the militias used to hunt down runaway slaves. Like the white…
December 5, 1793 · Camille Desmoulins publishes the first issue of Le Vieux Cordelier. He favors the ideas of Danton, urging peace negotiations with foreign powers and an end to the official Terror.
December 12, 1793 · Although it continues sporadically, the important revolt in the Vendée is repressed.
December 15, 1793 · Revolution Devours Its Own—Le Vieux Cordelier
Despite the consolidation of power in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety and the creation of Revolutionary Tribunals across France to eliminate traitors to the Republic, the Convention…
December 25, 1793 · Robespierre delivers an important report on the principles of revolutionary government, which he describes as a necessary and provisional form of war against the enemies of liberty, to be distinguished from constitutional government, which conserves and protects liberty once firmly and peacefully established.
1794 · Père Duchesne Idealizes the Sans–culottes
The sans–culotte [without the breeches of the wealthy] became the symbol of the committed, patriotic revolutionary everyman. This newspaper article describes the ideal sans–culotte, emphasizing his…
1794 · The Père Duchesne Supports the Terror
The radical journalist Jacques–René Hébert here calls on the sans–culottes of Paris to rise against their enemies in the capital, that is, those who block the work of the sections and revolutionary…
1794 · Dismantling the Terror: Parliamentarianism Reasserted
In condemning Robespierre on 9 Thermidor, the Convention deputies did not necessarily intend to end the Terror as much as prevent Robespierre and his followers from turning it on them. Yet in the…
1794 · The Convention Is Weak
The coup of Thermidor did not lead immediately to the dissolution of the Committee of Public Safety (CPS), although much of its power was quickly transferred to other committees, especially the…
1794 · Puisaye to the Central Catholic Committee
The fall of Robespierre and the Mountain in the summer of 1794 also reinvigorated counterrevolutionary forces, especially those hoping to restore royal authority in the person of the son of the…
1794 · Alexander Hamilton on the French Revolution
Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804) represented the Federalist Party perspective on events in France. He, and they, supported the moderate phase of the Revolution, which they understood to be about…
1794 · Republican Calendar
1794-1820 · Speech in the Garden of the Palais–Royal
In this artistic rendition, on 12 July 1789 Camille Desmoulins stands on a table and encourages his listeners to rise against the threat to the Estates–General. He, and others of his ilk, would be…
1794-1795 · President of a Revolutionary Committee After the Seal Is Taken Off
Critics of popular action first mastered the art of searing attacks and here sharpen their propaganda skills against this activist worker, who appears to be walking off with his "loot" after the locks…
1794 · Parisian Fishwives
1794 · Last Meeting of Louis XVI with His Family at the Temple Prison
Another version of the final meeting of the King with his family. To the left is his confessor; the figure to the right is most likely Cléry, the King’s valet.
1794-1796 · Execution of Louis XVI, January 21, 1793, 10:22 in the morning
This image shows much the same scene on the platform as the preceding one, but the surroundings are much more in evidence. Visible here are the troops. Eight to nine thousand were mobilized to avoid…
1794-1795 · President of a Revolutionary Committee Distracting Himself with His Art While Waiting
The shoemaker shown here is president of his neighborhood revolutionary committee. Although this engraving does not portray a specific political activity, the character evokes hostility toward…
1794 · Act of Justice
Here Robespierre’s death is depicted as divine retribution, as in a classical myth. Numerous heads, presumably of those who had perished at the guillotine, watch two male figures (bearing a strong…
1794 · Louis’s Separation from His Family
After hearing the verdict, the King was allowed a final evening with his family, whom he had not seen for almost a month during the trial. Twice on the evening of 20 January the King met with his…
1794 · View of the Mound of Champ de la Reunion on the Festival That Was Celebrated in Honor of the Supreme Being
In this watercolor of the Festival of the Supreme Being, we see a procession that includes a woman wearing a Phrygian cap paraded past a statue of Hercules holding two smaller statues of Liberty and…
1794 · Army of Jugs
This color drawing, produced in 1793 at the request of the Committee of Public Safety and then published as an engraving, caricatures the British army and its king, George III, as incompetent, who,…
January 1794 · Summoning to Execution
One of the most fearful parts of the Terror was its unpredictability. Many were swept up in suspicion, including unexpected, even nighttime arrests. As reality and imagination merged, this fear of the…
February 4, 1794 · Decree of the National Convention abolishes slavery in all colonies.
February 4, 1794 · Decree of the National Convention of 4 February 1794, Abolishing Slavery in all the Colonies
News traveled slowly from the colonies back to France, and the first word of the emancipations in Saint Domingue aroused suspicion if not outright hostility in the National Convention. Many of the…
February 5, 1794 · Robespierre reports on the principles of political morality that should be respected by the Convention, in which he declares that the revolutionary government is based on both virtue and terror ". . . virtue without which terror is evil, terror without which virtue is powerless"
February 21, 1794 · How a Mother Survives
Madame Ducroquet wrote to her son in the spring of 1794 about the continuing shortage of food. She expressed her worries upon reading that someone with the same name had been arrested; in fact, it was…
February 26, 1794 · The Laws of Ventôse enacted; they authorize the seizure and redistribution of all property belonging to those suspected of working against the Republic.
March 1794 · Waves of dechristianization continue through April.
March 13, 1794 · Arrest of the Hébertists.
March 16, 1794 · Police Report on a Session of the Cordeliers
In the passage below, a police observer of a Cordelier Club meeting notes the ongoing concern of the participants to identify and then to denounce "conspiracies" against the republic, even when the…
March 21, 1794 · Opening of the trial of the Hébertists.
March 24, 1794 · Execution of the Hébertists.
March 29, 1794 · The arrest of Danton and the Dantonists ordered by the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security.
April 2, 1794 · Trial of the Dantonists.
April 5, 1794 · Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and other Dantonists are guillotined.
May 18, 1794 · French victory of Tourcoing over British who, from this point on seek to avoid facing French forces on land.
June 1, 1794 · British naval victory, the "Glorious First of June," establishes British control of the seas.
June 4, 1794 · The Abbé Grégoire submits his report on the necessity of eliminating regional dialects and patois in order to establish French as the national language.
June 8, 1794 · Festival of the Supreme Being.
June 8, 1794 · Religion: The Cult of the Supreme Being
Adapting the established strategy of staging public pageantry to win support for a political cause, Robespierre organized a "Festival of the Supreme Being" in the summer of 1794. Having recently…
1794 · Festival of Supreme Being
These depictions show the Festival of the Supreme Being, a massive pageant staged by Jacques–Louis David on 8 June 1794, in open air on the "Field of Reunion," formerly the royal army’s parade ground.…
June 10, 1794 · The Law of 22 Prairial. Judicial procedures are accelerated in all accusations against enemies of the revolution. The Terror is re–enforced. Two–thirds of all executions by the Revolutionary Tribunal take place after this point.
June 10, 1794 · Debate on the Law of 22 Prairial
Many in the Convention, including some on the Committee of Public Safety, opposed the proposed law, which they feared concentrated too much power in too few hands and would only further destabilize…
June 10, 1794 · The Law of 22 Prairial Year II (10 June 1794)
Although the most immediate threats to the security of the Republic—foreign invasion, the civil war in the Vendée, the Federalist uprisings, the grain shortage in Paris, and hyperinflation—had abated…
June 26, 1794 · French victory at Fleurus against Austria ends the threat of invasion.
July 26, 1794 · The Eighth of Thermidor
By the summer of 1794, Revolutionary Tribunals had tried over 200,000 suspects, of whom approximately 20,000 had been convicted of treasonous behavior and sent to the guillotine. Moreover, the work of…
July 27, 1794 · Fall of Robespierre, 9 Thermidor Year II.
