The French Revolution by Davidson
Ref: Ian Davidson (2018). The French Revolution. From Enlightenment to Tyranny. Pegasus Books.
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Summary
French Revolution (aka Le Marseillaise, ‘Liberte, Fraternite, Galite’, Ou La Mort).
Resulted in the abolition of the French Monarchy, emancipation of the Individual, nominal establishment of equality, abolition of the concept of Noble Birth. Triggered a Global Decline of absolute monarchies, replacing them with republics and liberal democracies and was the birth of Total War by organizing the resources of France and the lives of its citizens towards the objective of military conquest.
Causes
Increasing French population unmatched by economic growth; wages did not keep pace with prices, with the result that large swathes of the population were regularly afflicted by economic hardship, harvest failures and hunger. The hardship and the hunger became much more severe in the 1780s, with a long succession of cold winters, wet summers and harvest shortfalls.
The trigger for the Revolution was the King’s progressive recognition that the French state was virtually bankrupt and that he needed help to solve his financial difficulties. But the most profound political reason for the Revolution was that the King and his predecessors had, over many decades, repeatedly adopted policies which alienated all those who might have helped him solve his problems, including, crucially, both the nobility and the bourgeoisie.
The traditional avenues of advancement in a France dominated by the monarchy were the army and the Church; but under rules laid down by the monarchy, and significantly tightened earlier in the early 18c under Louis XV, no one could be promoted to any serious level in either field unless they were aristocrats.
Due to the enlightenment, there were now more and more educated and able young men, part of the significant and growing middle class, and they wanted a bigger share in the system and were deeply frustrated by the exclusionary rules of the ancien regime.
Bread was an absolutely vital element in the popular diet and could generally account for half of a working family’s budget; in periods of crisis, as in July 1789, it could even rise to as much as 80%. As a result, the supply and price of bread became determining factors in the course of the Revolution.
Following the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War, the French Government was deeply in debt and attempted to restore its financial status through unpopular, regressive taxation schemes.
The central theme of the Revolution was criticism of the nobility and the quasi-feudal privileges that the nobility enjoyed; and it was the pamphlet of Sieyès that brought this first phase into close focus.
Their most important political innovations were to have declared overtly the principle of the sovereignty of the people, as opposed to the sovereignty of the King or of any other intermediary institution; and to have set out their political principles in a Declaration of the Rights of Man.
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Major Events
Jun, 1789: The Estates General meets near Versailles.
17 Jun, 1789: The Third Estate renames itself the National Assembly.
20 Jun, 1789: The Tennis Court Oath; the Third Estate swears to draw up a French Constitution.
27 Jun, 1789: The Estates General becomes the National Assembly.
14 July, 1789: Storming of the Bastille.
4 Aug, 1789: The National Assembly orders the end of French Feudalism.
Aug, 1789: The National Assembly passes the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
5 Oct, 1789: The March on Versailles forces King Louis XVI to accept the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Nov, 1789: The National Assembly nationalizes the church.
21 May, 1790: Paris Municipal Elections; the 60 districts are reorganized into 48 sections, each with an elected assembly. The Paris Municipal Council is called the Commune.
12 Jul, 1790: The National Assembly enacts a new Constitution civile du clergé. The church must become part of the civil society of France.
30 Sep, 1791: The National Assembly closes. The National Legislative Assembly Opens with entirely new members.
20 Apr, 1792: The National Legislative Assembly votes for War with Austria.
Jul, 1792: The National Legislative Assembly plans to overthrow the King.
10 Aug, 1792: Peoples coup; the Sans Culottes (Commune insurrectionnelle) rise up against the National Legislative Assembly, establishing the Convention.
Sep, 1792: The National Legislative Assembly fails, the Convention takes over.
21 Sep, 1792: The Convention puts an end to the French Monarchy.
Jan, 1793: Trial and Death of French King Louis XVI.
Jan, 1793: France declares War on England.
9 Mar, 1793: The Revolutionary Tribunals begin.
6 Apr, 1793: The Comité de Salut Public (CSP- Committee of Public Safety) is established.
May, 1793: A 9-man insurrectionary committee is established.
2 June, 1793: Peoples Coup (uprising); Hanriot musters a force of 80K armed men from the Sections and surrounds the Convention demanding the immediate arrest of the 22 Girondin députés.
Jun, 1793: Overthrow of the Girondins.
29 Sep, 1793: The Loi Des Suspects is passed.
10 May, 1794: The CSP control of the commune after arresting Paris Mayor Pache and replacing him with Lescot-Fleuriot, a loyal Robespierrist.
10 Jun, 1794: The Loi des 22 is passed; ‘the Terror’ begins.
27 Jul, 1794 (9 Thermidor II): Fall of Robespierre and the end of ‘the Terror.’ The Thermidorian Convention begins.
23 May, 1795: The French Thermidorian Convention musters a force to violently quell protests in Paris.
22 Aug, 1795: The Directorate is created as a five-person Directoire.
4 Sep, 1797: French coup de fructidor; the elections of 177 right wing deputes are canceled.
11 May, 1798: French Coup de Floréal; the Directoire disqualifies 106 undesirable députés so as to ensure a comfortable majority of moderates in the Conseils.
Apr, 1799: In French Parliamentary Elections, Neo-Jacobins win a majority of seats and pressure the Directoire towards Jacobinism.
Nov, 1799: Military Coup; Napoleon overthrows the Directorate and establishes the Consulate with Napoleon, Sieyes, and Roger as the three consuls. The French Revolution ends.
1803: The Napoleonic Wars begin.
Jun, 1815: French forces under Napoleon are defeated at Waterloo.
1815: The Congress of Vienna declares the Restoration of the French Monarchy.
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Political Clubs/Ideologies
Club des Cordeliers: The Society of Friends of the Right of Man and of the Citizen, affiliated with the Mountain and led by Danton, Robert, Hebert.
Club Breton (aka Société des Amis de la Constitution, ‘Jacobins’): The first political club started during the French Revolution. It had been setup in Versailles during the États généraux, by a group of Deputies, in the monastery of the order of the Jacobins. The Jacobins sought a republican government without a monarch of any kind and received their main support from the Sans-Culottes. Advocated for equality and the elimination of all political and civil distinctions.
Girondins: Moderate political ideology advocating for a constitutional monarchy supported by a progressive noble and conservative middle class; soughs low change.
Montagnards (Mountains): Created in 1792 as a merger of the Cordeliers and the Jacobins. The most radical of the French Revolutionary Political groups, led by Robespierre. Opposed the Girondins. Believed in liberal values, including the independence of elected representatives, supported by the Sans-Culottes, who advocated for direct democracy, and voting out loud and in public.
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The États généraux (Estates General)
The Estates (États): The people of France, divided into three hierarchically distinct États: the clergy at the top, followed by the nobility, and the commoners, the Third Estate (tiers état), at the bottom. The meeting of the États généraux led directly not to the solution of the King’s finances but to the start of the Revolution, because the most important question most commonly raised in the cahiers was the unavoidable issue of political legitimacy.
The First Estate (the Clergy): There were 120K members of the clergy. At the top were 139 bishops, who were very rich, very powerful and very privileged, and all, of course, members of the nobility; at the bottom were 35K parish priests, most of whom were almost as poor as their parishioners.
The Revolutionaries referred to monks and nuns as ‘idlers’ or fainéants (do-nothings).
There was substantial strain of anticlerical sentiment, based largely on resentment at the multifarious privileges that the Church enjoyed under the ancien regime.
The Second Estate (Nobility): Aristocrats that comprised a tiny minority (<<1%) of the population.
The Third Estate (Commoners):
What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it ask? To be something.-Sieyès.
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French Constitution
There was a widespread sense of support, from all three orders, for the idea that the États généraux should insist on the establishment of a Constitution before introducing any solution to the financial crisis.
Many of the cahiers, from the noblesse as well as from the tiers état, advocated making use of the value of Church property, either to reduce the state debt or to alleviate poverty. It all added up to a demand, from all sides, for a constitution which would limit the powers of the King and create a system of national representation with the right to authorize taxation and make laws.
The principle of laïcité (secularism) has been one of the central tenets of French civic law ever since and is enshrined in the first article of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, which is still in force: ‘France is an indivisible, secular [laïque,] democratic and social Republic. It ensures equality before the law of all citizens without distinction of origin, race or religion. It respects every belief.
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The Rights of Man
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the citizen (Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen):Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the French Revolution and symbolizes the moment when the Revolutionaries were at their best and trying their hardest to make a better world and a better form of government. Possibly the first attempt to draft all the essential principles of an emerging democracy in a nation state.
One of the chief sources of inspiration for the députés was the American Declaration of Independence of 1776. The Americans were claiming what they believed were the rights of Englishmen; the French were denying the rights of Louis XVI.
Preamble: ‘The ignorance, the disregard or the contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of the public ills and of the corruption of governments’ and that ‘the Representatives of the French People’ have therefore resolved to set out, in a solemn Declaration, the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man, in order that the acts of the legislative power, and those of the executive power ... can at any moment be compared with the objectives of any political institution ... Therefore, the National Assembly recognizes and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Article 1: Principle of equality. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
Article 2: The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
Article 3: The source of all sovereignty is the nation (and therefore not the King).
