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Treaty of Paris September 3, 1783
In 1782, Benjamin Franklin rejected informal peace overtures from Great Britain for a settlement that would provide the thirteen states with some measure of autonomy within the British Empire. Franklin insisted on British recognition of American independence and refused to consider a peace separate from France, America’s staunch ally. Franklin did agree, however, to negotiations with the British for an end to the war. (https://history.state.gov/milestones/1776-1783/treaty) -
Call of The Estate General
In 1789, the King Louis XVI called a meeting of the Estates General. It was the first meeting of the Estates General called since 1614. He called the meeting because the French government was having financial problems. Read more at: https://www.ducksters.com/history/french_revolution/estates_general.php
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Tennis Court Oath
In Versailles, France, the deputies of the Third Estate, which represent commoners and the lower clergy, meet on the Jeu de Paume, an indoor tennis court, in defiance of King Louis XVI’s order to disperse. In these modest surroundings, they took a historic oath not to disband until a new French constitution had been adopted. -
Storming of the Bastille
Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and dismantle the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs. This dramatic action signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, a decade of political turmoil and terror in which King Louis XVI was overthrown and tens of thousands of people, including the king and his wife Marie-Antoinette, were executed. -
March On Versailles
On this day in 1789, an angry mob of nearly 7,000 working women armed with pitchforks, pikes and muskets marched in the rain from Paris to Versailles in what was to be a pivotal event in the intensifying French Revolution. To the beat of a drum, the women chanted “Bread, Bread!” for, despite the fertile French soil, the people of Paris were starving while the remote Louis XVI and the much-hated Marie Antoinette continued to eat like proverbial kings and queens at their salubrious country gaffe. -
Execution of the King
One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris. -
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Reign Of Terror
After the death of Louis XVI in 1793, the Reign of Terror began. The first victim was Marie Antoinette. She had been imprisoned with her children after she was separated from Louis. First they took her son Louis Charles from her (often called the lost dauphin, or Louis XVII). He disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Then she led off a parade of prominent and not-so-prominent citizens to their deaths. The guillotine, the new instrument of egalitarian justice, was put to work. -
Execution of Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre, the architect of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, is overthrown and arrested by the National Convention. As the leading member of the Committee of Public Safety from 1793, Robespierre encouraged the execution, mostly by guillotine, of more than 17,000 enemies of the Revolution. The day after his arrest, Robespierre and 21 of his followers were guillotined before a cheering mob in the Place de la Revolution in Paris. -
Haitian Revolution January 1, 1803
Soon after Toussaint’s arrest, Dessalines led a new revolt against French rule. With the aid of the British, the rebels scored a major victory against the French force there, and on November 9, 1803, colonial authorities surrendered. In 1804, General Dessalines assumed dictatorial power, and Haiti became the second independent nation in the Americas. Later that year, Dessalines proclaimed himself Emperor Jacques I.(http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/haitian-independence-proclaimed) -
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Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts fought between France under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte and a number of European nations between 1799 and 1815. They followed on from the War of the First Coalition (1793-97) and engaged nearly all European nations in a bloody struggle, a struggle that also spilled over into Egypt, America and South America. -
Coronation of Napoleon I
In Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Napoleon I, the first Frenchman to hold the title of emperor in a thousand years. Pope Pius VII handed Napoleon the crown that the 35-year-old conqueror of Europe placed on his own head. -
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo, which took place in Belgium on June 18, 1815, marked the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century. Napoleon rose through the ranks of the French army during the French Revolution, seized control of the French government in 1799 and became emperor in 1804. The Battle of Waterloo, in which Napoleon’s forces were defeated by the British and Prussians, marked the end of his reign and of France’s domination in Europe. -
Mexico Gains Independence
Eleven years after the outbreak of the Mexican War of Independence, Spanish Viceroy Juan de O’Donojú signs the Treaty of Córdoba, which approves a plan to make Mexico an independent constitutional monarchy.