July 27, 1794 · The Ninth of Thermidor
Having carried the day in the Jacobin Club, Robespierre rose to speak the next day in the Convention, where he attacked members of the Committee of Public Safety and Committee of General Security,…
July 27, 1794 · 9 Thermidor: The Conspiracy against Robespierre
This account of the proceedings in the Convention Hall on the 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794) describes how Robespierre and Saint–Just, facing an organized attack by other members of the Committee…
July 27, 1794 · Execution of Robespierre
Having carried the day in the Jacobin Club, Robespierre rose to speak the next day in the Convention, where he attacked members of the Committee of Public Safety and Committee of General Security,…
July 29, 1794 · The Eleventh of Thermidor
During the night of the 9th and 10th, with the outcome in doubt, deputies opposing Robespierre went to speak in the sections, hoping to convince the activists of the rightness of their cause. Whether…
August 1, 1794 · Law of 22 Prairial repealed.
August 5, 1794 · Release of large numbers of prisoners begins.
September 11, 1794 · An Ordinary Woman Faces Prison for her Comments
This petition from the wife of a wigmaker in Paris demonstrates both the volatility of the political situation (she went to jail for badmouthing a local official while standing in line at a food…
September 18, 1794 · A separation of Church and State is effected with the decree of the Convention that it will no longer pay salaries or expenses of the Church.
October 5, 1794 · Gracchus Babeuf publishes the first issue of his newspaper, Le tribun du peuple, devoted to explaining the principles of an ideal agrarian communist society.
October 10, 1794 · One hundred livres–assignats are worth twenty livres in metal currency.
November 2, 1794 · The Trial of Olympe de Gouges
The case against Olympe de Gouges is worth reading in detail because it is typical of the attacks on those who criticized the authority of the central government that gathered force in the fall of…
November 12, 1794 · Jacobin Club closed.
November 12, 1794 · The Gilded Youth
Across France, the period of the Directory witnessed revenge against those who had carried out revolutionary justice during the Terror. Opponents of the Jacobins forced them from office and sought to…
November 17, 1794 · Primary Schools
During the period of revolutionary government, the Jacobins had introduced the idea of universal, free, secular education provided by the state. The Jacobins conceived of education not only as a means…
November 19, 1794 · The American and British governments sign a treaty in London agreeing to blockade French shores, despite a treaty of Franco–American alliance signed in 1778.
December 8, 1794 · Surviving Girondins are reinstated.
December 24, 1794 · Abolition of the Maximum.
1795 · Declaration of Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen, Constitution of the Year III (1795)
After the fall of Robespierre and the dismantling of the Terror, the National Convention drafted yet another republican constitution. The new constitution was also approved in a referendum and put…
1795 · Constitution of the Year III (1795)
By mid–1795, dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, particularly the extra–constitutional nature of the government, had become widespread. The Left demanded "bread and the Constitution of…
1795 · "Letter to Fréron: Émigrés Return" by Thérèse Bouisson
Once in power, the Directorial government appeared poised to preserve the gains of the Revolution while undoing what some considered the excesses of the period of Jacobin ascendancy. Yet precisely…
1795 · Police Reports on Women’s Discontent (Spring 1795)
Agitation over the shortage of bread reached a breaking point in the spring of 1795. Women played critical roles in these disturbances, as they had before the Revolution.
1795 · Costumes of the Council of Five Hundred
In this bicameral legislature, the smaller of the two councils (the Elders with 250 members) had to pass all the legislation, while the Five Hundred could initiate legislation. The revolutionaries…
1795-01-00 · The Alarm of the People
Composed by J.M. Souriguieres, a parisian dramatist, and Pierre Gaveaux, an actor, this song demands revenge for the crimes and bloodshed of the Terror. It was quickly adopted as an anthem by the…
February 21, 1795 · Freedom of worship officially restored: Separation of Church and State and freedom of religion are decreed.
March 21, 1795 · It is decided that the Constitution of 1793, the most liberal of all the revolutionary constitutions, will be set aside. A committee is charged with drafting a new constitution. The chief prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal is tried. Conviction and execution follows.
March 28, 1795 · Fouquier–Tinville, the chief prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal, is tried. Conviction and execution follow swiftly.
April 1795 · Culture: Weights and Measures
Among its many lasting contributions to French and western history, the French Revolution initiated the metric system as a more rational and universally applicable way of conveying weights and…
April 1, 1795 · Sans–culotte insurrection of 12 Germinal against the Convention, demanding bread and the Constitution of 1793.
April 2, 1795 · General Pichegru suppresses the Germinal uprising.
April 24, 1795 · The so–called White Terror had been developing throughout April, since the first decree on April 10 calling for the disarming of all "terrorists," or supporters of Robespierre. In Lyons, many Jacobin prisoners are massacred. Many murders of former terrorists by royalists continue through June.
May 1795 · Military Suppression of Prairial
The Prairial insurrection of Year III (May 1795) would prove to be among the last major episodes of popular activism during the Revolution, due in part to the Convention’s forceful use of National…
May 16, 1795 · Treaty of The Hague, peace with the Netherlands and Prussia.
May 20, 1795 · Uprising of Prairial (to May 23): Riots in the sections of Paris. The Convention is also invaded by demonstrators calling for bread and the enforcement of the Constitution of 1793. The army puts down these insurrections.
May 20, 1795 · Women’s Activities during the Prairial Uprising
Popular radical activity continued throughout the period of the Terror (see Chapter 7) and did not end with 9 Thermidor. On 1–4 Prairial, Year III (20–23 May 1795), a large group composed largely of…
May 23, 1795 · Disarmament of Paris sections by the army.
May 29, 1795 · Denunciation of a Woman Participant in the Uprising of May 1795
Once the uprising of May 1795 had been suppressed, the government set up a military tribunal, which gathered denunciations of presumed rioters. This one gives a good sense of the charges made and the…
June 1795 · Interrogation of a Suspected Rioter (June 1795)
The police interrogated those accused of participating in the May 1795 riots. This interrogation gives a good idea of the police’s concerns.
June 8, 1795 · Louis XVII, son of Louis XVI and heir to the throne, dies in the Temple. The declaration of Verona put punishment of the regicides and reestablishment of the orders of society on the agenda for the Bourbon’s return.
June 23, 1795 · A new Constitution is reported on by Boissy d’Anglas. It is accompanied by the assertion that those most worthy of governing are those who own property.
June 26, 1795 · The Chouans join 4,000 émigrés landed at Quiberon on the shores of Brittany by an English fleet. Defeated by General Hoche on July 21st.
July 1795 · One hundred livres–assignats worth eight livres in metal currency.
July 8, 1795 · Louis XVIII to Charette
The "Central Committee" organizing royalist efforts in 1795 was led by François–Athanése de Charette de la Contrie, a former nobleman. He had participated in the Vendéan uprising in 1793, with the…
July 22, 1795 · Peace Treaty of Basel concluded with Spain.
1795-07-27 · Hymn of 9 Thermidor
This hymn commemorates the overthrow of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety by the men of the National Convention. It had its debut performance on the first anniversary of that event (27…
August 22, 1795 · Constitution of the Year III and Two Thirds Law approved.
September 23, 1795 · Proclamation of the Constitution of Year III.
October 1795 · One hundred livres–assignats worth only 1.4 livres in metal currency.
October 1, 1795 · Annexation of Belgium. It is incorporated into the Republic as eight new departments. In 1799 the German west bank of the Rhine is incorporated as four new departments.
October 5, 1795 · Uprising of Vendémiaire: Napoleon is instrumental in putting down a royalist revolt in Paris.
October 5, 1795 · Bonaparte Saves the Day
In the waning days of the Convention in the fall of 1795, royalist–influenced sections in Paris revolted to prevent a new constitution that protected the position of the radicals. Bonaparte was…
October 5, 1795 · Revival of the Mountain
The Directory’s constitution had ensured the rights of assembly, free speech, and a limited suffrage; for former Jacobins now deprived of their clubs and of their power in the legislature, these…
October 16, 1795 · Bonaparte appointed major–general.
