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May 5, 1789 Meeting with Estates General
The heads of each Estate of France met to discuss issues in their lives. Because nothing was accomplished, the 3rd Estate left the government to make their own government. -
Tennis Court Oath
Members of the third estate gathered and vowed that they would "never separate and to reassemble wherever necessary until the Constitution of the kingdom is established. This showed the growing unrest of the Louis the 16th and laid the foundation for later events. -
The Storming of the Bastille
When a prison in paris known as the Bastille was attacked by an angry mob, and after a violent battle the mob eventually took hold of the building. The success of the revolutionaries gave commoners throughout France the courage to rise up and fight against the nobles who had ruled them for so long. -
Declaration of the Rights of Man
a fundamental document of the French Revolution that granted civil rights to some commoners, although it excluded a significant segment of the French population. It became the basis for a nation of free individuals protected equally by law. -
Women's March on Versailles
It gave the revolutionaries confidence in the power of the people over the king. Driven to desperation by food shortages, they hoped the king would intervene – but some had more sinister ambitions. -
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Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror was a period where many first, second, and third estate members were targeted and executed. As a result, paranoia and mistrust spread across the people of France. -
Maximillian Robespierre's execution
He was executed by guillotine. Maximilien Robespierre was executed for the excesses of the "Reign of Terror" and acting in a dictatorial way. -
Napoleonic Code is established
The 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. -
Napoleon Crowns himself emperor
Napoleon's elevation to emperor was overwhelmingly approved by the French citizens in the French constitutional referendum of 1804. Among Napoleon's motivations for being crowned were to gain prestige in international royalist and Catholic circles and to lay the foundation for a future dynasty -
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Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was the military conflict fought by Spain, the United Kingdom and Portugal against the invading and occupying forces of France for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars -
Napoleon and his men march on Russia
In June 1812 Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed the Niemen River to engage and defeat the Russian army. The French invasion of Russia was begun by Napoleon to force Russia back into the Continental blockade of the United Kingdom. -
Napoleon is exiled to Elba
After Napoleon Bonaparte's disastrous campaign in Russia ended in defeat, he was forced into exile on Elba. He retained the title of emperor. But it was of the Mediterranean island's 12,000 inhabitants, not the 70 million Europeans over whom he'd once had dominion. -
Napoleon dies
Napoleon was subsequently exiled to the island of Saint Helena off the coast of Africa. Six years later, he died, most likely of stomach cancer, and in 1840 his body was returned to Paris, where it was interred in the Hotel des Invalides. -
Execution of King Louis XVI
He was executed for treason. Louis had failed to address France's financial problems, instigating the French Revolution that eventually descended upon him.