Article 4: Liberty consists in being able to do anything which does not harm others.
Article 5: The law can forbid only acts that are harmful to…others (including their liberty).
Article 6: The law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right, directly or indirectly through their representatives to contribute ... to its formulation. All citizens are equal in the eye of the law.
Article 7: No man can be accused, arrested or detained except in circumstances laid down by law.
Article 8: The law must prescribe only punishments which are strictly and obviously necessary.
Article 9: Every man [must be] presumed innocent until he is proved guilty.
Article 10: Freedom of thought and expression: ‘Nobody can be persecuted for his opinions, even religious opinions, provided their expression does not disturb the public order’.
Article 11: The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man.
Article 12: The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are established for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be entrusted.
Article 13: A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.
Article 14: All citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes.
Article 15: Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.
Article 16: A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all.
Article 17: Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.
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The Terror
~300K (Mathiez & Soboul) to 500K (Greer) were arrested during the Terror. To put this into perspective, the French population at the time was around 28M, so the top estimate of arrests would have been about 1.8% of the total,~5% of adult males.
Guillotining took place in the Place de la Concorde.
If one counts only those executed after trial before some kind of formal tribunal, and killed one by one, the recorded number of Terror victims is ~16,594, of whom half were executed during the first wave of the Terror, between November 1793 and January 1794.
43% of those who played a role in the Revolution for history to have recorded their names had a violent death.
~16-40K were executed by guillotine as enemies of the state.
Marxist Interpretation: Terror was a necessary response to outside threats (in terms of other countries going to war with France) and internal threats (of traitors inside France threatening to frustrate the revolution).
In a period of fifteen months, 1,251 people had been guillotined, but from the passage of the Law of 22 prairial in June 1794 to the fall of Robespierre six weeks later, the number of people executed reached 1,376.
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People
Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794): ‘The incorruptible’; lawyer and French Revolutionary Leader from Arras who was one of the best known, influential, and controversial figures of the French Revolution. Robespierre was a member of the Estates General, the National Legislative Assembly, leader of the Paris Commune, the CSP, and the leader of the Jacobin and Mountain political clubs. He advocated for universal male suffrage, the abolition of clerical celibacy, the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, and the creation of a unified French state with equality before the law.
Emmanuel Sieyès (1748-1836): The intellectual leader of the radicals in the early phase of the French Revolution. Argued that the ultimate political reality, predating all constitutional forms, was the nation. ‘The nation exists before everything else, it is the origin of everything. Its will is always legal, it is the law itself.’
Glibert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834): Adulated as the ‘Hero of Two Worlds.’ French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War, commanding American troops in several battles including the siege of Yorktown and was a key figure in France during the French Revolution. His reputation was fatally damaged by the massacre at the Champ de Mars.
Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793): An early French Feminist, suffragette, and author, sentenced to death for sedition and royalism on 2 Nov, 1793.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821): French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution, leading several successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. He was the de factor leader of the French Republic as First Consul from 1799-1804 and as Emperor from 1804 to 1815.
Napoleon’s height was recorded at 5'2" in French feet which correlates to 5'6.5" in English Feet.
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Misc Quotes
“Robespierre will go far because he believes everything he says.”-Mirabeau.
In Amiens and in Rouen the demonstrating crowds shouted the slogan ‘Some bread and a King!’ (Du pain et un roi!); in Paris the cry was more Revolutionary: ‘Some bread and the Constitution of 1793!’ (Du pain et la Constitution de 1793!
‘If a woman has the right to mount the scaffold. She must have an equal right to mount the speaker’s platform.’-Gouges (early French feminist).
“Necessity is perhaps leading us to results about which we have not thought. Wealth is in the hands of a fairly large number of enemies of the Revolution; need puts working people into a state of dependence on their enemies ... The property of patriots is sacred, but the property of conspirators is there for all the needy. The poor are the powers of the earth. They have the right to talk with authority to governments which fail to look after them.-Robespierre.
“One doesn’t carry the country on the soles of one’s shoes.”-Danton (on being advised to escape).
‘Liberty is only an empty phrase when one class of men can starve another with impunity; equality is only an empty phrase when the rich exercise the right of life and death over their fellow men.-Roux (on the inequalities of French Society).
‘That is why 9 thermidor’ (27 Jul, 1794) is such a profound dividing line in the history of the Revolution. It is the end of the Revolution because it is the victory of representative legitimacy over Revolutionary legitimacy ... and as Marx says, the revenge of real society over the illusions of politics. If the death of Robespierre has that meaning, it cannot be because he was honest, and the Thermidoriens [those who overthrew him] corrupt. It is because he was, more than anyone else, the Revolution in power.-Furet.
‘War’ is always the first wish of a powerful government which wants to become still more powerful ... It is in war that the executive power deploys the most fearful energy and exercises a sort of dictatorship which can only frighten our emerging liberties; it is in war that the people forget those principles which are most directly concerned with civil and political rights and think only of events abroad, that they turn their attention from their political representatives and their magistrates and instead pin all their interest and all their hopes on their generals and their ministers ... It is during war that a habit of passive obedience, and an all too natural enthusiasm for successful military leaders, transforms the soldiers of the nation into the soldiers of the King or of his generals. [Thus] the leaders of the armies become the arbiters of the fate of their country, and swing the balance of power in favour of the faction that they have decided to support. If they are Caesars or Cromwell’s, they seize power themselves.-Robespierre to the Jacobins (18 Dec, 1791).
‘The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a politician is to believe that it is enough for a people to enter among a foreign people by force of arms to make them adopt its laws and its Constitution. Nobody loves armed missionaries; and the first advice that nature and prudence give is to reject them as enemies.-Robespierre to the Jacobins (2 Jan, 1792).
‘Extreme inequality of wealth is the source of many evils and many crimes.’-Robespierre (24 Apr, 1793).
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Terminology
Armée Révolutionnaire
Primary Purpose: Ensure adequate food supplies by commandeering what was required, by force if necessary.
Secondary Purpose: Act as the paramilitary arm of the Terreur and to enforce the Law of Suspects.
Livre: Pound, originally of silver; the main unit of French currency. The livre is broken down into 20 sous (sol- singular), and the sol is broken down into 12 deniers.
Pound: The main unit of British currency. The pound was subdivided into 20 schillings, and the schilling broken down into 12 pennies or pence.
Saint-Domingue: French Slave Colony; its plantations produced enormous wealth in the form of sugar, rum, coffee and cotton with an economy essentially built on the slave trade; the dominant and slave-owning population consisted of 30,000 whites, but all the work was done by 500,000 black slaves. In between were 27,000 mulattoes, who were free but not white.
Thermidor: A retreat from more radical goals and strategies during a revolution.
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Chronology
28 Apr, 1969: Resignation of French President Charles de Gaulle.-French Revolution by Davidson.
5 Oct, 1958: Rise of the French Fifth Republic under de Gaulle following the failure of the French Fourth Rep due to the postcolonial crisis over Algeria.-French Revolution by Davidson.
1945: Rise of the French Fourth Rep. following the collapse of the Vichy Regime at the end of WWII.-French Revolution by Davidson.
1940: Rise of the Vichy regime under WWI Military Hero Phillipe Pétain following the German defeat of France in WWII.-French Revolution by Davidson.
1894: The Second Franco-Prussian War; collapse of the French Second Empire following French defeat by a coalition of Prussian states.-French Revolution by Davidson.
4 Sep, 1870: Rise of the French 3rd Republic following Napoleon III’s defeat at the Battle of Sedan (Wiki).
1870: First Franco-Prussian War; a coalition of Prussian states defeats France, leading to the overthrow of Napoléon III.-French Revolution by Davidson.
1-2 Sep, 1870: The Battle of Sedan and the fall of the French Second Empire; Prussian forces and their allies defeat French forces under Napoleon III, who is captured in battle along with <100K troops. (Wiki).
1852: Fall of the French Second Rep and rise of the French Second Empire after Napoleon III proclaims himself emperor (Wiki).
23 Feb, 1848: Rise of the French Second Rep. following the abdication of French King Louis-Philippe. Early demonstrations for electoral reforms turned into full-fledged revolution, with gunfire and barricades in the streets. At night, a crowd of Parisians surrounded the palace forcing King Louis-Philippe to abdicate and flee to England.-French Revolution by Davidson.
1830: Louis-Phillipe, surviving Bourbon son of the guillotined duc d’Orléans, assumes the throne of France following the overthrow of his cousin, Charles X (Wiki).
5 May, 1821: Death of Napoleon on the remote S. Atlantic Island of St. Helena (Wiki).
6 Dec, 1815: Death by firing squad of French Field Marshall Michel Ney, one of Napoleon's original 18 Field Marshall's.-French Revolution by Davidson.
“Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her ... Soldiers, fire!”-French Field Marshall Michel Ney.
15 Jul, 1815: Napoleon surrenders to the British at Rochefort. The Allies exile him to the remote South Atlantic Island of St. Helena (Wiki).