October 21, 1795 · Elections to the legislative Councils.
October 26, 1795 · Napoleon is named commander–in–chief of all armies within the boundaries of France.
October 31, 1795 · Election of the Directors.
November 3, 1795 · The Directory begins, 1795–1799, created by Constitution of the Year III.
1796 · Diary of a Woman at Fifty
Born in 1770 and married to the only surviving son of one of the greatest noble families in France, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin endured humiliation, emigration, and Terror during the first part of…
1796 · Day of 1 Prairial of the Year III
Men and women threaten the deputies on 20 May 1795. They demand "Bread and the Constitution of 1793." This day marked one of the last interventions of ordinary women into national politics.
1796 · Louis XVI Stopt [sic] in his Flight at Varennes
This romantic English painting of the King’s flight suggests only a few feet separated the King from escape.
1796 · The Fountain of Regeneration
In this engraving of the Festival of Reunion or Unity of 10 August 1793, a female statue of Nature in the form of the Egyptian goddess Isis represents the regeneration of the French people. It sits on…
February 18, 1796 · Ceremonial destruction of plates used for printing assignats.
March 2, 1796 · Napoleon is named commander–in–chief of all French forces in Italy.
March 9, 1796 · Bonaparte marries Joséphine Beauharnais.
March 27, 1796 · Napoleon begins to prepare his own Italian campaign.
March 29, 1796 · Royal leader Charette executed.
March 30, 1796 · The alleged Conspiracy of the Equals organized by Gracchus Babeuf. The goal is a coup d’état and the end of the Directory in order to set a communist government in its place.
April 11, 1796 · Invasion of Italy.
April 12, 1796 · Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at Montenotte.
April 13, 1796 · Bonaparte defeats the Piedmontese at Millesimo.
April 15, 1796 · Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at Dego.
April 21, 1796 · Bonaparte defeats the Piedmontese at Mondovi.
May 10, 1796 · Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at Lodi.
May 10, 1796 · Babeuf is arrested and his Conspiracy of Equals is suppressed.
June 5, 1796 · Napoleon as an Ambitious Young General in 1796–97
In his memoirs, André François Miot de Melito, a special minister from the French government to Piedmont, tells of his first impressions of the young Napoleon Bonaparte, who was only twenty-seven but…
August 5, 1796 · French victory at Castiglione.
September 4, 1796 · Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at Roverdo.
September 8, 1796 · Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at Bassano.
September 28, 1796 · The Pennsylvania Gazette: Unrest Continues (28 September 1796)
Despite the abolition of slavery by the French, turbulence continued in many parts of the colony. The French relied on local generals, such as Toussaint L’Ouverture, to restore order.
1796 · Promised Horrors of the French Invasion or Forcible Reasons for Negotiation of a Regicide Peace. Vide, The Authority of Edmund Burke
This highly sophisticated political cartoon by the noted engraver James Gillray from October 1796 responds to Edmund Burke’s pamphlet, "Reflections on a Regicide Peace." This image argues against…
October 16, 1796 · Proclamation of the Cispadane Republic at Bologna.
November 15, 1796 · French victory at Arcola.
December 1796 · The Irish Expedition (Hoche’s expedition against the British Isles) fails. A storm destroys the French fleet before it could reach Ireland.
1797-00-00 · Funeral Hymn for General Hoche
This hymn was performed at the state funeral held in Paris for Lazare Hoche. Only twenty–nine when he died, Hoche was already famous for his daring military leadership against the Prussians in 1793…
1797 · Voodoo
Among the African rituals and customs described by Moreau de Saint–Méry, none terrified white planters more than the practice of voodoo. His description of the rituals associated with voodoo and the…
1797 · Germaine de Staël, a French Writer Exiled by Napoleon
De Staël was the daughter of Jacques Necker, Louis XVI’s Swiss Protestant finance minister. She published novels, literary tracts, and memoirs and became one of the best-known writers of the early…
1797 · Saint Domingue: Some Geography
Here Moreau de Saint–Méry describes the topography and peoples of the French part of the island, providing some important basic knowledge which he expands upon in subsequent passages.
1797 · Saint Domingue: The Freedmen
As many as two–thirds of the slaves in Saint Domingue in 1789 had been born in Africa, but by that time a significant number of Africans or children of Africans had become free. Here Moreau de…
1797 · That Seductive Mulatto Woman
Moreau de Saint–Méry painted a particularly negative portrait of mulatto women whom he considered to be voluptuaries and a threat to morals and decency.
1797 · The Maroons
In this passage, Moreau de Saint–Méry explains that runaways (Maroons) are and have always been a persistent problem in Saint Dominigue and details the tremendous efforts put into retrieving the…
1797 · The Slaves from Africa
The African born slaves brought with them their African rituals and customs, but the white planters also tried to get them to accept French manners and mores. Moreau de Saint–Méry had a great…
1797 · De Maistre, Considerations on France
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) defended the absolutist legacy and the close alliance of throne and altar. He thought the Revolution and the republic it created in the name of reason and individual…
1797 · Day of 13 Vendemaire of the Year 4
In the waning days of the Convention in the fall of 1795, royalist–influenced sections of Paris revolted to prevent the adoption of a new constitution that protected the position of the radicals.…
1797 · French Democrats surprizing the Royal Runaways.
1797 · Mea Culpa of the Pope
Although the revolutionaries long regarded the Pope as an enemy, their anger was stoked significantly by the papal decision to decree as unacceptable the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This…
January 14, 1797 · Bonaparte defeats Austria at Rivoli.
February 20, 1797 · Babeuf’s Trial
Long after sans–culotte influence on the government had waned, social conflicts continued to drive some revolutionary events. Throughout 1794 and 1795, urban and rural radicals alike demanded "bread…
March 1797 · Elections for new ’third’ in the legislative Councils begin.
April 18, 1797 · Elections of Year V.
May 12, 1797 · Democratic republic established by the Venetians.
May 15, 1797 · Venetian Republic occupied by France.
May 27, 1797 · Gracchus Babeuf is guillotined.
June 15, 1797 · Ligurian republic set up at Genoa by France.
July 9, 1797 · Cisalpine republic set up at Milan by France.
August 22, 1797 · The beginnings of the independence movement in Saint Domingue, present–day Haiti, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture.
September 1797 · Liquidation of the public debt by two–thirds with a system of coupons that, by the end of the December, in effect, simply invalidates two–thirds of what is owed to various public creditors.
September 2, 1797 · A group of moderate and rightist delegates to the legislative Councils of the Five Hundred and of the Elders, members of the political club of Clichy, plan a coup d’état against the Directory.
September 4, 1797 · Coup d’état of Fructidor. Ardent republicans expel moderates and neo–royalists from the Executive Directory and the two legislative councils.
September 5, 1797 · Return to the emergency laws of the Terror.
September 9, 1797 · Rise of the Right Leading to the Coup of 18 Fructidor: Proclamation of 9 September 1797
The Directorial legislatures were formed in 1795 primarily of holdovers from the Convention, so the elections in the fall of 1797 were the first open legislative elections since 1792. The result, to…
October 17, 1797 · The peace treaty of Campio Formio is signed with Austria.
December 13, 1797 · The Pennsylvania Gazette: U.S. Vigilance (13 December 1797)
In the United States, vigilance remained at a high pitch as slaveowners dreaded the possible importation of rebellion from Saint Domingue.
December 29, 1797 · A Second Coalition uniting Russia, Great Britain, and eventually Austria against France is formed. The War of the Second Coalition continues to 1801.
