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Palace of Versailles built for the King -
Versailles before the reign of Louis was mostly used as a royal hunting lodge; but Louis had other plans for it. In 1661, he began expanding it into his personal palace. -
At Versailles, Louis, the French dauphin, marries Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Austrian Archduchess Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. France hoped their marriage would strengthen its alliance with Austria, its longtime enemy. -
A new Constitution -
The start of it all
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a commitment to a national constitution and representative government -
revolutionaries stormed and seized control of the medieval armory -
one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution -
One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention -
a period of state-sanctioned violence and mass executions during the French Revolution. -
coup d'état that overthrew the system of government under the Directory in France and substituted the Consulate -
Napoleon takes power/loses power.
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Civil Code of France marked the first major revision and reorganization of laws since the Roman era -
Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor -
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 -
Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and one of the greatest military leaders in history, abdicates the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba -
The Battle of Waterloo, in which Napoleon's forces were defeated by the British and Prussians, marked the end of his reign and of France's domination in Europe