22 Jun, 1815: Abdication of Napoleon. Louis XVIII assumes the throne of France.-French Revolution by Davidson.
10 Mar- 18 Jun, 1815: War of the 7th Coalition (aka the 100 days); a coalition comprised of Britain, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, and several German states defeat a reconstituted French Force of ~280K soldiers under Napoleon, leading to the fall of Napoleon, the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the introduction of democracy to France, the cession of Norway from Denmark to Sweden, Belgium passed to Netherlands as a buffer state against France, the rise of Prussia as a great power, and led later to the independence of the Latin American colonies from Spain and Portugal. The Congress of Vienna produced a “balance of power” by resizing the main powers so they could balance each other out (Wiki).
18 Jun, 1815: Battle of Waterloo; a combined force of English under Wellington and Prussians under Blücher defeat French Forces under Napoleon (Wiki).
By late afternoon, the French Army had not succeeded in driving Wellington's forces from the escarpment (at waterloo) on which they stood. When the Prussians arrived and attacked the French right Flank in ever increasing numbers, Napoleon's strategy of keeping the coalition armies divided had failed and a combined coalition general advance drove his army from the field in confusion.
May-Jun, 1815: A French force of ~124K soldiers under Napoléon travel to Belgium on a pre-emptive strike against the allies (Wiki).
Mar, 1815: Napoleon lands at Cannes on 1 March following his escape from Elba and travels to Paris to overthrow King Louis XVIII and assume the throne of France (Wiki).
1812-1814: War of the 6th Coalition; a combined force from Prussia, Sweden, Austria, and several German states defeat the French and force the abdication of Napoleon and his exile to Elba (Wiki).
11 Apr, 1814: The Treaty of Fontainebleau is signed between the allies and the French, initiating the Congress of Vienna to redraw the map of Europe. Napoleon is exiled to Elba (Wiki).
6 Apr, 1814: Napoleon abdicates power (Wiki).
30 Mar, 1814: The 6th Coalition allies enter Paris (Wiki).
16-19 Oct, 1813: The Battle of Leipzig in Saxony (‘The Battle of Nations’). 191K French are defeated by a coalition force comprised of ~300K allies. French forces retreat back into France (Wiki).
26-27 Aug, 1813: The Battle of Dresden; French forces defeat a combined Austrian, Russian, Prussian force At Dresden (modern Germany) (Wiki).
Oct, 1812: French forces under Napoleon begin the disastrous great retreat from Moscow. By the time Napoleon returned across the Berezina River, only 27K fit soldiers survived with 380K men dead or missing and 100k captured. The Campaign effectively ended on 14 Dec, 1812, when the last troops left Russia (Wiki).
14 Sep, 1812: French forces under Napoleon enter Moscow after Russian forces retreat from the city (Wiki).
7 Sep, 1812: The Battle of Borodino; Russian forces led by Tsar Alexander I and French forces under Napoleon engage in the bloodiest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, fought with 250K men and 70K casualties (Wiki).
1812: Invasion of Russia by Napoleon with his 650K strong Pan-European Grande Armee. They cross the Niemen River on 24 Jun, 1812 (Wiki).
10 Apr- 14 Oct, 1809: War of the 5th Coalition; French forces defeat a combined British, Austrian, Russian force (Wiki).
14 Oct, 1809: The Treaty of Schönbrunn (aka Treaty of Vienna) is signed between France and Austria at Schönbrunn Palace near Vienna ending the War of the 5th Coalition (Wiki).
5-6 Jul, 1809: The Battle of Wagram; French forces under Napoleon defeat Austrian forces (Wiki).
1808-1809: War of the 4th Coalition: French Forces led by Napoleon defeat an allied European force led by Prussia resulting in the French takeover of Poland (Wiki).
Aug- Dec, 1805: War of the 3rd Coalition; French forces under Napoleon defeat an allied European force resulting in the defeat of Austria and the consolidation of power of Belgium, Netherlands, and Germany.
21 Oct, 1805: The Battle of Trafalgar; 27 British ships of the line led by Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson aboard HMS VICTORY defeat 33 French/Spanish ships of the line under French Admiral Villeneuve in the Atlantic off the SW coast of Spain. The Frano-Spanish fleet loses 22 ships without a single British vessel lost. The battle conclusively ended French plans to invade England; Admiral Nelson dies in Battle (Wiki).
"No Captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy."-Horatio Nelson.
1801: Napoléon and Pope Pius VII sign an agreement officially recognizing Catholicism as the religion of the great majority of the French people.-French Revolution by Davidson.
9 Nov, 1799: French Military Coup of 18 Brumaire and the end of the French Revolution; French troops under Napoleon overthrow the directorate, replacing it with the Consulate, with Napoleon, Sieyes, and Roger, as the three Consuls.-French Revolution by Davidson.
23 Aug, 1799: Bonaparte returns from Egypt to France (Wiki).
Apr, 1799: French Parliamentary Elections; Neo-Jacobins win the majority of seats and cancel the elections of the anti-Jacobin Directeurs, pressure Barras to change sides; and force another two Directeurs, Lépeaux and de Douai, to resign, replacing them with two who were more pro-Jacobin.-French Revolution by Davidson.
11 May, 1798: French Coup de Floréal; the Directoire disqualifies 106 undesirable députés so as to ensure a comfortable majority of moderates in the Conseils.-French Revolution by Davidson.
1798: War of the 2nd Coalition; a 35K strong French force under Napoleon seeking a colony in Egypt to disrupt British SLOCs in the Indian Ocean are defeated by the British Fleet under Horatio Nelson (Wiki).
1-3 Aug, 1798: The Battle of the Nile (aka The Battle of Aboukir Bay); 13 British ships of the line under Admiral Horatio Nelson splits his line in two and attacks the French splitting them in three, decisively defeating 13 French ships of the line led by Francois-Paul Brueys d'Ailleurs. Nelson’s fleet captures 9, destroys 2, kills 2000-5000 seaman with 3000-3900 captured, at a loss of 218 killed, 677 wounded (Wiki).
4 Sep, 1797: French coup de fructidor; French General Charles Augereau in the armée de l’Italie is recalled to Paris by Napoleon and is appointed commander of the capitals 17th Military Division. Augereau floods the city with troops and cancels the Apr, 1797 election results in 49 departments, disqualifying 177 right-wing députés.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Apr, 1797: French Elections produce a right-wing parliament in conflict with the policies of the Revolutionary rump of the Directoire, led by Barras, Lépeaux and Reubell. Barras calls on Bonaparte for support, and he agrees to help on the condition that the Directoire back the Treaty of Campoformio, a temporary peace with Austria.-French Revolution by Davidson.
9 Mar, 1796: Marriage of Napoleon to Joséphine from Martinique, the wife of guillotined General Alexandre de Beauharnais.-French Revolution by Davidson.
23 Sep, 1795: The French constitution is formally adopted.-French Revolution by Davidson.
22 Aug, 1795: A French constitution is approved by the Thermidorian Convention. It creates a five-person directorate (Directoire) nominated and elected by parliament each serving a 5y term with executive powers, and a bicameral legislature; the first chamber- ‘Le Conseil des Cinq-Cents (the Council of the Five Hundred)’ initiated the laws while the second council- ‘Le Conseil des Anciens (the Council of the Seniors)’ reviewed and rejected/approved the laws. There were rolling elections for both houses, one-third of the members each year, and for the five Directeurs, one each year. When submitted to a plebiscite, it is massively endorsed.-French Revolution by Davidson.
8 Jun, 1795: Death of French Dauphin Louis Charles, aged 10, likely while in jail.-French Revolution by Davidson.
5 Jun, 1795: The Massacre at Fort-Saint-Jean in Marseille during the Terreur Blanche; representatives of the French Thermidorian Convention slaughter some 100 Jacobin prisoners with sabres and grapeshot.-French Revolution by Davidson.
23 May, 1795: The French Thermidorian Convention musters a force of 20K men, including 3K cavalry, and send them into the rebellious faubourg Saint-Antoine. The leaderless sans-culottes surrender without a fight: the protests of prairial were over. Retribution followed their surrender. The new Military Commission, a right-wing successor to the left-wing Tribunal révolutionnaire, tried 149 rebels and sentenced 36 to death, 18 to prison and 12 to deportation. Those condemned to death included six of the Montagnard députés who had sided with the protestors; three of them committed suicide, but the other three went to the guillotine. There followed a vast wave of 1,200 arrests of suspects in the Sections, Jacobins and former Terrorists, even if they had had nothing to do with the demonstrations at the Convention. The Garde Nationale was purged of anybody who was politically unreliable, and on May 23 the CSP announced that the prisons were full.-French Revolution by Davidson.
May, 1795: Attempted French Coup; ~20K Paris insurgents under General Louis Danican take a large part of the capital while Paris Military Division General Menou hesitates to respond. The Thermidorian Convention replaces Menou with Barras who gathers several Generals he trusts including Napoleon. General Danican led his force along the Seine towards the Tuileries, where the Thermidorian Convention was housed, but artillery mobilized by Bonaparte mowed them down. The insurrectionists suffered about 200 dead or wounded; the defenders of the Convention slightly fewer. By 1800 the next evening, the forces of the Convention were victorious, and that was the end of the last Parisian insurrection of the Revolution. Bonaparte was well rewarded by Barras. Three days after helping to suppress the insurrection of vendémiaire, he was promoted to Deputy Commander of the armée de l’Intérieur; eight days later he was promoted from Brigadier to Lieutenant-General; and ten days after that, on October 26, 1795, he was the Commander-in-Chief of the armée de l’Intérieur. The next spring, on March 9, 1796, he married Joséphine de Beauharnais, and two days later he left Paris for Italy at the head of the armée de l’Italie, with which he was to make a fortune, for the army, for France and for himself, and a reputation as the country’s principal military hero.-French Revolution by Davidson.