1798 · Hymn for the Festival of Marriage
Although festivals drew much smaller audiences during the final years of the Revolution, the government continued to celebrate them. Now, however, they tended to commemorate apolitical events: thus a…
1798 · The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingo (London, 1798)
Laborie provides the perspective of the planter himself. He gives a detailed description of the organization of slave labor in the production of coffee. Although he shared quite negative views of the…
1798 · Mercier, The New Paris: "Sections"
With the founding of the Republic, the forty–eight sectional assemblies of Paris declared themselves in "permanent session" so they could exercise constant vigilance over the Convention and over…
1798 · Kant, The Contest of Faculties
The most influential German philosopher of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), set the foundations for much of modern philosophy. He lectured on a wide variety of topics, from astronomy…
1798 · March of the Powers Allied against France
This engraving uses classical figures to depict allegorically an alliance of Prussia, Britain, and Austria, represented as "Tyranny, Hypocrisy, and Pride," who seek to divide the map of France among…
1798-1817 · Marie Antoinette Josephe Jeanne de Lorraine
The memory of the Queen is glorified in this image.
1798-1817 · Louis XVI, King of France, born 23 August 1754, beheaded 21 January 1793
Louis quickly became a matyr to the royalist cause, as this and other memorials indicate.
1798-00-00 · Bonaparte Visiting the Hospital in Jaffa
This undated print shows Bonaparte visiting a hospital in Jaffa. Of classical proportions, this image is centered on Bonaparte, who appears to be bringing order to an otherwise disorderly and chaotic…
1798-1817 · Bonaparte, First Consul of the French Republic, 18 Brumaire, Year VIII
From the beginning it was clear that Napoleon’s political support was closely tied to his fortunes in war. This engraving celebrates the victory over the Austrians at the battle of Marengo in Italy,…
1798-1799 · Scene of Directory Life, Men and Women from L’Optique du Jour, ou le foyer de Montansier
After Jacobin control faded, with its repression of exuberant social life as well as political diversity, the following years saw a rebirth of open pleasures. This image focuses on fashionable men and…
1798 · Destruction of the French Colossus
This hand–colored engraving, published in late 1798, depicts a Hercules representing France being decapitated by a lighting bolt in divine retribution for the executions by guillotine and for the…
1798 · Britannia Rules the Waves!!
This color drawing from 1798 mocks both the French navy’s abysmal performance against Nelson’s fleet and the French hope to invade England; in the style of Gillray, it depicts a grotesque, gargantuan…
February 15, 1798 · Proclamation of Roman Republic by France.
March 1798 · Proclamation of Helvetic Republic by France.
April 1798 · Elections for the Councils begin, continue into May.
May 11, 1798 · The so–called coup d’état of 22 Floréal Year VI. The two councils invalidate totally or partially the elections in forty–eight out of ninety–six departments.
May 19, 1798 · Expedition to Egypt leaves Toulon.
June 22, 1798 · Proclamation to the Army of Egypt (22 June 1798)
In his Proclamation, issued en route to Egypt, Bonaparte explained his aims and urged his soldiers to respect the customs of the Muslims.
July 21, 1798 · French victory of the Pyramids against the Mamelukes.
August 1, 1798 · Admiral Nelson defeats the French fleet at Aboukir Bay.
1799 · A French Gentleman of the Court of Louis XVI. A French Gentleman of the Court of Egalité, 1799
A sarcastic treatment from England of French manners that contrasts the weakness of the old regime with revolutionary arrogance. The engraver also seems to be pointing toward two entirely different…
1799 · Sword of Sieyès
This ceremonial sword, created for one of the directors in 1799, is presented symbolically as an instrument to defend the "people." Indeed, the war effort was waged for the populace against the…
1799 · Printed Cloth of the Directory and Napoleon
This image presents an idealized version of Napoleon during the Directory, especially his intellectual contributions. In the upper right corner he appears before the Directory. Along the right bottom,…
1799 · The Fatherland in Danger
This painting of the period by Gillaume Guillon Lethière shows the emotion caused by the prospect of loved ones departing for the army. Women had to part with their families in order to support the…
1799 · The Death of Robespierre
This engraving, based on a color portrait by Beys, depicts the death of Robespierre on the guillotine. The executioners wear not the traditional hangman’s hood but red bonnets representing liberty.…
January 26, 1799 · Proclamation of the Parthenopean (Neapolitan) Republic.
March 4, 1799 · Siege of Jaffa, held by the Turks.
March 4, 1799 · Circular on Elections
A former playwright and old regime colonial official, Nicolas–Louis François de Neufchâteau, twice Minister of the Interior under the Directory, here outlines the importance of elections for the…
March 19, 1799 · Siege of Acre, held by the Turks.
April 27, 1799 · General Moreau is defeated at Cassano.
April 29, 1799 · Austrians enter Milan; during the summer a succession of Russian and Austrian victories remove French power in Italy except for a besieged garrison at Genoa.
May 16, 1799 · Election of Sieyès to the Directory.
May 17, 1799 · Bonaparte raises the siege of Acre.
June 18, 1799 · After attacks and threats of accusation from the two Councils, two members of the Directory resign (La Révellière–Lepeaux and Merlin de Douai). Barras and Sieyès remain.
September 25, 1799 · General Masséna defeats the Russians and Austrians at Zurich. Russia and Austria evacuate Switzerland.
October 6, 1799 · Victory of General Brune at Casticum, in the eastern Mediterranean against the British and the Russians.
October 9, 1799 · Bonaparte returns secretly to France from Egypt, having deserted his army.
October 14, 1799 · Final defeats of the rebel Chouans and Vendéens.
October 23, 1799 · Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, is elected president of the Council of the Five Hundred.
November 1, 1799 · Emmanuel–Joseph Sieyès meets with Napoleon. They plan together a coup d’état.
November 9, 1799 · Legislative councils transferred to Saint–Cloud. Sieyès, Ducos, and Barras resign. Bonaparte appointed commander of the army in Paris. Coup d’état of 18 Brumaire Year VIII supported. The Executive Directory and the two legislative councils are overthrown.
1800 · Day of Saint–Cloud, 18 Brumaire, an 8 (9 November 1799)
The problems of the revolutionary government had so intensified that the two leaders, Abbé Sieyès and Roger Ducos, plotted to overthrow it with the help of the most famous military man of the day. But…
November 10, 1799 · After a chaotic session the remaining deputies elect Bonaparte, Sieyès and Ducos as consuls.
November 10, 1799 · Brumaire: Bonaparte’s Justification
Having seized power through the coup of 18 Brumaire [9 November 1799], Bonaparte—now First Consul—set out to win public support for yet another new government. His first public pronouncement was the…
November 10, 1799 · The Council of Five–Hundred Concurs
The Council of Five–Hundred, the lower house of the legislature under the Directory’s constitution, put up only token resistance to the coup of 18 Brumaire [9 November 1799]. By the following day,…
November 10, 1799 · Napoleon’s Own Account of His Coup d’Etat (10 November 1799)
Napoleon glosses over the conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution of 1795 and the duly elected legislature. This conspiracy was organized in part by his younger brother Lucien. He does, however,…
December 12, 1799 · Bonaparte imposes the text of 21 Frimaire, the constitution of the Year VIII, shunting the other two consuls aside.
December 15, 1799 · The Constitution of the Year VIII (the fourth since 1791) is submitted for approval in a plebiscite. This constitution is not preceded by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In a preface announcing the new constitution the following is declared: "Citoyens, la Revolution est fixee aux principes qui Pont commencee: elle est finie." [Citizens, the Revolution is established upon its founding principles: the Revolution is over.]
December 15, 1799 · 24 Frimaire Year VIII, the constitution is proclaimed.
December 22, 1799 · The Council of State is installed.
December 27, 1799 · The Senate is installed.
December 28, 1799 · Sunday church services are reopened.
