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Parisians Storming the Bastille
On July 14, 1789, France's newly constituted National Assembly led a crowd of Parisians to successfully besiege the Bastille, an old fortress that had been used since 1659 as a state prison. -
Louis XVI calls the Estates General
Estates-General of 1789. Louis XVI convened the Estates-General in 1788, setting the date of its opening for May 1, 1789. -
Tennis Court Oath
representatives of the non-clergy and non-nobles of France swore they would not disperse until a constitution was established for France. -
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
The Marquis de Lafayette, with the help of Thomas Jefferson, composed a draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and presented it to the National Assembly on July 11, 1789. -
March on Versailles
Concerned over the high price and scarcity of bread, women from the marketplaces of Paris led the March on Versailles on October 5, 1789. This became one of the most significant events of the French Revolution, eventually forcing the royals to return to Paris. -
Execution of the King and Queen
Louis XVI was executed on orders from the National Convention in January 1793, and in August the queen was put in solitary confinement in the Conciergerie. -
King Louis XVII Begins His Reign
When his father was executed on 21 January 1793, during the middle period of the French Revolution, he automatically succeeded as King of France, Louis XVII, in the eyes of the royalists. -
King Luis XVII Begins His Reign
At the death of his father on 21 January 1793, royalists and foreign powers intent on restoring the monarchy held him to be the new king of France, with the title of Louis XVII. -
Reign of Terror
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 -
Napoleon Overthrows the Directory
The coup d'état of 18 Brumaire brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power as First Consul of France. In the view of most historians, it ended the French Revolution and led to the coronation of Napoleon as emperor. This bloodless coup d'état overthrew the Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate. -
Napoleon Builds an Empire
Napoleon built his empire through conquest of territories belonging to his enemies. Napoleon greatly assisted in defeating the First Coalition in 1792–1797, in which the newly formed French republic annexed a part of the Rhine and also the formerly Austrian Netherlands, in addition to client states. -
Napoleon Invades Russia
On June 24, 1812, the Grande Armée, led by French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, crossed the Neman River, invading Russia from present-day Poland. The result was a disaster for the French. The Russian army refused to engage with Napoleon's Grande Armée of more than 500,000 European troops. -
6th Coalition Occupies Paris
Following Napoleon's retreat from Russia and the subsequent defeat of his army by the Sixth Coalition at Leipzig (1813), the armies of the Sixth Coalition invaded France and advanced toward Paris, which capitulated on March 31, 1814. -
The Congress of Vienna Meets
The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. -
Napoleon Defeated at Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on 18 June 1815 between Napoleon's French Army and a coalition led by the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blücher. The decisive battle of its age, it concluded a war that had raged for 23 years, ended French attempts to dominate Europe, and destroyed Napoleon's imperial power forever.