7 May, 1795: Execution of Fouquier-Tinville and Herman, with 14 other members of the French Tribunal révolutionnaire.-French Revolution by Davidson.
4 May, 1795: The Terreur blanche; massacres of Jacobins across France beginning in Lyon with 100 murders and Aix-en-Provence with 40.-French Revolution by Davidson.
5 Apr, 1795: The first Peace of Basel; French forces formally occupy the left bank of the Rhine.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Apr, 1795: The French convention orders the disarming of the men known in their Section as having taken part in the horrors committed under the tyranny’, meaning all those who had contributed to the Terror launched by Robespierre. Since the carrying of arms had become, in the course of the Revolution, a symbol of Revolutionary citizenship, this implied the beginning of an overt class war against the sans-culottes, a sort of Loi des suspects in reverse.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Mar- Aug, 1795: The Thermidoriens devise a French Constitution with election rules bent to favour the better-off: to be a simple voter, a man had to be >21yo and to have paid some direct tax; but an elector who voted for a member of parliament – had to have paid tax equivalent to 100-200 days’ work (district dependent). This cut the number of electors to 30K for the whole of France (~.1% of the 28M population).-French Revolution by Davidson.
End, 1794: The French abandon the widely unpopular system of price control known as le maximum.-French Revolution by Davidson.
1794-1795: Rapid currency deflation in France; the assignat which had fallen to 31% of its face value at the time of the fall of Robespierre, falls further to 20& by December and 8% by the spring.-French Revolution by Davidson.
12 Nov, 1794: The French Thermidorian Convention closes the Jacobin club.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Fall, 1794: The French Convention (‘Thermidorians’) repeals the Law of 22 prairial (June 10, 1794), which had been introduced to deprive the accused of any form of defence in court. Many hundreds of prisoners, previously arrested as suspects under the Terror laws but not yet put on trial, were released, nearly 500 in Paris alone in the first few days after the fall of Robespierre. The Terror was at an end.-French Revolution by Davidson.
29 Jul, 1794: Execution of 73 members of the insurrectional Commune as rebels against the Convention, and 12 more the next day. The death toll directly connected with the coup d’état against Robespierre was 107.-French Revolution by Davidson.
28 Jul, 1794: Execution of Robespierre and his brother Augustin, Saint-Just, Couthon and Hanriot, together with 17 Robespierrists, convicted as outlaws. On the scaffold before Robespierre was guillotined, the bandage was ripped from his jaw, and he screamed in pain. Dumas was executed the same day.-French Revolution by Davidson.
27 Jul, 1794 (9 Thermidor II): Arrest of Robespierre amid mounting uproar while attempting to speak at the French Convention. Billaud-Varenne stood up and accused Robespierre of having sole responsibility for the Loi du 22 prairial and, in short, of being a tyrant; Tallien came forward, brandishing a dagger and demanding the arrest of Robespierre’s closest followers. The Convention immediately voted the arrest of François Hanriot, the Robespierrist General who commanded the Garde Nationale, and of René François Dumas, the Robespierrist President of the Tribunal révolutionnaire. Robespierre again tried to speak, but his voice was again drowned out, by the shouting and the incessant ringing of the President’s bell. Finally, a voice from the depths of the Convention, from an obscure député, Louis Louchet, a Dantonist, was heard shouting above the hubbub: ‘It’s time to conclude! Vote now on the arrest of Robespierre!’ The vote was held straight away and Robespierre’s arrest adopted unanimously. His younger brother, Augustin, asked to be included with him; as did Saint-Just, Couthon, and Lebas. All five are immediately arrested, but escape amidst a failing insurrection shortly after.-The French Revolution by Davidson.
Barras was tasked to raise a counter-force from the moderate and relatively bourgeois Sections; and it passed a decree declaring that the insurrectionists and all those who had escaped from arrest as outlaws; Robespierre and his colleagues could be executed on sight. Mustering the counter-force took time, and it was not until two o’clock in the morning that Barras put together a sufficient contingent, which then converged on the Hôtel de ville in two columns and rushed into the main hall where they found Robespierre and his allies writing an appeal to the armies. Robespierre’s younger brother, Augustin, threw himself out of a window and broke his leg on the stone pavement below. Lebas killed himself with a shot from a pistol. A pistol shot smashed Robespierre’s jaw, fired either by him in a suicide attempt or by one of the invading guards. Robespierre lay for many hours on a table in the Hôtel de ville, in great pain, with his jaw bandaged and bleeding, until his execution.-The French Revolution by Davidson.
22 Jul, 1794: Execution by Guillotine of General Alexandre de Beauharnais for having failed to defend Mainz from siege by the Austrians.-French Revolution by Davidson.
26 Jun, 1794: The Battle of Fleurus; the French Revolutionary armée de Sambre-et-Meuse under General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan defeat a combined Austrian, Dutch, and British force at Fleurus, near Charleroi, Belgium. After heavy losses of 4-5K on each side, the French expel the house of orange and install the Batavian Rep, moving to reconquer Belgium.-French Revolution by Davidson.
General Jourdan won more victories in Belgium, and Carnot wrote to him at the beginning of July 1794: ‘You must strip the country, and make it impossible for them [the Belgians] to give our enemies [the Austrians] any means of coming back.’ As French forces advanced, they carried out this strategy to the letter. Thousands of sacks of grain, thousands of cattle, millions of pints of wine, hundreds of thousands of rations of fodder were ferried back to France, as well as £50m in coin from the people of Brussels, £10m from Tournai, £3m from Deux-Ponts and £4m from Neustadt.-French Revolution by Davidson.
10 Jun, 1794: The Law of 22 prairial is passed by the French CSP, depriving those who accused in the Tribunal révolutionnaire of any form of defence: there would be no interrogation of the accused; no evidence was to be produced; no lawyers; no witnesses; and the tribunal could only choose acquittal or death, based not on evidence but on the moral conviction of the jurors. The intention was to speed up the trial process: each session of the Tribunal might be presented with large batches (fournées) of dozens of prisoners, often on completely unrelated charges. The Grande Terreur begins.-French Revolution by Davidson.
24 May, 1794: The CSP orders the distribution of 15-25 sous a day to the poor and infirm of Paris; a decisive, egalitarian shift to the left by the CSP to satisfy the demands of the sans-culottes.-French Revolution by Davidson.
21-24 May, 1794: Trial of Hébertistes in France; 18 are condemned to death.-French Revolution by Davidson.
May, 1794: Robespierre orders the closing down of all the sociétés populaires, the independent debating clubs around the country.-French Revolution by Davidson.
10 May, 1794: Arrest of Jean Nicolas Pache, the Mayor of Paris, previously the Minister of War, and a leading Hébertiste. Pache is replaced by loyal Robespierrist, Jean-Baptiste Édouard Lescot-Fleuriot, the deputy public prosecutor of the Tribunal révolutionnaire. The Commune was effectively under the direct control of the French CSP.-French Revolution by Davidson.
5 Apr, 1794: Execution by guillotine of the Dantonistes (Danton, Desmoulins, Delacroix, Phillippeaux) and others of whom nine were députés of the Convention following their arrest on 29-30 Mar for circumstantial innuendos including past intrigues with Mirabeau, covert dealings with the court, secret relationships with Dumouriez, treacherous transactions with the Girondins, attempts to save the royal family, insidious campaigns for clemency and peace, silent resistance to all Revolutionary measures, links with corruption and friendships with suspect foreigners. They are condemned to death at their trial from 2-5 Apr on the passage of a new emergency decree that silences any accused who ‘insulted’ justice.-French Revolution by Davidson.
18 Mar, 1794: Trial of all who took part in the Compagnie des Indes affair: Fabre, Claude Basire, Chabot and Delaunay.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Spring, 1794: The French CSP orders conquest and plunder due to food shortages and economic hardships.-French Revolution by Davidson.
5 Dec, 1793: The décret du 14 frimaire is enacted in France, banning any expression of a challenge to the powers of the CSP.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Nov, 1793: French Populist Dalton argues for a policy of greater moderation: a curb on the endless bloodletting, the repeal of the Law of Suspects and the creation of a committee of clemency. He and his friends also urged a moderation on economic policies, such as price controls and food requisitions (which they had never liked), and the exploration of a compromise peace with France’s European enemies.-French Revolution by Davidson.
31 Oct, 1793: Execution of all Girondins in France following a week of trials in which a new emergency decree permits jurors to convict if their ‘consciences’ permit.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Oct, 1793- Feb 1794: French Convention member Carrier is sent to Nantes as a representative en mission to deal with the royalist and federalist counter-revolutionaries and their families were imprisoned after their defeat at Le Mans and Savenay. Carrier has the prisoners executed en masse without trial, hassling men, women, and children on barges and sinking them (drownings, baths, vertical deportations, republican marriages). An estimated 10K people are killed by drownings and execution by gun (Wiki, French Revolution by Davidson).