1800 · Establishing a New Administrative Order (1800–1801)
Naming his brother Lucien to the key post of minister of the interior, Bonaparte quickly moved to establish his political control over the country. He set up “prefects” for every administrative region…
1800 · The Saving of France
In this propagandistic allegorical engraving, Napoleon saves the female figure of France from the abyss to which she has been led by "revolutionary fanaticism." The figure of fanaticism is armed to…
1800-1804 · Watch Yourself or You’ll Be a Product for Sale
The women in this image appear to be tempted to a life of prostitution. The female figure in the left foreground gestures toward the door but remains modestly attired. Once inside, the women are there…
January 1, 1800 · The Tribunal and the Legislative Body are installed.
February 7, 1800 · On 18 Pluvôise Year VIII, results of the plebiscite are published and the Constitution of the Year VII is accepted.
February 13, 1800 · The Bank of France is created.
February 14, 1800 · Surrender of Cadoudal. Royalist insurgency in Western France is apparently pacified.
March 2, 1800 · The first prefects of departments are appointed.
May 1800 · Constance Pipelet, Review of a Book by Théremin, On the Condition of Women in a Republic
In this review of a book by an author favorable to women’s education, Pipelet argues that republics should demonstrate a different attitude toward women than monarchies. She restates the arguments for…
June 14, 1800 · Bonaparte’s victory at Marengo; breakup of Second Coalition.
October 20, 1800 · 48,000 émigrés are removed from list of 100,000.
December 3, 1800 · General Moreau defeats the Austrians at Hohenlinden.
December 24, 1800 · An assassination attempt on Bonaparte occurs in the rue Saint–Niçâise.
1801 · Making Peace with the Catholic Church, 1801–2
One of Napoleon’s first priorities was to reestablish good relations with the papacy, which had fought the revolutionary church settlement tooth and nail. Napoleon gained everything he desired in the…
1801-00-00 · Triumph of Napoleon, First Consul
Napoleon encouraged comparisons to the Roman republic. The French adoption of the term "Consul" was a clear reference to the Roman Republic, for that was the name given the men chosen to direct the…
January 5, 1801 · 130 Jacobins deported by Senatus–consultum.
February 9, 1801 · Peace of Lunéville with Austria. Confirmation of the main points of the Treaty of Campo Formio. France receives Left Bank of the Rhine.
April 12, 1801 · Chateaubriand publishes Atala.
July 15, 1801 · Signing the Concordat with the Papacy (26 Messidor Year IX).
1802 · Account of a Session of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women
Unfortunately the only first-hand account of the meetings of the women’s club comes from notes taken by Pierre–Joseph–Alexis Roussel, published in a volume of memoirs in 1802. His account makes fun of…
1802 · Battle of Aboukir
Napoleon’s eventual acquisition of political power may be attributed partly to his success in publicizing his Egyptian campaign as a great victory for France that spread the values of the Revolution.…
1802 · Siege and Taking of the City of Lyon
In September 1793, in response to the unwillingness of the municipal government of Lyon to enforce the legislature’s laws, the Republic sent the deputies and Committee of Public Safety members Georges…
1802 · The King Returns to Paris
From Berthault’s series of great moments in the Revolution, this engraving presents a version of events on 6 October 1789 favorable to the King. Reminiscent of orderly ceremonial royal appearances,…
1802 · Entry of the French into Holland
From Berthault’s series of great moments of the Revolution, this engraving depicts the victorious entry of the republican French forces into the southern Netherlands (currently Belgium) on 21 January…
1802 · Fusillades at Lyon, Ordered by Collot–D’Herbois
Lyon’s rebellion against the central government in September 1793 had terrible repercussions that seemed only to worsen with the initiation of collective trials and immediate executions by firing…
1802 · Drowning in the Loire by Order of the Fierce Carrier
On 6–7 December 1793, Jean–Baptiste Carrier, a deputy sent by the Convention to suppress the insurrection at Nantes, accepted, if he did not in fact welcome, a measure proposed by the local…
1802 · Inside a Revolutionary Committee during the Reign of Terror
The extremely respectful view of sans–culotte militancy is evident in this image, engraved by the revolutionary sculptor Berthault and based on a painting by Fragonard, the son of the famous old…
1802 · Attack of Nantes by the Vendéans
1802 · The Cap Français Fire
In June 1793, the French governor of Saint Domingue, Thomas–François Galbaud, tried to raise a revolt of the whites against republican commissioners sent from France. To defeat him, the commissioners…
1802 · The Days of 31 May and 1–2 June 1793
Even though popular action had unseated the Legislative Assembly and replaced it with the Convention, the elections that followed had not satisfied the radicals of Paris and their artisanal followers.…
1802 · Return from Varennes, Arrival of Louis Capet in Paris
Following his arrest, Louis and his family are returned to Paris. Large, silent crowds looked on disapprovingly.
1802 · Taking of Weapons at the Invalides
From the City Hall, the crowd that had gathered on the morning of 14 July crossed the Seine River and sacked the royal veterans’ hospital known as the Invalides, where it hoped to capture arms. In…
1802 · Fusillade in the Faubourg St. Antoine, 28 April 1789
This image chronicles a riot. Many believe it was caused by artisans who attacked the Reveillon wallpaper shop and factory because they believed that the owner was about to lower wages. Over two days,…
1802 · Burning the Guardhouse on the Pont Neuf
This retrospective shows that early in the Revolution targets were often economic. This should be no surprise as the populace had a long tradition of taking the law into its own hands to rectify what…
1802 · Assembly of Notables, Held at Versailles
Here an engraver provides a view of the assembly, called by the King to get around the Parlement, a judicial body that blocked his initiatives.
1802 · Bonaparte, First Consul, Putting Away His Sword after the General Peace
The engraving celebrates the peace treaties of 1801 and 1802. The lack of perspective in this image reflects the vision that Napoleon wanted the French to have when they thought about his actions.…
January 4, 1802 · Creation of 31 "senatoriates" (14 Nivôse Year X).
January 26, 1802 · Bonaparte becomes president of the Italian Republic.
February 6, 1802 · Leclerc lands in Saint Domingue on a mission to quell the revolt of Toussaint–L’Ouverture.
March 18, 1802 · Bonaparte purges the Tribunate and Legislative Body to eliminate critics (27 Ventôse Year X).
March 27, 1802 · Peace Treaty (Amiens) with Great Britain (4 Germinal Year X).
April 3, 1802 · Articles organiques concerning the Catholic and Protestant religions.
April 14, 1802 · Chateaubriand publishes The Genius of Christianity.
April 18, 1802 · Promulgation of the Concordat.
April 26, 1802 · All but one thousand émigrés are removed from the list.
May 19, 1802 · Creation of the Legion of Honor.
August 2, 1802 · 14 Thermidor Year X, Napoleon proclaimed Life Consulate.
August 4, 1802 · Constitution of the Year X (16 Thermidor Year X).
August 4, 1802 · Oath as Consul for Life (4 August 1802)
The oath that Bonaparte took on becoming consul for life gives a good idea of the image that he tried to project: protector of the gains of the Revolution and insurer of order. In retrospect, his…
September 11, 1802 · Kingdom of Piedmont annexed to the French Republic as six new departments, followed in 1805–1808 by that of the republics of Genoa, Tuscany, and Parma.
1803 · Religious Conflicts after the Concordat (1803)
Despite the official settlement with the papacy, some priests refused to bury those who had supported the pro–revolutionary wing of the church in the 1790s and others preached royalism from the…
April 12, 1803 · 22 Germinal XI, laws passed concerning labor in manufactures, including the prohibition of workers’ coalitions.
May 3, 1803 · Sale of Louisiana to the United States.
November 29, 1803 · Declaration of the Independence of the Blacks of St. Domingo
This important and revealing document evokes both the contemporary situation in the colonies and the political developments taking place in Paris. It comes from Marcus Rainsford’s supportive account…
December 1, 1803 · Introduction of the livret ouvrier mandating that workers carry this "notebook" at all times and that his behavior and work performance would be recorded and tracked in it.
1804 · Haiti recognized as an independent republic, marking the first successful slave revolt in history.
