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Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker was a Genevan banker who became a finance minister for Louis XVI and a French statesman. Necker played a key role in French history before and during the first period of the French Revolution. -
Louis XVI
last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as Citizen Louis Capet during the four months just before he was executed by guillotine. In 1765, upon the death of his father, Louis, Dauphin of France, he became the new Dauphin. -
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. -
Marquis De Lafayette
known in the United States as Lafayette, was a French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War, commanding American troops in several battles, including the Siege of Yorktown. -
Georges Danton
George Jacques Danton was a leading figure in the early stages of the French Revolution, in particular as the first president of the Committee of Public Safety. -
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French statesman and military leader who led many successful campaigns during the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars, and was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814 and again briefly in 1815 during the Hundred Days. -
Jacobins
The Society of the Friends of the Constitution, renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club or simply the Jacobins, was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789. -
tennis court oath
On 20 June 1789, the members of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath vowing "not to separate and to reassemble wherever necessary, until the Constitution of the kingdom is established". It was a pivotal event in the French Revolution. -
attack on the Bastille
The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, France, on the afternoon of 14 July 1789. The medieval armory, fortress, and political prison known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. -
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. -
Women's march to Versailles
Concerned over the high price and scarcity of bread, women from the marketplaces of Paris led the March on Versailles on October 5, 1789. This became one of the most significant events of the French Revolution, eventually forcing the royals to return to Paris. -
execution of louis XVI
Ultimately unwilling to cede his royal power to the Revolutionary government, Louis XVI was found guilty of treason and condemned to death. He was guillotined on January 21, 1793. His wife, Marie-Antoinette, was guillotined nine months later, and their son Louis (XVII) died at the age of 10 while imprisoned by the Revolutionary government. -
reign of terror
The Reign of Terror, commonly The Terror, was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First French Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and spurious accusations of treason by Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. -
the directory is formed
the French Revolutionary government set up by the Constitution of the Year III, which lasted four years, from November 1795 to November 1799. It included a bicameral legislature known as the Corps Législatif. -
napoleon invades Russia
The French invasion of Russia, known in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812 and in France as the Russian campaign, began on 24 June 1812 when Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed the Neman River in an attempt to engage and defeat the Russian Army.