16 Oct, 1793: Execution of Marie Antoinette by guillotine, convicted of teaching her husband the art of dissimulation, incest with her son, etc. She was brought before the Tribunal révolutionnaire on 14 Oct, and tried for high treason. Her trial caused no difficulty, for she was widely unpopular and often suspected, as a member of the Austrian ruling family, of being in league with France’s enemies.-French Revolution by Davidson.
10 Oct, 1793: The French Convention abandon the new Constitution.-French Revolution by Davidson.
17 Sep, 1793: The Law of Suspects (Loi des suspects) is enacted in France, ordering the arrest of suspected counter- revolutionaries and people who had revealed themselves as “enemies of freedom.” The law called for the arrest of ‘all those who by their writings have shown themselves partisans of tyranny or federalism and enemies of liberty.’ The Reign of Terror Begins.-French Revolution by Davidson.
‘Public notoriety accuses a citizen of crimes of which no written proofs exist, but whose proof is in the heart of all indignant citizens.-French Revolution by Davidson.
The first manifestation of the Terror was the mass arrests under the Law of Suspects, possibly as many as 500,000.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Even the possession of a picture of a crucifix could lead to the guillotine on an accusation of fanatisme religieux.-French Revolution by Davidson.
9 Sep, 1793: The French Convention votes to establish a sans-culottes paramilitary force, a revolutionary army, and to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government-French Revolution by Davidson.
5 Sep, 1793: A large mob storms the Convention, with Hébert at their head; they intimidate the députés into passing a sweeping series of repressive laws: the arrest of suspects; the creation of an Armée révolutionnaire of 6,000 foot soldiers and 1,200 gunners; the expansion of the Tribunal révolutionnaire and its division into four parts; and a forced loan of £100m to be exacted from the rich. Later that day, another deputation from the Club des Jacobins led by Robespierre and accompanied by delegations from all 48 sections demand that the Girondins be put on trial; and they too called for the creation of an Armée révolutionnaire (whose task would be to commandeer all necessary food supplies, by force if necessary) and for the dismissal of all nobles from public employment. The crucial new demand of the Jacobin deputation was that the Terror be ‘put on the agenda’ (mise à l’ordre du jour).-French Revolution by Davidson.
Sep- 19 Dec, 1793: The Siege of Toulon; French forces under Carteaux’ succeed in retaking Toulon from the English.-French Revolution by Davidson.
At Toulon, Barras established close links with Bonaparte and used his authority as an envoyé en mission to have him promoted from Lieutenant to Captain; after the city’s recapture, the envoyés en mission jointly recommended that Bonaparte be promoted to Brigadier.-French Revolution by Davidson.
27 Aug, 1793: Fall of Toulon; French Royalists under threat of two Revolutionary armies, surrender Toulon, the naval port, and the French Mediterranean fleet of 58 warships to British Admiral Samuel Hood, commander of the English Med Fleet. English soldiers enter Toulon.-French Revolution by Davidson.
23 Aug, 1793: The sans-culottes push through the French Convention a levée en masse, and from that moment military service became universal and compulsory for unmarried men and widowers aged between 18-25, ultimately raising 300K troops.-French Revolution by Davidson.
10 Aug, 1793: The Louvre Museum in Paris opens.-French Revolution by Davidson.
9 Aug- 9 Oct, 1793: The siege of Lyon; the town surrenders to French Rep. Forces.-French Revolution by Davidson.
27 Jul, 1793: Robespierre becomes a member of the French CSP.-French Revolution by Davidson.
17 Jul, 1793: The French Convention abolishes, without indemnity, all remaining feudal rights.-French Revolution by Davidson.
15 Jul, 1793: Execution of French populist leader Joseph Chalier, by guillotine. With Louis Michel Le Peletier (the member of the Convention who had been assassinated on January 20, 1793, by a royalist député after voting for the death of the King) and Marat (assassinated on July 13 by Charlotte Corday), one of the three martyrs of the Revolution.-French Revolution by Davidson.
13 Jul, 1793: Murder of Marat while in his bath by Charlotte Corday, by a pious 24y who had come specially for the purpose from her home in Normandy, with a knife concealed in her skirt.-French Revolution by Davidson.
12 Jul, 1793: Rebellion against the Jacobin dictatorship. The Royalists retake power, closing the Jacobin club and hanging 24 of its members.-French Revolution by Davidson.
24 Jun, 1793: The French CSP drafts a new Constitution and in less than a week and has it endorsed by the Convention. Robespierre was moving towards the establishment of a centralized, all-powerful Revolutionary government, mainly through the CSP.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Article #35: ‘When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people, and for every part of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.’
‘The purpose of society is general happiness’ (le but de la société est le bonheur commun.’-French Revolution by Davidson.
Momoro persuades Jean Pache, then the Mayor of Paris, a fellow Hébertiste and a fellow critic of the ruling Montagnard clique, to have Liberté, égalité, fraternité inscribed on all the public monuments of the capital.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Jun, 1793: French Civil war surges to a peak when some 60 (of 83) French départements were nominally in rebellion against the regime in Paris. Civil War had shown a Deep split in the country between supporters of the Revolution and royalist sympathizers.-French Revolution by Davidson.
2 June, 1793: French Peoples Coup (uprising); Hanriot musters a force of 80K armed men from the Sections and surrounds the Convention demanding the immediate arrest of the 22 Girondin députés, plus the members of the Committee of Twelve. Danton proposed a compromise: the 22 would not be arrested but instead invited to resign. There was uproar. The 22 Girondins, the committee of 12, and any députés (including 73 non-Girondins) who protest are imprisoned. Despite a majority, Robespierre and the Montagnards now had complete control of the Convention.-French Revolution by Davidson.
31 May, 1793: The Commune and the Sections draft a joint motion in fourteen points, whose threatening terms were read out to the Convention: A charge sheet against 22 named Girondin deputies, a charge sheet against the committee of 12, a demand for the creation of a revolutionary army of sans-culottes in every town of France (including 20K in Paris), the establishment of workshops for the manufacture of arms for the sans-culottes, that bread cost no more than 3 sous per pound, the arrest of Lebrun-Tondu and Clavière, the closing of the postal administration, the disarmament, arrest, and condemnation of all suspects, that voting rights be restricted to sans-culottes, the expansion of the tribunal révolutionnaire, the establishment of workshops for the old and inform, the exaction of a forced loan of £1B from the rich, and the immediate payment of indemnities to defenders of the country.-French Revolution by Davidson.
May, 1793: A 9-man insurrectionary committee is established by a large number of sans-culotte delegates from 33 of the 48 Paris sections. Two days later they sent this committee to the Hôtel de ville to assert the sovereign powers which they claimed a majority of the Sections had conferred on them. They tried, in effect, to depose the members of the legal Commune; they were there, they said, to punish the traitors. It was virtually a rerun of the insurrection of August 10, 1792.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Spring, 1793: The French convention makes multiple attempts to stop rampant inflation and currency devaluation, freezing the value of the assignat (21 Apr), introduces ‘le maximum’ with limited price controls for cereals (4 May), and finally exacting a loan from the rich of £1B, which does nothing to address the problem of food supply.-French Revolution by Davidson.
In Paris, the Commune was spending £12,000 a day on bread subsidies, but this made the supply situation worse, since the private millers and bakers could not meet the price competition from subsidized bread, and some simply shut up shop. Anyone convicted of having spoiled, lost or hidden cereals could face the death penalty.-French Revolution by Davidson.
15 Apr, 1793: Paris Mayor Pache calls on the French Convention to indict 22 of the leading Girondins starting with Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Buzot, Pétion, Lasource and Lanjuinais, accusing them of being guilty of the crime of felony against the sovereign people.-French Revolution by Davidson.
6 Apr, 1793: The Comité de salut public (CSP) with 22 members is established by the French Convention as the de facto executive institution of government. In practice, it dominates the Convention. Initially, the CSP included 9 Girondins and 13 Montagnards.-French Revolution by Davidson.
5 Apr, 1793: French General Dumouriez joins Austrian forces taking with him the 19yo Louis-Philippe, duc de Chartres, the eldest son of the duc d' Orleans.-French Revolution by Davidson.
1 Apr, 1793: The French Convention votes to rescinds their Deputies’ immunity from prosecution. From now on, the Convention could prosecute any of its members ‘against whom ... there are strong presumptions of complicity with the enemies of freedom, of equality and of the republican government.’ The words of this decree, with its deliberately imprecise, definition of the offences targeted, were a weapon aimed not at the enemies of the state but at the political enemies of the Montagnards: the Girondins.-French Revolution by Davidson.
18 Mar, 1793: The Battle of Neerwinden; Austrian forces defeat French forces under Dumouriez in Belgium. By the end of Mar, French forces had to evacuate the whole of Belgium. Within another week, almost all of France’s other conquests to the north and east had been lost, and it had withdrawn, virtually to its original frontiers.-French Revolution by Davidson.
