French Revolution Timeline

By hinal

  • Day of the Tiles in Grenoble

    First revolt against the king

  • Assembly of Vizille

    Assembly of the Estates General of Dauphiné

  • Riots in Paris

    Riots in Paris by workers of the Réveillon wallpaper factory in the fabourg Saint-Antoine. Twenty-five workers were killed in battles with police.
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    The Great Fear

    A period of panic and riot by peasants and others amid rumours of an “aristocratic conspiracy” by the king and the privileged to overthrow the Third Estate.

  • Tennis Court Oath

    On 20 June 1789, the members of the French Estates-General for the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, vowing "not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established."

  • Louis XVI abruptly dismisses Necker.

    Parisians respond by burning the unpopular customs barriers, and invading and looting the monastery of the Lazaristes. Skirmishes between the cavalrymen of the Régiment de Royal-Allemand of the King's Guard and the angry crowd outside the Tuileries Palace. The Gardes Françaises largely take the side of the crowd.

  • Storming of the Bastille

    It occurred as a result of the anger of Parisian citizens, who saw the prison fortress as the symbol of an oppressive monarchy. The crowd also wanted to obtain a supply of ammunition being stored in the building.

  • Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen is drafted

    It was passed by France's National Constituent Assembly. It was an important document of the French Revolution and in the history of human and civil rights.

  • Riots in Marseille

    Three forts are captured, and the commander of Fort Saint-Jean, the Chevalier de Beausset, is assassinated.

  • Civil Constitution of the Clergy

    a law passed during the French Revolution, that caused the immediate subordination of the Catholic Church in France to the French government.

  • Day of Daggers

    Lafayette orders the arrest of 400 armed aristocrats who have gathered at the Tuileries Palace to protect the royal family.
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    Flight to Varennes

    King Louis XVI of France, his queen Marie Antoinette, and their immediate family unsuccessfully attempted to escape from Paris in order to initiate a counter-revolution at the head of loyal troops under royalist officers concentrated at Montmédy near the frontier.

  • Masscarce of the Champa de Mars

    The event is named after the site of the massacre, the Champ de Mars. Two days before, the National Constituent Assembly issued a decree that the king, Louis XVI, would remain king under a constitutional monarchy.

  • Slave uprising begins in Saint Domingue (Haiti)

  • Slavery abolished in France, but not in French colonies in New World

  • Declaration of Pillnitz

    Astatement issued at the Castle of Pillnitz in Saxony (south of Dresden) by the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II and Frederick William II of Prussia.

  • Revolution of 10 August

    Storming of the Tuileries Palace. The National Guard of the insurrectional Paris Commune and revolutionary from Marseille and Brittany attack the Tuileries Palace. The King and his family take refuge in the Legislative Assembly. The Swiss Guards defending the Palace are massacred. The Legislative Assembly provisionally suspends the authority of the King, and orders the election of a new government, the Convention.
  • Period: to

    September Massacres

    Wave of killings in France.

  • Mutiny of sailors of the French fleet at Brest

  • The Convention abolishes the monarchy and France declared a republic

  • Period: to

    Counter-revolution in the Vendee begins

    counterrevolutionary insurrections in the west of France during the French Revolutio
  • Period: to

    The committee of Public Safety begins de-Christianization

    a conventional description of the results of a number of separate policies conducted by various governments of France between the start of the French Revolution in 1789 and the Concordat of 1801, forming the basis of the later and less radical policies.

  • Marat is murdered

    Marat was murdered at his home on the Rue de Cordelier

  • Lyon is recaptured by the army of the Convention.

  • Danton executed

    The Parisian leader Georges Danton was executed on April 6th 1794. This account of Danton’s execution was recorded by Ruault, in a letter to his brother: “Danton was the first to climb into the first of three carts which were to take the group to the Place de la Revolutio

  • Robespierre executed

    He was executed due to the excesses of the Reign of Terror which he and his supporters started. He passed a law that suspended a suspect’s right to trial on June 4, 1794.

  • The Great Terror Begins

    This marks the beginning of almost two years of repressing perceived enemies of the Revolution. It will claim an estimated 18,500-40,000 lives before its end in July 1794.

  • Muscadins attack the Jacobin Club

  • Louis XVI is executed

  • Period: to

    Reign of Terror

    the period of the French Revolution. With civil war spreading from the Vendée and hostile armies surrounding France on all sides, the Revolutionary government decided to make “Terror” the order of the day (September 5 decree) and to take harsh measures against those suspected of being enemies of the Revolution (nobles, priests, hoarders)