-
Louis XIII built a simple hunting lodge on the site of the Palace of Versailles in 1623. -
Versailles became the headquarters of the government. Athough Paris never ceased to be the official capital, the decision made Versailles the de facto centre of the kingdom until 1789. -
Marriage of the Dauphin Louis and Marie-Antoinette -
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen came into existence in the summer of 1789, born of an idea of the Constituent Assembly. -
-
In the Tennis Court Oath, representatives of the non-clergy and non-nobles of France swore they would not disperse until a constitution was established for France. -
Hundreds of Parisians stormed the Bastille, a state prison, seizing 250 barrels of gunpowder and freeing its prisoners. -
Concerned over the high price and scarcity of bread, women from the marketplaces of Paris led the March on Versailles. -
Louis XVI died at the guillotine -
The Reign of Terror was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions that took place in response to revolutionary fervour. -
Coup d'état that overthrew the system of government under the Directory in France and substituted the Consulate, making way for the despotism of Napoleon Bonaparte. -
-
The resulting Civil Code of France marked the first major revision and reorganization of laws since the Roman era. -
Napoleon crowned himself Emperor Napoleon I at Notre Dame de Paris. -
Napoleon's army eventually reached a Moscow abandoned and destroyed by the Russian army based on the scorched-earth policy. -
Napoleon's exile on Elba, an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea just 10 miles from the Italian mainland. -
Marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars.