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Louis XIII built a simple hunting lodge on the site of the Palace of Versailles in 1623. With his death came Louis XIV who expanded the château into the beginnings of a palace that went through several changes and phases from 1661 to 1715. -
In 1682 he moved the royal Court to the Palace of Versailles, the defining symbol of his power and influence in Europe. -
Although Marie Antoinette initially condescended to her husband, she eventually developed a genuine fondness for him. For his part, Louis was completely devoted to her and never took a mistress, exhibiting a restraint virtually unheard of in an 18th-century French king. -
Louis XVI (Louis Auguste), former king of France since the abolition of the monarchy, was publicly executed on 21 January 1793 during the French Revolution ... -
representatives of the non-clergy and non-nobles of France swore they would not disperse until a constitution was established for France. -
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, which was formed by the assembly of the Estates General to draft a new Constitution, and precede it with a declaration of principles. -
Concerned over the high price and scarcity of bread, women from the marketplaces of Paris led the March on Versailles on October 5, 1789 -
On the morning of July 14, 1789, hundreds of Parisians stormed the Bastille, a state prison, seizing 250 barrels of gunpowder and freeing its prisoners. The storming of the Bastille was a pivotal moment in the French Revolution, the violent result of a multitude of social, economic, and political crises. -
The French Revolution was a period of political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789, and ended with the coup of 18 -
The Reign of Terror, also called the Terror, was a period of state-sanctioned violence and mass executions during the French Revolution. Between Sept. 5, 1793, and July 27, 1794, France's revolutionary government ordered the arrest and execution of thousands of people -
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 event is often viewed as the effective end of the French Revolution. -
Napoleon Bonaparte, later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French emperor and military commander who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. -
Enacted on March 21, 1804, the resulting Civil Code of France marked the first major revision and reorganization of laws since the Roman era. The Civil Code (renamed the Code Napoleon in 1807) addressed mainly matters relating to property and families. -
On the 2nd of December 1804 Napoleon crowned himself Emperor Napoleon I at Notre Dame de Paris. According to legend, during the coronation he snatched the crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII and crowned himself, thus displaying his rejection of the authority of the Pontiff. -
The only major battle of the campaign, at Borodino on 7 September 1812, ended with a territorial gain for Napoleon but at a very high cost. 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—lasted from May 1814 to March 1815. -
And yet almost every historian since 1815 has stated unequivocally that the battle was won by the armies of the Duke of Wellington and his Prussian ally General Gebhard Blücher, and that France's defeat at Waterloo effectively put an end to Napoleon's reign as emperor.