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Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker was a Genevan banker and statesman who served as finance minister for Louis XVI. He was a reformer, but his innovations sometimes caused great discontent. -
Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges was a French playwright and political activist. She is best known for her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen and other writings on women's rights and abolitionism. Born in southwestern France, de Gouges began her prolific career as a playwright in Paris in the 1780s. -
Louis XVI
Louis XVI was the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. The son of Louis, Dauphin of France, and Maria Josepha of Saxony, Louis became the new Dauphin when his father died in 1765 -
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I -
Georges Danton
Georges Jacques Danton; was a French lawyer and a leading figure in the French Revolution. He became a deputy to the Paris Commune, presided in the Cordeliers district, and visited the Jacobin club -
Jacobins
The Society of the Friends of the Constitution, renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club or simply the Jacobins, was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789 -
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Calling of the Estates General
was a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm summoned by Louis XVI to propose solutions to France's financial problems. It ended when the Third Estate formed into a National Assembly, signaling the outbreak of the French Revolution. -
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Tennis Court Oath
The Tennis Court Oath was a key moment that set off the French Revolution. On June 20, 1789, the Tennis Court Oath was taken. There, the men of the National Assembly swore an oath never to stop meeting until a constitution had been established. -
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Attack on the Bastille
when revolutionary insurgents attempted to storm and seize control of the medieval armoury, fortress and political prison known as the Bastille. -
Sans-culottes
The sans-culottes were the common people of the lower classes in late 18th-century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the Ancien Régime. -
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Reign of Terror
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 took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety -
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The Directory is formed
The Directory was the governing five-member committee in the French First Republic from 26 October 1795 until 10 November 1799, when it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup of 18 Brumaire and replaced by the Consulate. Directoire is the name of the final four years of the French Revolution