9 Mar, 1793: A new Tribunal révolutionnaire is formed by the French convention to try all traitors, conspirators and counter-revolutionaries. The tribunal included a law against émigrés which included the confiscation of their property; and the death penalty for anyone who published subversive writings. At first, the tribunal had five judges, one prosecutor, and a jury of 12 citizens. Later that year it is massively expanded and becomes the main instrument of the Terreur.-French Revolution by Davidson.
24 Feb- 23 Dec, 1793: The Vendée Rebellion in France; the Vendée rise up in protest against the conscription of 300K decreed by the French Convention. Despite initial victories, they are defeated and massacred in the marshes of Savenay.-French Revolution by Davidson.
23 Dec, 1793: The Battle of Savenay in Loire-Inférieure (now Loire-Atlantique); the Vendée rebels are defeated and massacred by French forces.-French Revolution by Davidson.
15-17 Oct, 1793: The Battle of Cholet; French forces inflict a crushing defeat on the Vendée rebels.-French Revolution by Davidson.
29 Jun, 1793: The Siege of Nantes by the Vendée Repels.-French Revolution by Davidson.
18 Jun, 1793: The Battle of Angers; the Vendée rebels defeat French forces taking Aners.-French Revolution by Davidson.
9 Jun, 1793: The Battle of Saumur; the Vendée rebels win their first significant victory against French forces.-French Revolution by Davidson.
24 Feb, 1793: The ‘levée des 300,000’; the French Convention votes to raise a force of 300K men. The Vendée in Cholet rise up in protest against the Convention in Paris.-French Revolution by Davidson.
21 Jan, 1793: Execution of French King Louis XVI by guillotine at the Place de la Révolution (today the Place de la Concorde). The King arrived at 1010, in a carriage surrounded by 1,500 soldiers. He climbed the steps. He tried to speak, to proclaim his innocence, but drums rolled to drown out his voice. Four men seized him and tied him down. At the last moment, he let out a terrible cry.-The French Revolution by Davidson.
20 Jan, 1793: The French Convention votes on the question of reprieve for the King (310-yay, 380- nay).-French Revolution by Davidson.
15 Jan, 1793: The French Convention votes on three questions: whether the King was guilty (unanimous yay; 707-0); whether the verdict should be subject to popular ratification (287 yay, 424 nay); and what the sentence should be (361 votes- the minimum majority, for death).-French Revolution by Davidson.
10 Dec, 1792: After 4 days of work, the Commission of 21 (members) announce charges against the French King listing all the duplicities of the King, going back to the beginning of the Revolution. The general charge laid was that ‘Louis Capet was guilty of conspiracy against the general security of the state.-French Revolution by Davidson.
4 Dec, 1792: A Belgian delegation in Paris requests independence from the Convention and is turned down. Three days later the French army brutally represses a public demonstration in Brussels calling for Belgian independence. By annexing Belgium, France would increase its population by 3M, its army by 40K soldiers and its revenue by millions. Danton’s idea was to revolutionize Belgium completely, selling all its church or feudal properties to pay for the war.-French Revolution by Davidson.
6 Nov, 1792: The Battle of Mons; French forces defeat Austrian forces at Jemappes forcing the Austrians to withdraw. French troops enter Brussels a week later and occupying Belgium, with Dumouriez poised to conquer Holland.-French Revolution by Davidson.
The takeover of Belgium threatened maritime access to the Escaut and the Rhine; and it was largely because of this threat to England’s trading interests, that London, reluctantly, abandoned its policy of neutrality, thus massively increasing the strength of the coalition arrayed against France. Towards the end of Jan, 1793, England broke off relations with France; France responded at the end of the month by declaring war in turn. England’s rupture with France was echoed across Europe. Spain broke off relations in March, and the Convention then declared war against it. Later that month, most of the German princes, followed by almost all of the Italian states, apart from Venice and Genoa, joined Austria and Prussia against France. It was now at war with virtually the whole of Europe.-French Revolution by Davidson.
21 Sep, 1792: The Battle of Valmy; French forces defeat Prussian forces, causing the withdrawal of Prussian forces from France.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Emboldened French forces move out along their borders; In the North, Dumouriez moves North with the aim of liberating the Belgians from their Austrian colonizers; in the South, General d’Anselme seizes Nice (for 400 years a province of Savoy), and imposed a Jacobin administration; In the SE, General Montesquiou seizes Chambéry (the capital of Savoy); in the East, General Philippe, takes Speyer on 25 Sep, Worms on 5 Oct, and Mainz on 21 Oct, threatening Frankfurt.-French Revolution by Davidson.
21 Sep, 1792: Opening of the new ‘Assemblée Nationale Consituante’ (Convention) which abolishes the monarchy, declares France a republic, and establishes universal male suffrage.-French Revolution by Davidson.
20 Sep, 1792: Closing of the French National Legislative Assembly due to several reasons; the king did not accept limitations of his powers and mobilized support from foreign monarchs, efforts at secularization caused deep consternation among the pious and peasants, inflation, taxation and dues owed to local landowners, invasion. The Convention becomes the de-facto government of France.-French Revolution by Davidson.
2-7 Sep, 1792: Some 1090-1395 prisoners (40-45% of Paris’ prison population) are murdered by French Revolutionaries; On 2 Sep, the Comité de surveillance ordered or permitted 24 prisoners to be transferred to the prison of the Abbaye. A number of these prisoners were priests, dressed in ecclesiastical garb. The convoy was surrounded on its slow journey by screaming crowds, and attacked and killed with pikes and other makeshift weapons in the cabs or as they were getting out. The killing went on for several more days and in several more prisons: at the Conciergerie on 3 Sep, and at the Châtelet, Saint-Firmin, and La Salpêtrière on 4 Sep. The massacres did not finally stop until 7 Sep.-French Revolution by Davidson.
26 Aug- Sep, 1792: French elections for electors and députés; voters had to be 21y and self-supported by employment while candidates had to be 25y, thus doubling the electorate to some 7M people. Turnout remains low at <12%. 23/24 députés elected by the Paris voters were followers of Robespierre, of Danton or of another leading member of the Commune. Robespierre was the first elected, on 5 Sep, followed by Danton on 6 Sep, then Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, Louis Pierre Manuel, Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne and Camille Desmoulins; Marat was elected on 9 Sep. The Girondins secured the election of Jérôme Pétion as the President of the Convention and got hold of almost all of the top jobs in its secretariat.-French Revolution by Davidson.
23 Aug, 1792: Execution of Arnaud de La Porte, a former French Minister of the King’s Household and a regular distributor of the King’s secret funds by guillotine.-French Revolution by Davidson.
19 Aug- Winter, 1792: Prussia-France War; French forces defeat Prussian forces resulting in Prussia’s withdrawal from France and leads, indirectly, to the execution of King Louis XVI.-French Revolution by Davidson.
20 Sep, 1792: The Battle of Valmy; French forces defeat Prussian forces, causing the withdrawal of Prussian forces from France.-French Revolution by Davidson.
19 Aug- Sep, 1792: Prussian forces under General Duke of Brunswick invade France following the suspension of the French Monarchy. Prussian forces capture two key fortresses causing violent reactions in Paris, including the massacre in a number of prisons of >1000 inmates by mobs of sans-culottes due to rumors of a plot to release prisoners and arms them against the revolutionary patriots -French Revolution by Davidson
18 Aug, 1792: The French Insurrectionary Commune suppress certain religious congregations, forbids the wearing of religious vestments in public, order the deportation, to the colony of French Guiana, of all priests who had refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and impose a new loyalty oath on priests: ‘I swear to be faithful to the nation, to maintain with all my power the liberty, the equality, the safety of people and property, and to die, if necessary, for the execution of the law.’-French Revolution by Davidson.
17 Aug, 1792: The French Tribunal du 17 août; the defenders of the Kings Palace at Tuileries are tried in court.-French Revolution by Davidson.
12 Aug, 1792: French King Louis XVI and his family are handed over to the Commune and incarcerated at the prison of the Temple.-French Revolution by Davidson.
10 Aug, 1792: French Peoples Coup; the Commune insurrectionnelle (Sans-culottes), meeting in sections, name commissioners, suspend the General Council (Conseil général) and take charge of the French government with the intent of overthrowing the King and electing a new Assembly. Simultaneously, angry crowds of Parisians and soldiers from all of France attack the Kings Palace in Tuileries. The King attempts to escape but is taken prisoner. The National Legislative Assembly temporarily relieves the King and suspends the monarchy. Later, French National Guard Commander and Marquis de Mandat Antoine Jean Gailliot is summoned the Hôtel de ville and on arrival, surrounded, stripped of his command and shot dead.-French Revolution by Davidson.
The National Assembly played for time, but finally it submitted and agreed that the King would be suspended ‘until a National Convention had spoken. Manuel, the Commune’s reinstated Chief Executive, simply overturned that decision and declared that only the Commune had the right to decide the fate of the King: he and his family would be sent to the Temple, part of the original monastery of the Templars. Vergniaud accepted the decision and implied that the King would be held in the palace of the Temple. No, Manuel insisted: it must be in the Temple’s prison. Again, the National Assembly submitted to the power of the Insurrectionary Commune.-French Revolution by Davidson.