1804 · The French Civil Code (1804)
Napoleon brought to completion a project dear to the hearts of the revolutionaries, the drafting of new law codes. The civil code was the most important of them because it institutionalized equality…
1804-00-00 · A Grateful France Proclaims Napoleon the First Emperor of the French
In this engraving, Roman and contemporary themes are combined to glorify the new emperor. The absence of any clear representation of revolutionary liberty shows Napoleon moving away from the events of…
March 21, 1804 · 30 Ventôse Year XII, the Duke d’Enghien is executed. Proclamation of the Civil Code or Code Napoleon.
May 18, 1804 · 28 Floréal Year XII, Constitution of the Year XII. Senatus–consultum proclaims Napoleon Emperor.
December 1804 · Napoleon’s Reasons for Making Himself Emperor (December 1804)
When he made himself emperor, Napoleon clearly rejected the republican form of government. Here he tries to claim that hereditary government is necessary in a large state. The presence of the pope at…
December 2, 1804 · Coronation of Napoleon at Notre–Dame.
1805 · Toussaint L’Ouverture in An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
Rainsford paints a glowing portrait of the abilities and accomplishments of L’Ouverture, the most noted leader of the rebellion and one of the key founders of the nation of Haiti.
1805 · A Divided Elite from An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
In this excerpt, Rainsford describes the divisive effects of the Declaration of Rights of the Blacks among the various racial/social groupings.
1805 · Discontent Spreads from An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
Rainsford wrote one of the first favorable accounts of the Haitian Revolution. He blamed the colonists for refusing to alter the slave system. Our excerpts begin with reactions to the revolution in…
1805 · Ogé’s Rebellion in An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
Rainsford’s sympathy for the revolt in Haiti did not seem to extend to the influence of ideas imported from revolutionary France, which appear to have been at the heart of Ogé’s rebellion.
1805 · The French Return from An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
In this excerpt, Rainsford continues to exhalt the qualities of L’Ouverture while criticizing French behavior in the attempted reconquest of the island under Napoleon.
1805 · The Revolt from An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
Rainsford’s detailed contemporary account of the revolt emphasizes the strenuous yet ultimately unsuccessful mobilization of colonial French resources.
1805 · The Mode of training Blood Hounds in St. Domingo, and of exercising them by Chasseurs
This image reveals grotesque mistreatment of blacks even during training exercises. Here a cavalryman (chasseur) plans to use a black as a live prey for hunting dogs.
1805 · The Mode of exterminating the Black Army as practised by the French
The fighting between the French and the Haitians was very bloody. When the French tried to put down Toussaint in 1802, it took them some five months with an expeditionary force of 23,000. Supplied by…
1805 · Revenge taken by the Black Army for the Cruelties practised on them by the French
This execution simply suspends the French officer in the air, slowly strangling him to death. His struggles, emphasized by the convulsing legs, reveal the hatred visited on opponents, themselves…
1805 · Toussaint L’Ouverture
A slave inspired by the French Revolution’s egalitarianism, Toussaint saw himself as French and struggled for French control of the island of Saint Domingue. Nonetheless, he had no intention of…
1806 · Image of the Queen’s Defense
The trial of the Queen is here depicted in a tinted engraving by Jean Duplessi–Bertaux as part of his series of Historical Scenes of the French Revolution. Although it refers to her as "Marie…
1805 · Robespierre Laid on the Table of the Committee of Public Safety
This Dutch engraving, based on a sketch by Berthault, shows Robespierre laid out on the table where his Committee of Public Safety did its work. It is the morning of 10 Thermidor and having been…
1805 · The Annoyance of Walking
Nobles had been used to riding in carriages or on horseback. Now, so radicals hoped, they could no longer afford to do so either financially or politically. The imagined response of this social elite…
1805-1815 · Trial of Marie Antoinette of Austria
Some months after the execution of her husband, Marie Antoinette found herself in the dock of the public prosecutor, Antoine Quentin Fouquier–Tinville. The intervention of the radical journalist…
1805 · Aristocratic Occupations . . .
The second image, a color drawing by the popular English caricaturist James Gillray in 1805 during the Empire, takes a different view of the Directory, suggesting that it is a time of moral decadence…
May 26, 1805 · Napoleon is crowned King of Italy in Milan.
August 6, 1805 · Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.
October 20, 1805 · General Mack’s Austrian army surrenders at Ulm.
October 21, 1805 · Admiral Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar over France and Spain confirms British command of the sea.
December 2, 1805 · Defeat of Austria at the Battle of Austerlitz. 1806–1807 defeat of Prussia and Russia, and breakup of Third Coalition.
December 26, 1805 · Peace Treaty of Pressburg with Austria ends hostilities.
December 31, 1805 · Republican calendar shelved (10 Nivôse Year XIV); return to old calendar.
1806 · The Glitter of the Imperial Court
The memoirs of Claire, Countess of Rémusat provide a bird’s-eye view into the operation of Napoleon’s imperial household. Rémusat was a lady-in-waiting to Napoleon’s first wife Josephine. Napoleon…
1806 · An Ordinary Soldier’s Account (1806)
The “French” armies included units from many allied states. Excerpted below is the memoir of an ordinary foot soldier in Napoleon’s army. Jakob Walter came from Württemburg, one of the medium-size…
1806 · The Continental System (1806)
Since 1793, the French government had carried out policies intended to ruin British commerce; it hoped in this way to eliminate or at least dampen the British will to join in and its ability to…
July 12, 1806 · The Confederation of the Rhine created to replace the defunct Holy Roman Empire.
August 1, 1806 · The Confederation of the Rhine and the Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire (1 August 1806)
To increase his control over the German states and definitively destroy the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon set up the Confederation of the Rhine, grouping together a large number of formerly indepedent…
August 14, 1806 · Creation of estates (majorats) for imperial nobles to provide sufficient income to maintain a noble lifestyle for worthy state servants regardless of birth or background.
October 14, 1806 · French victories at Jena and AuerstŠdt against Prussia.
November 21, 1806 · Napoleon proclaims the Continental Blockade, which prohibits trade with the British Isles.
December 10, 1806 · Opening of rabbinical conference that leads to the adoption of civil status for Jews.
February 7, 1807 · Inconclusive battle of Eylau against the Prussians and Russians.
March 2, 1807 · Decrees made regarding the civil status of Jews and their choice of patronymics.
June 14, 1807 · Napoleon defeats the Russians at Friedland.
July 8, 1807 · Peace Treaty of Tilsit; Franco–Russian alliance signed by Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I.
August 19, 1807 · Suppression of the Tribunate to eliminate governmental resistance to Napoleon.
October 9, 1807 · The Prussian Reform Edict (9 October 1807)
In response to his defeat by Napoleon, Prussian King Frederick William I, pushed by his ministers, initiated a series of reforms intended to modernize property relationships and the administration of…
October 11, 1807 · Proclamation of the Commercial Code.
1808 · Charles Fourier on the Revolution
Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was a salesman for a cloth merchant in Lyons who conceived of a different form of social organization, called a "phalanx," that was part garden city and part agricultural…
February 27, 1808 · Invasion of Spain. From 1808–1813 there is war in Spain and Portugal.
March 1, 1808 · Senatus–consultum organizes the imperial nobility.
May 1808 · Spanish Rebellion begins.
April 23, 1809 · Victory of Ratisbon against Austria.
July 5, 1809 · Arrest of Pope Pius VII.
July 6, 1809 · Victory of Wagram over Austria.
1810 · Winning over the Nobles
To make his new hybrid state work, Napoleon curried the favor of the old regime nobles. He needed their approval to make his empire convincing. Although he set up his own form of nobility, largely…
1810 · An Ordinary British Soldier Recounts the Portuguese Campaign (1810)
This account, probably by Thomas Howell, a soldier of the Highland Light Infantry regiment, offers a firsthand account of the skirmishes between British/Portuguese forces and the French armies. Little…
January 12, 1810 · Marriage of Napoleon and Josephine annulled by the officiality (church court) of Paris.
