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Louis XVI crowned King of France
Immediately after King Louis XV's death, Louis XVI was crowned as the King of France, and he continued the Absolute Monarchy. -
American Revolution Begins
By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. -
Calling of the Estates-General
In 1789, the King Louis XVI called a meeting of the Estates General. It was the first meeting of the Estates General called since 1614. He called the meeting because the French government was having financial problems. -
Formation of the National Assembly
During the French Revolution, the National Assembly, which existed from June 13, 1789 to July 9, 1789, was a revolutionary assembly formed by the representatives of the Third Estate -
The Tennis Court Oath
On June 20th, 1789, the members of the French Estates-General for the Third Estate, who had begun to call themselves the National Assembly, took the Tennis Court Oath, vowing "not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established". -
Attack on the Bastille
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. -
French Women force Louis XVI to leave Versailles
The Women's March on Versailles was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. The march began among women in the marketplaces of Paris who, on the morning of 5 October 1789, were near rioting over the high price and scarcity of bread. -
Declaration of war against Austria
By 1792, European Monarchs were eyeing France with suspicion. They had seen the overthrow of Louis XVI, by the French people, and worried that revolutionary fervor would spread to their countries. However, the monarchs were too suspecting of each other to unite against France. On April 20, 1792, the Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria. Although the French fared poorly at first, the armies became more successful as the war progressed. -
The National Convention is formed
The National Convention was elected to provide a new constitution for the country after the overthrow of the monarchy. The Convention numbered 749 deputies, including businessmen, tradesmen, and many professional men. Among its early acts were the formal abolition of the monarchy, and the establishment of the republic. -
Louis XVI is executed
The execution of Louis XVI, by means of the guillotine, took place on 21 January 1793 at the Place de la Révolution in Paris. It was a major event of the Revolution. The king was convicted in a near-unanimous vote and condemned to death by a large majority. -
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Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror or The Terror is the label given by some historians to a period during the French Revolution after the First French Republic was established. Between June 1793 and the end of July 1794, there were 16,594 official death sentences in France, of which 2,639 were in Paris. However, the total number of deaths in France was much higher, owing to death in imprisonment, suicide and casualties in foreign and civil war. -
The Thermidorian Reaction
On 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), the French politician Maximilien Robespierre was denounced by members of the National Convention as "a tyrant", leading to Robespierre and twenty-one associates including Louis Antoine de Saint-Just being arrested that night and beheaded on the following day. -
The Directory is formed
Directory, French Directoire, the French Revolutionary government set up by the Constitution of the Year III, which lasted four years, from November 1795 to November 1799. -
Napoleon Takes power
After seizing political power in France in a 1799 coup d’état, he crowned himself emperor in 1804. Shrewd, ambitious and a skilled military strategist, Napoleon successfully waged war against various coalitions of European nations and expanded his empire. -
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Napoleon Invades Russia
The French invasion of Russia, known in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812 and in France as the Russian Campaign, began on 24 June 1812 when Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed the Neman River in an attempt to engage and defeat the Russian army. -
Napoleons defeat at Waterloo
Exiled to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, he escaped to France in early 1815 and set up a new regime. At Waterloo in Belgium, Napoleon Bonaparte suffers defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington, bringing an end to the Napoleonic era of European history.