It was to be called a Convention, in homage to the Constitutional Convention held five years earlier in the newly created United States. But the elections to this assembly would be different from all their predecessors in two crucial respects. First, they would be by universal manhood suffrage, without the previous distinctions between the rich and the poor, the active citizens and the ‘passive’. Second, they would not be held by secret ballot; instead, voting would be in public, according to a roll call and out loud (à haute voix. The day after the overthrow of the monarchy, Robespierre became a member of the Insurrectionary Commune.-French Revolution by Davidson.
3 Aug, 1792: Pétion, the Mayor of Paris, made three last, desperate attempts to avert insurrection. With the endorsement of 47 of 48 Sections, he led a delegation to the National Assembly to call for the overthrow of the King.-French Revolution by Davidson.
30 Jul, 1792: La Marseillaise; a company of 600 men from Marseille march into Paris, singing the hymn of the Army of the Rhine, composed in Strasbourg only a few months earlier by the young Captain Claude Rouget de l’Isle; it became famous as La Marseillaise, today the French national anthem.-The French Revolution by Davidson.
25 Jul, 1792: The Duke of Brunswick, the commander-in-chief of the Austrian and Prussian forces, issues a long and menacing ultimatum. It read, in part: The French, and especially the people of Paris, are called on to submit to the King without delay ... and if the least violence were to be shown towards their Majesties the King and the Queen and to the royal family, [the sovereigns of Prussia and Austria] will inflict on them an exemplary punishment, in subjecting the city of Paris to a military execution and a total overthrow, and the guilty rebels to the tortures which they will have deserved.-French Revolution by Davidson.
17 Jul, 1792: The Jacobins present a petition to the National Assembly demanding the suspension of the King.-French Revolution by Davidson.
6 Jul, 1792: Prussian forces cross the French frontier.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Summer, 1792: French King Louis XVI dismisses three of his main Girondin Ministers, Roland (Interior), Clavière (Finance) and Joseph Servan (War), replacing them with loyal Feuillants. Rumours began to spread that he was planning a conspiracy with the Austrians, through Queen Marie-Antoinette, to break the Jacobins, dissolve the Assembly, recall the émigrés and end the war. Pierre Vergniaud, one of the leading Girondins, delivers a speech on 3 July accusing the King of working for the enemy and causing France’s military setbacks. The leaders of the Jacobins, including Robespierre, and the leaders of the sans-culottes begin planning the overthrow of the King.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Summer, 1792: Jacobin Jérôme Pétion is elected Mayor of Paris.-The French Revolution by Davidson.
May, 1792: The Second Partition of Poland; Russia intervenes in Poland at the bequest of the Polish Confederation of Targowica. Russia takes ~250K sqkm of Polish territory, including Western Ukraine, while Prussia got 57K sqkm, including Danzig (now Gdansk). Austria got nothing. Prussia now felt free to turn on France, and the Prussian King, Frederick William II, insisted that Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, the Duke of Brunswick, be appointed the commander-in-chief of the combined Prussian-Austrian forces.-French Revolution by Davidson.
18 May, 1792: The three French generals decide together to suspend hostilities. La Fayette, for example, sent a message to the Austrian ambassador in Brussels asking for a suspension of hostilities and offering to march on Paris with his troops to drive out the Jacobins and reform the Constitution. When their armies failed to carry out their orders to go on the offensive, Robespierre publicly blamed the generals; the generals blamed the troops; Rochambeau resigned; many officers deserted; three regiments of cavalry went over to the enemy; and the French Defence Minister, the marquis de Grave, resigned.-French Revolution by Davidson.
25 Apr, 1792: The Guillotine is used for the first time at the Place de Grève, to execute a thief named Pelletier.- French Revolution by Davidson.
20 Apr, 1792- 17 Oct, 1797: War of the 1st Coalition; The combined forces of Austria, Sardinia, Naples, Prussia, Spain, and GB wage war on France. The War of the 1st Coalition ended when Napoleon forced the Austrians to accept his terms in the Treaty of Campio Formio. Only Britain remained opposed.
26-29 Dec, 1793: The 2nd Battle of Wissembourg; French forces under General Lazare Hoche force a combined Austrian, Prussian, Bavarian, Hessian force under General Dagobert Wurmser to withdraw to the E. of the Rhine (Wiki).
15-16 Oct, 1793: Battle of Wattignies; French forces under Jean-Baptiste Jourdan attack a Coalition army under Prince Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, compelling to withdraw from Habsburg (Wiki).
6-8 Sep, 1793: Battle of Hondschoote (Flanders Campaign); French forces under General Jean Nicolas Houchard and General Jourdan defeat an allied force at Hondschoote (Wiki).
Spring, 1794: French forces number 1M, organized into 12 armies, created by the CSP through mass mobilization and nationalization.-French Revolution by Davidson.
20 Apr, 1792: The French National Assembly votes for war against Austria. The French army is divided between the traditional royalist troops of the line, in their white uniforms (les blancs), and the new, more democratic Revolutionary volunteers from the Garde nationale, in their blue uniforms (les bleus), who were better paid and used to electing their own officers.-French Revolution by Davidson.
10 Mar, 1792: Louis XVI’s Foreign Minister, Jean-Marie de Lessart, despite doing his best to keep the peace, is charged with treason by the Assembly. The King’s other Ministers all resign, and Louis XVI appoints a new government made up of friends of Brissot, all of whom were in favour of war: Charles François Dumouriez, a lieutenant general, was appointed the Foreign Minister; Étienne Clavière, a banker from Geneva, became the Finance Minister; and Jean-Marie Roland became the Interior Minister. (They all ended badly. Dumouriez betrayed his country by going over to the Austrians; Clavière committed suicide to avoid being condemned to death; Roland committed suicide on hearing that his wife had been guillotined.)-French Revolution by Davidson.
1 Mar, 1792: Death of Austrian King Leopold II. His son, Francis II, assumes the throne and is immediately keen to fight the French revolutionaries, in support of the French Monarchy.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Feb, 1792: The Rights of Man Part II is published by Thomas Pain in England in which he outlines a spectacular programme of economic and social reform which, without exactly repudiating the rights of private property, went as far as it was then possible to imagine towards a welfare state.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Dec, 1791: The French National Legislative Assembly debates possible War with Austria.-French Revolution by Davidson.
16 Nov, 1791: Jérôme Pétion, a radical Jacobin, is elected as President of the new French National Legislative Assembly. The more radical Revolutionaries (Jacobins), chose to sit together on the left of the President, whereas the supporters of the monarchy (the Feuillant Club), tended to sit on his right. Between the Feuillants and the Jacobins was a large, undeclared center of some 300 Deputies, unaffiliated with any club, who came to be known as la Plaine.-French Revolution by Davidson.
9 Nov, 1791: The French Natl Legislative Assembly passes a decree giving émigrés two months to return home; if they refused, their property would be confiscated and they would be guilty of conspiracy, punishable by death.-French Revolution by Davidson.
1 Oct, 1791: The new French National Legislative Assembly opens with 745 deputies, mostly young men (none of which were part of the Assemblée Nationale Consituante). As a consequence, the entire Revolutionary movement was now split between the newly elected National Assembly at the center and the constellation of political clubs around it. The Assembly begins dealing with state solvency, inflation, food shortages, and unemployment, made worse as aristocrats depart France.-French Revolution by Davidson.
30 Sep, 1791: The National Constituent Assembly (Assemblée nationale constituante) closes giving way to an entirely new National Legislative Assembly (Assemblée nationale législative). In his closing remarks at the last session of the Constituent Assembly, Jacques Thouret, its President, declared: ‘The National Assembly has given the state a constitution which will guarantee both liberty and the monarchy.-French Revolution by Davidson.
13 Sep, 1791: Louis accepts the revised constitution- a collection of the various constitutional laws passed by the National Assembly.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Aug, 1791: Slave revolt in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue (Modern Haiti); Toussaint Louverture and fellow slaves set fire to plantations leading to shortages of sugar, coffee, and rum. This, on top of the shortages of other foodstuffs, exacerbated the price inflation caused by the decline in the value of the assignats.-French Revolution by Davidson.
17 Jul, 1791: The Champ de Mars Massacre; angry protests following the attempted flight of King Louis XVI are violently suppressed by Lafayette, resulting in ~50 civilian casualties (Wiki).
16 Jul, 1791: The Jacobins in France release a petition calling for the abdication of the King and his replacement ‘by all constitutional means.-French Revolution by Davidson.
16 May, 1791: Robespierre persuades the French National Assembly to decree that no member of that body could be elected to the new French National Legislative Assembly.-French Revolution by Davidson.
15 May, 1791: The French National Assembly gave citizenship to mulattoes, but the colonial whites refused to implement the decree. This refusal led to the rising first of the mulattoes, then of the blacks.-French Revolution by Davidson.
28 Feb, 1791: The Day of Daggers; hundreds of nobles with concealed daggers went to the Tuileries Palace in Paris to defend King Louis XVI while Lafayette and the National Guard were in Vincennes stopping a riot. A confrontation between the guards and nobles breaks out as the guards thought the nobles were there for the King, who ultimately orders the nobles to drop their weapons (Wiki).