February 17, 1810 · Rome annexed to the French Empire. Napoleon’s heir shall bear the title King of Rome.
April 1, 1810 · Marriage of Napoleon with Marie–Louise, daughter of Francis II, emperor of Austria.
December 13, 1810 · Holland and northwest Germany (Hamburg, Breman, etc.) annexed. Now 130 departments in the French Empire.
March 20, 1811 · Birth of the King of Rome, Napoleon’s son.
1812 · The Russian Campaign as Seen by a Female Russian Soldier
Fighting under the name Alexander Durov, Nadezhda Durova was the daughter of a Russian officer who dressed as a man to join the Russian army in 1806. Although it became known that she was a woman, she…
1812 · The Russian Campaign as Seen by an Ordinary Soldier
Adrien-Jean-Baptiste-François Bourgogne (1785–1867) was the son of a cloth merchant from northern France. He fought in Poland in 1806; in Austria, Spain, and Portugal in 1809–11; and in Russia in…
1812 · Retreat from Russia
There was not much to celebrate in the Russian campaign, especially once the retreat from Moscow began.
May 24, 1812 · Invasion of Russia.
September 5, 1812 · Battle of Moscow.
September 14, 1812 · The Burning of Moscow as Seen by One of Napoleon’s Generals
Philippe de Ségur served as Quartermaster–General during the invasion of Russia and had accompanied Napoleon on many of his military campaigns.
October 25, 1812 · Retreat from Moscow begins.
November 1812 · The Effect of the Russian Winter Described by a General
Ségur gave a terrifying description of the effect of the Russian winter that started in November 1812.
December 3, 1812 · The Government Acknowledges Disaster in Russia (3 December 1812)
The French government used its Bulletins of the Grand Army to report official versions of the course of military campaigns. In a rare admission of problems, Bulletin no. 29 reported the French losses…
1813 · Triumph of the Year 1813
Napoleon’s efforts to dominate central Europe kindled a huge reaction, as national feelings soared among the many ethnic groups inhabiting the area. While these feelings would eventually lead to great…
June 1813 · Debris of the French Army Returning to the Fatherland in June 1813
Here, as in other critical images, reversal plays an important role. Proud soldiers have given way to a bedraggled collection of men, far removed from their former glory.
October 16, 1813 · Napoleon is defeated at Leipzig and withdraws from Germany.
November 21, 1813 · Another Firsthand View of the Fighting in Portugal
This account by British Private William Wheeler of the 51st Regiment gives a vivid account of the hand–to–hand fighting in Portugal. Wheeler’s letters home were saved by the family and form the basis…
1814 · Benjamin Constant, Leader of French Liberal Opposition to Napoleon
Benjamin Constant (1767–1830) spent the early years of the French Revolution in a post at a minor German court. He moved to Paris in 1795 and became active in French politics (and became the lover of…
1814-00-00 · Napoleon Is Unable to Digest Leipzig
After the defeat in Russia, with renewed allied forces arrayed against him, Napoleon prepared once again to defend France. Yet in 1813 at Leipzig, the Emperor was defeated. This allowed the allies to…
1814-00-00 · "His Monument": Napoleon’s Past and Future Are Filled with Dead Bodies
This Janus–like figuration of Napoleon haunts the viewer as it suggests a future filled with skulls. Indeed, the unprecedented deaths from war and conquest of the last two centuries make this image…
April 6, 1814 · Bonaparte abdicates the throne at Fontainebleau. The Count of Provence (Louis XVIII) is offered the throne by the Senate.
May 2, 1814 · Louis XVIII offers reassurances to keep the revolutionary status quo in his Declaration of Saint–Ouen.
May 3, 1814 · Louis XVIII enters Paris. Bourbon dynasty restored.
May 4, 1814 · Napoleon sent into exile at island of Elba.
May 30, 1814 · First Treaty of Paris: France is reduced to its 1792 frontiers.
1815 · Bourbon Restoration (1815–1830).
1815 · Historical, Political, and Moral Essay on Revolutions, Ancient and Modern
The French novelist and essayist François–René Chateaubriand (1768–1848) was a royalist who for a time admired Napoleon. Like Burke, he denounced the revolutionary reliance on reason and advocated a…
1815 · People under the Old Regime
This image shows "the people" as a chained and blindfolded man being crushed under the weight of the rich, including both clergy and nobility. Such a perspective on the period before 1789 purposely…
1815 · The Queen of Louis XVI King of France at the Guillotine, 16 October 1793
An idealized portrait of Marie Antoinette at the moment of death. Unlike the pale, aged woman the contemporaries observed, this later print memorialized a beautiful, absolutely pure, woman. While in…
March 1, 1815 · Napoleon returns to France. Beginning of the Hundred Days.
March 20, 1815 · Napoleon arrives at the Tuileries from exile. Benjamin Constant draws up the liberal additional act to the Constitution of the Empire which provides for meaningful participation in politics.
June 1815 · The Battle of Waterloo as Recounted by one of Napoleon’s Personal Aides (June 1815)
Jardin Ainé (the elder) was responsible for Napoleon’s horse and had a firsthand view of the momentous events that definitively ended Napoleon’s career.
June 15, 1815 · The Battle of Waterloo as Seen by an Ordinary British Cavalryman
At the Battle of Waterloo, Dickson (1789–1880) was a corporal in a Scottish cavalry troop. He had enlisted in 1807. His reminiscences of the battle were written down by relatives years later.
June 18, 1815 · Bonaparte defeated at Waterloo.
June 22, 1815 · Napoleon’s second abdication.
June 24, 1815 · Start of new White Terror in the Midi.
July 8, 1815 · Louis XVIII returns to Paris.
July 15, 1815 · Napoleon surrenders to the British.
September 26, 1815 · The Holy Alliance between Russia, Prussia, and Austria is ended.
October 16, 1815 · Napoleon in exile on the mid–Atlantic island of St. Helena.
November 20, 1815 · Second Treaty of Paris; France is now reduced to its 1790 frontiers.
1817-1822 · Louis XVI distributes aid to the Poor
Here Louis XVI is portrayed as a benevolent king distributing alms to the poor, an appropriate action for the "Father of his people." However, his rich fur–clad outfit contrasts with the abject…
December 1818 · End of the occupation of France by the allied armies.
1819 · The Radical’s Arms. (No God! No Religion!! No King! No Constitution!!)
From an English periodical of 1819, this antirevolutionary print portrays the sans–culottes as drunkards anxious to destroy by fire, gallows, and guillotine rather than to work for their own good. The…
1821 · A Popular English Broadside (1821)
Some in the popular classes saw in Napoleon an opponent of monarchs.
May 5, 1821 · Napoleon dies on the island of St. Helena.
July 5, 1821 · The View of the London Times (5 July 1821)
On the occasion of Napoleon’s death, the leading English paper expressed the view of the English establishment: hatred of his despotic rule, yet a kind of sneaking admiration of his “extraordinary…
1824 · John Stuart Mill on the French Revolution
John Stuart Mill (1806–73), an English civil servant and philosopher, was a firm believer in the liberal, democratic, and anti–absolutist elements of the legacy of the Revolution and hoped to extend…
September 16, 1824 · Death of Louis XVIII.
1825 · Progression of Napoleon’s Life
Even when they resisted Napoleon’s efforts to control their destinies, contemporaries of all European nations were fascinated by the Napoleonic legend unfolding before their eyes.
April 27, 1825 · Law on compensation for the émigrés and victims of the Terror.
May 29, 1825 · Coronation of Charles X in Reims.
