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France Socially Divided
1700s... France socially divided, It was divided into three estates. The First Estate was the Catholic clergy, the Second Estate was made up of the French nobles and the Third Estate was the vast majority of the population, the common people. -
Tennis Court Oath
a pivotal event during the first days of the French Revolution. The Oath was a pledge signed by 576 of the 577 members from the Third Estate who were locked out of a meeting of the Estates-General on 20 June 1789. They made a makeshift conference room inside a tennis court located in the Saint-Louis district of Versailles (commune), near the Palace of Versailles. -
Fall of the Bastille
occurred in Paris on the morning of 14 July 1789. The medieval fortress and prison in Paris known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the center of Paris. While the prison only contained seven inmates at the time of its storming, its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution. -
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
a law passed on 12 July 1790 during the French Revolution, that subordinated the Roman Catholic Church in France to the French government. -
Rights of Man
a book by Thomas Paine, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard its people, their natural rights, and their national interests. Using these points as a base it defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke's attack in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). -
Battle of Valmy
the first major victory by the army of France during the French Revolution. The action took place on 20 September 1792 as Prussian troops commanded by the Duke of Brunswick attempted to march on Paris -
King and Queen executed
was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793. Succeeding Louis XV, his unpopular grandfather, Louis XVI was well aware of the growing discontent of the French population against the absolute monarchy. The first part of his reign is marked by his attempts to reform the kingdom in accordance with the Enlightenment ideals -
Reign of Terror 1793-94
On 2 June 1793, Paris sections – encouraged by the enragés Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert – took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread, and a limitation of the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone. With the backing of the National Guard, they persuaded the Convention to arrest 31 Girondist leaders, including Jacques Pierre Brissot. On 13 July the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat. -
death of robespierre
a French lawyer, politician, and one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. As a member of the Estates-General, of the Constituent Assembly and of the Jacobin Club, he defended the abolition of slavery and of the death penalty, he supported equality of rights, universal suffrage and the establishment of a republic. -
Napoleon overthrorows Directory
On November 9th Napoleon Bonarparte overthrew the failing French Directory. Napoleon had arrived unannounced from Egypt at Frejus. With the help of Sieyes and Roger-Ducos as well his brother Lucien he succeeded in ending the Directory and becoming first consul of France. -
Concordat
was an agreement between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII, signed on 15 July 1801. It solidified the Roman Catholic Church as the majority church of France and brought back most of its civil status -
Napolenonic Code
the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified -
Napoleon becomes emperor
he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815. His legal reform, the Napoleonic Code, has been a major influence on many civil law jurisdictions worldwide, but he is best remembered for his role in the wars led against France by a series of coalitions, the so-called Napoleonic Wars. He established hegemony over most of continental Europe and sought to spread the ideals of the French Revolution, while consolidating an imperial monarchy which restored aspects of the deposed ancien régime. Due to -
Continental System
The continental system was the name given to those measures of Napoleon Bonaparte taken between 1806 and 1812 that were designed to disrupt the export trade of Great Britain and ultimately to bring that country financial ruin and social breakdown. This term likewise refers to Bonaparte's plan to develop the economy of continental Europe, with France to be the main beneficiary. -
invasion of Russia
The French invasion of Russia of 1812 also known as the Patriotic War of 1812, Russian. was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars. It reduced the French and allied invasion forces to a tiny fraction of their initial strength and triggered a major shift in European politics as it dramatically weakened French hegemony in Europe. The reputation of Napoleon I as an undefeated military genius was severely shaken, while the French Empire's former all -
Congress of Vienna
a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815.The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. This objective resulted in the redrawing of the continent's political map, establishing the boundaries of France, the Duchy of Warsaw, the Netherlands, the states of the Rhine, the German province of Saxo -
Waterloo
was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. An Imperial French army under the command of Emperor Napoleon was defeated by combined armies of the Seventh Coalition, an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington combined with a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher. It was the culminating battle of the Waterloo Campaign and Napoleon's last. Put end to Napoleon's rule as Emperor .