3 Sep, 1790: The National Assembly votes against a massive issue of £2,000 assignats and vote instead, by a narrow majority, for an issue of £800m. Necker resigns in protest.-French Revolution by Davidson.
The entire assignat enterprise, including its mismanagement, was one of the most serious of all the mistakes that the Revolutionaries made. It may indeed have been the single most important factor that caused the Revolution to go off the rails and descend into the Terreur of 1793.-French Revolution by Davidson.
24 Aug, 1790: French King Louis XVI sanctions the new French constitution.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Jul, 1790: French King Louis XVI and family attempt to flee to the French Stronghold of Varennes. He is caught and relieved of all functions. In order to maintain legitimacy and "backing of the king," The Assembly endorses the fiction that Louis had been the innocent victim of an abduction; on July 16 it restored him to all his functions as a constitutional monarch, on condition that he accept the Constitution when it was presented to him.-French Revolution by Davidson.
12 Jul, 1790: The French National Assembly enact a new Constitution civile du clergé; clergy, being no longer a separate order, must become part of the civil society of France. Civilian officials were required only to declare loyalty to the newly configured institutions of the civil state, the clergy were in effect being asked to renounce their long-standing commitment to the hierarchy, the principles and therefore the legitimacy of the Church. Of 250 clerical députés, only 99 consent to swear the oath.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Some historians believe that the requirement of a specifically clerical oath of loyalty to the Revolution, was one of the worst of the unnecessary mistakes made by the Revolutionaries.-French Revolution by Davidson.
21 May, 1790: Paris Municipal Elections; the 60 districts are reorganized into 48 sections, each with an elected assembly. The Paris Municipal Council (the Commune) was now to consist of 144 members, 3 for each section. From the beginning, the assemblies of these Sections met frequently to debate current political issues, some as often as every ten days. The Sections were increasingly active during the following year of rising political agitation, and many of them went into permanent session. (‘Permanent session’ was a Revolutionary term, meaning that they were entitled to meet as often as they wanted, not just when they were given permission to do so).-French Revolution by Davidson.
13 Feb, 1790: The French National Assembly dissolves all religious orders.-French Revolution by Davidson.
4 Dec, 1789: The French National Assembly enact a law dividing citizens into two categories, active and passive. The active citizens were those who paid taxes equivalent to at least three days’ work, roughly £2 to £3 a year, and they had the right to vote; the passive citizens paid less than three days’ worth of taxes, and they did not have the vote. Also excluded were all women, all domestic servants, and all men under 25yo. Although all active citizens were entitled to vote in the first round of elections, these were to choose the electors proper. To be a real elector, one who would actually vote directly in a second round of voting for the representatives of the National Assembly, you had to have paid taxes equivalent to ten days’ work, roughly £7 to £10 a year.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Nov, 1789: The French National Assembly enacts a new tax system, based on three universal forms of income tax: income from property (contribution foncière), on non-property income (contribution mobilière), and on commercial profits (patente).-French Revolution by Davidson.
2 Nov, 1789: The French National Assembly votes (568-346) to place the property of the Church ‘at the disposal of the Nation’.-French Revolution by Davidson.
28 Oct, 1789: The French National Assembly decrees that there is to be no further recruitment to the monastic orders in France, on the grounds that there was no need for them.-French Revolution by Davidson.
5 Oct 1789: The women's march on Versailles; vast crowds gather at the Hôtel de ville and march to Versailles, demanding bread supplied by the King. La Fayette, with 20K national guard of the National Assembly, march to Versailles. At 2000, Louis notifies Mounier in writing that he would accept the Assembly’s decrees on both the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the delaying veto. He also promised to make available all the bread that could be procured in Versailles and gave orders that wheat should be brought from such neighboring towns as Senlis and Noyon. The King and family are moved to Paris under the protection of the National Guards the following day, thus legitimizing the National Assembly.- French Revolution by Davidson.
4 Oct, 1789: Alarmist rumor rises in Paris at the arrival of the French Kingsguard in Versailles.-French Revolution by Davidson.
11 Sep, 1789: The French National Assembly decrees that the King should have a suspensive or delaying power of veto, which would allow him to hold back actions by the National Assembly for a maximum of two legislatures, or four years. Louis responded by refusing to ratify either the overthrow of feudalism or the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He summons his Royal Regiment of Flanders from the NE of France to Versailles.-French Revolution by Davidson.
‘The King’s reply is destructive, not only of any Constitution, but even of any national right to have a constitution. Anyone who can impose a condition on a constitution has the right to prevent that constitution; he places his will above the rights of the nation.-Maximilien Robespierre
20-26 Aug, 1789: The drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Autumn, 1789: Rebellion of the Low Countries (Belgium), briefly driving out the Austrians, who soon reoccupy the territory.-French Revolution by Davidson.
11 Aug, 1789: ‘The Great Decree’; the French National Assembly votes to suppress the tithes of the Catholic Church.-French Revolution by Davidson.
4-11 Aug, 1789: The French National Assembly votes to dismantle all the feudal institutions of the ancien régime: royal pensions, immunities, hunting monopolies, seignorial jurisdictions, and all tax exemptions and privileges. The common people assumed that the old dues were done away with. They did, or did not want, to grasp, that the National Assembly intended that the old dues and duties should go on being paid until reformed alternatives could be put in place or until the old dues had been bought out. As a result, the population at large became much more resistant to taxation, with the inevitable consequence that the fiscal crisis of the French state, already close to insolvency, grew almost insoluble. With these decisions, one of the central principles of the ancien régime – a society based on class distinctions and privilege – collapses.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Summer, 1789: Bands of peasants arm themselves in many provinces, attacking châteaux and manor houses, destroying aristocrats’ documentary titles of seigneurial feudal privileges, and pillaging grain stores.-French Revolution by Davidson.
16 July, 1789: French King Louis XVI recalls Necker and other Ministers whom he had dismissed five days earlier.- French Revolution by Davidson.
14 July, 1789: Storming of the Bastille; early in the morning, crowds of protestors poured towards the military hospital of Les Invalides, where they emerged with 3,000 rifles, distributing them among their fellow-demonstrators. But these rifles were not enough. The demonstrators wanted more weapons; they wanted ammunition and gunpowder; they wanted cannon; and they believed they would find them at the fortress of the Bastille. At the time, the Bastille held only seven prisoners and was defended by ~30 Swiss soldiers and 80 war invalids. It fell after several hours of combat. The prisoners were released, the governor beaten, stabbed, and decapitated, and the mayor killed. The Assemblée Nationale interpreted the attack on the Bastille as a symbolic attack on a notorious monument of the ancien regime.-French Revolution by Davidson.
13 July, 1789: The French National assembly meets at the Hôtel de ville, and forms a bourgeois militia, with a force made up of 800 men from each of the sixty Paris districts, to quell agitation and maintain order in the city.- French Revolution by Davidson.
11 July, 1789: French King Louis XVI dismisses his Secretary of Finance, Necker, causing widespread alarm at the French financial system.-French Revolution by Davidson.
22 June, 1789: The National Assembly convenes in the church of Notre Dame de Saint-Louis. The tiers état welcome 150 members of the clergy and 2 members of the noblesse. Mirabeau then raised the stakes: ‘We are here by the wishes of the nation; only physical force can make us leave.’ Two days later, the King invites his nobles and clergy to join the tiers état, many follow, and set to work on a constitution.-French Revolution by Davidson.
20 June, 1789: The Tennis Court Oath; the Estates General closes entry to the tiers état, who reconvene on the Real Tennis Court (salle du Jeu de paume), swearing an oath of solidarity not to allow themselves to be separated from one another until they had drawn up a Constitution for France. King Louis XVI, his two children, and entourage depart Paris, on the recommendation of Bouillé, for the stronghold of Montmartre in the NE.-French Revolution by Davidson.
19 June, 1789: The clergy, shaken by the initiative of the tiers état, vote narrowly (149-137) to join it. The Nobles and the King hold out.-French Revolution by Davidson.
17 Jun, 1789: The Third Estate, representing the French people and meeting as the Assemblée Nationale (previously the commons), take power under celebrated astronomer, President Bailly. The French Revolution begins.-French Revolution by Davidson.
10 Jun, 1789: Abbe Sieyes recommends the Third Estate, as the representatives of the French people, take power.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Jun, 1789: The Estates General meets in Paris with 291 clerical deputies, 285 nobles, and 578 members of the third estate.-French Revolution by Davidson.
Jun, 1789: Death of French Prince Louis Joseph François Xavier at the age of 8.-French Revolution by Davidson.
2 Aug, 1788: The États généraux (Estates General) is called by Louis XVI in the hope that it would rescue him from his financial (and political) predicament.-French Revolution by Davidson.
1787: The French Assembly of Notables recommend that Louis XVI call an Estates General.-French Revolution by Davidson.
10 May, 1774: Death of French King Louis XV from variola minor. Louis XVI assumes the throne of France.-French Revolution by Davidson.
13 Apr, 1598: The Edict Nantes is issued by Henry of Navarre after ascending to the French throne as King Henry IV, effectively ending the French Wars of Religion by granting official tolerance to Protestantism (Britannica).
1302: Creation of the États généraux (Estates General) in France as the Kings national advisory institution.-French Revolution by Davidson.
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