1829 · Balzac’s The Chouans
Novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a giant of nineteenth–century European literature. In his multivolume The Human Comedy, he investigated the general desire for social advancement in the…
1829 · Battle of the Pyramids
After a six–week journey from France, the army of some 38,000 arrived in Egypt. The French stormed and took Alexandria first, then moved up the Nile toward Cairo. On 21 July Napoleon’s troops…
1830 · A Poem by Victor Hugo (1830)
In his poem “To the Column,” the great French poet Victor Hugo celebrates the memory of Napoleon.
1830 · The Philosophy of History
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a famous philosophy professor in Berlin whose lectures attracted many students, even though the lectures were extraordinarily abstract. The Philosophy of…
1830 · Cup: Louis XVI
Louis XVI’s old regime image graced china as well as coinage.
July 27, 1830 · Overthrow of Charles X, the last monarch in France of the Bourbon dynasty.
August 9, 1830 · Louis–Philippe, king of the French, swears loyalty to the revised Charter.
1838 · Battle for and Taking of Ratisbon, April 23, 1809
The general peace agreement lasted a scant two years after the treaty of 1801. Although unable to seriously threaten an occupation of the British Isles, Napoleon was very successful on the continent,…
1838 · Jemmapes, 6 November 1792
This engraving of the battle of Jemappes, preromantic in its composition and style, depicts a group of French citizen–soldiers bravely risking themselves under the banner of liberty and overcoming all…
1839 · Return from the Island of Elba
Troops sent by Louis XVIII to stop Napoleon’s advance toward Paris either deserted or joined Napoleon.
1840 · The Emperor and the Imperial Guard on the Island of Elba
Napoleon spent ten months on this island in the Mediterranean. He was able to follow events in France without much difficulty. This initial exile was part of a relatively lenient settlement granted by…
1847 · Charlotte Corday
Some images of Charlotte Corday emphasized her purity.
February 23, 1848 · February Revolution in Paris. Orleans dynasty overthrown. The Second Republic declared.
June 23, 1848 · Barricades and street fighting in the east of Paris (June Days) in which workers of Paris fight authorities over the closure of national workshops that provided them charity.
December 2, 1851 · Coup d’état by Louis–Napoleon Bonaparte, which a later plebiscite overwhelmingly accepts.
1852 · Karl Marx: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The German philosopher and founder of international communism, Karl Marx (1818–83), wrote on many occasions about the French Revolution, which he considered the first stage in an eventual worldwide…
November 7, 1852 · Senatus consultum modifying the constitution: re–establishment of the Empire under Napoleon III.
1856 · Publication of Tocqueville’s Old Régime and the French Regime and Guizot’s History of the English Revolution.
1857-00-00 · The Queen Exhausted
An image produced well after the Revolution shows a Queen, assaulted by the gaze of the people, controlled by the soldier, and tentative in her stance and appearance.
February 27, 1858 · Alexis de Tocqueville on the French Revolution
The nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) was a historian, social critic, and politician who wrote a vastly influential work entitled The Old Régime and the French Revolution (1856). Tocqueville…
1859 · The Traditional Order Defended
This newspaper article considers the question of equality from the opposite point of view—arguing that without social distinctions making clear who should lead and who should follow, society cannot…
1859 · Dickens, Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens’s (1812–70) novels generally appeared in serial form in popular newspapers. Usually he took his subjects and characters from contemporary English society, but in this novel he created…
September 4, 1870 · Proclamation of the French Republic after defeat of Napoleon III by the Prussians.
March 28, 1871 · Proclamation of the Paris Commune that refused to accept French peace negotiations with Germany.
May 10, 1871 · Treaty of Frankfurt: France cedes to the Prussians Alsace and part of Lorraine and has to pay five billion francs in indemnity.
July 5, 1871 · The Comte de Chambord (Henri V), back in France, refuses to abandon the royalist white flag.
November 13, 1871 · Thiers declares that the Republic exists and that it will be conservative.
1874 · Hugo, Ninety–Three
Victor Hugo (1802–85) was an ardent republican and defender of the revolutionary legacy who went into exile during the Second Empire (1852–70). He lived long enough to become an icon of the Third…
1875 · The Day after Waterloo
Thousands died or were wounded in the fighting that began 15 June and ended at a series of farmhouses at Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
1877 · Robespierre 10 Thermidor—Exposition of 1877
This painting from 1877 shows in romantic style Robespierre dying in a large room, surrounded by soldiers and others. His shirt is bloodied and his left hand is on his chest; visible in the background…
1878 · Hippolyte Taine on the French Revolution
Literary critic and historian, Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893) was lionized by late–nineteenth–century republican France. He emphasized rationalism and mathematical simplicity, being a bitter critic of…
1880 · Frederick Engels: Socialism, Utopic and Scientific
Marx’s lifelong collaborator, Frederick Engels (1820–95), devoted himself to popularizing the ideas he had developed with Marx. In 1880 he published this pamphlet in French in order to explain the…
July 6, 1880 · The Republic adopts 14 July as the annual national festival.
1889 · Bonaparte and Islam
Bonaparte’s secretary describes the religious practices, attitudes, and views of Bonaparte with regard to Islam. Accepting that the general curried favor with Muslims, he also hoped to deflect…
1889 · Egyptian Misery Shatters French Hopes
Bonaparte’s secretary naively complained how the hopes of the French invasion were shattered by the reality of the situation in Egypt. He clearly expected that the invaded would regard the French as…
1889 · In Search of Glory: Bonaparte’s Bulletins
In this passage, Bonaparte’s secretary describes the importance and effect of Bonaparte’s propaganda in the form of the military bulletin from an army in the field. Glory and military virtue were…
1889 · Problems in Governing Egypt
Bonaparte’s young secretary was a firsthand, if uncritical, observer who took detailed notes and left his memoirs for posterity. He was clearly enthralled by the young general. Here he describes the…
1899 · A Prefect in Action, 1800–1801
The prefect of the Haute-Garonne department headquartered in Toulouse reported on his efforts to establish control in a region known for its rebelliousness.
1905 · Sun Yat–Sen, The Three Principles of the People
Sun Yat–Sen (1866–1925) was a Chinese doctor who led the revolution against the Qing dynasty in 1911. Educated in Hawaii and Japan, he tried to compare Western concepts to Chinese conditions. Although…
1912 · France, The Gods Are Athirst
One of the most widely–read authors of the late nineteenth century, Anatole France (1844–1924) saw the humanity of even the most notorious revolutionary figures such as Jean–Paul Marat. Yet, dedicated…
1913 · Le Bon, The Psychology of Revolution
Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) disparaged the Revolution and the revolutionary legacy because he distrusted the common person, particularly when making collective decisions. His analysis of revolutionary…
1914-1917 · Plate: 1914–17 Quimper china
1919 · Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), whose original name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein, was one of the chief figures in the Russian Revolution of 1917. After years spent in exile agitating in favor of Russian…
1928 · Washington and Lafayette in color (lithograph, n.d., ca. 1928)
Washington had taken a special interest in Lafayette.
1929 · Antonio Gramsci: Selections from The Prison Notebooks
Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) was an Italian intellectual who joined first the Socialist and then the Communist Party. Between 1924 and 1926 Gramsci was the head of the Italian Communist Party. In 1926…
1938 · The Marseillaise
A similar emphasis on patriotic unity can be seen in Jean Renoir’s film, La Marseillaise (1938). The movie tells the story of France’s national anthem, composed by Rouget de Lisle as a way to rally…
1939 · Festival of National Unity, 14 July 1939
In this celebration of national unity, the focus on 1789 is quite apparent. The Phrygian cap at the top of the decorations recalled the Revolution, as did the date for this celebration. Of course,…
1944 · Vote given to women in France.
1945-09-02 · Ho Chi Minh, Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Viet–Nam
Ho Chi Minh, the revolutionary name of Nguyen That Thanh (1890–1969), was the leader of the Vietnamese revolution for independence from the French. He was educated in France, where he became a…
1948-12-10 · Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 to provide an authoritative list of human rights that could serve as an international…