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It was a small country residence and, according to the Maréchal de Bassompierre, “a mere gentleman would not have been overly proud of the construction.” Louis XIII decided to rebuild it in 1631. Construction continued until 1634 and laid the basis of the Palace we know today.
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In 1661, he began expanding it into his personal palace. Upon its completion in 1682, Louis moved in, and changed the capital from Paris to Versailles to escape the turmoil Paris was subject to.
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History is made by people – people who have likes and dislikes, who love and hate, who possess virtues as well as flaws. Kings and queens, living on a large stage, experience more spectacular successes and more dramatic failures than most of us, but ultimately they are just people
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The French Revolution began in May 1789 when the Ancien Régime was abolished in favour of a constitutional monarchy. Its replacement in September 1792 by the First French Republic led to the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793 and an extended period of political turmoil.
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On 20 June 1789, the members of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath French: Serment du Jeu de Paume, voting "not to separate and to reassemble wherever necessary, until the Constitution of the kingdom is established". It was a pivotal event in the French Revolution.
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On 14 July 1789, a state prison on the east side of Paris, known as the Bastille, was attacked by an angry and aggressive mob. The prison had become a symbol of the monarchy's dictatorial rule, and the event became one of the defining moments in the Revolution that followed.
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On 26 August 1789, the French National Constituent Assembly issued the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen which defined individual and collective rights at the time of the French Revolution.
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The Women's March on Versailles, also known as the October March, the October Days or simply the March on Versailles, was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution.
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One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris. On January 21, he walked steadfastly to the guillotine and was executed.
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also known as The Terror, was a period of violence during the French Revolution incited by conflict between two rival political factions, the Girondins moderate republicans and the Jacobins radical republicans, and marked by mass executions of “the enemies of
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Coup of 18–19 Brumaire, (November 9–10, 1799), 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.
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Napoléon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814, and again in 1815
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Napoleonic Code, French Code Napoléon, French civil code enacted on March 21, 1804, and still extant, with revisions. ... It was the main influence on the 19th-century civil codes of most countries of continental Europe and Latin America.
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On May 18, 1804, Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor, and made Josephine Empress. His coronation ceremony took place on December 2, 1804, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, with incredible splendor and at considerable expense.
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In the summer of 1812 Napoleon gathered his fearsome Grande Armée, more than half a million strong, on the banks of the Niemen River. He was about to undertake the most daring of all his many campaigns: the invasion of Russia.
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The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815, near Waterloo in Belgium, part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands at the time.
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Exiled to the island of Elba, he escaped to France in early 1815 and raised a new Grand Army that enjoyed temporary success before its crushing defeat at Waterloo against an allied force under Wellington on June 18, 1815. Napoleon was subsequently exiled to the island of Saint Helena off the coast of Africa.
