Take a chronological journey through the tumultuous events of the French Revolution with this meta-narrative. Discover key milestones from the convocation of the Estates General to the storming of the Bastille, the Reign of Terror, and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. This meta-description summarizes the unfolding story that reshaped the political, social, and cultural landscape of France during this transformative period. Experience the ebb and flow of revolutionary fervor, the establishment of the First French Republic, and the ensuing political turbulence in a concise timeline that moves through the dynamic phases of this historic upheaval.
Timeline of the French Revolution
| Historical Facts | Timeline of the French Revolution |
| 1789 | Estates-General convened |
| 20 June 1789 | Tennis Court Oath |
| 14 July 1789 | Storming of the Bastille |
| 1789-1791 | National Assembly reforms France |
| 1791 | Constitution adopted |
| 1792 | The French Republic declared |
| 1792-1794 | Reign of Terror |
| 1793 | Execution of Louis XVI |
| 1793-1794 | Napoleon crowned himself Emperor |
| 1794 | Robespierre’s execution |
| 1795 | Thermidorian Reaction |
| 1799 | Napoleon Bonaparte rises to power |
| 1804 | Napoleon crowned himself Emperor |
Introduction
The French Revolution was a watershed event in world history that began in 1789 and ended in the late 1790s with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. During this period, French citizens radically changed their political landscape, uprooting centuries-old institutions such as the monarchy and the feudal system. The upheaval caused disgust with the French aristocracy and the economic policies of King Louis XVI, who died by guillotine, as did his wife Marie Antoinette. Although it degenerated into a bloodbath during the Reign of Terror, the French Revolution helped shape modern democracies by demonstrating the power inherent in the will of the people. Below is a timeline of the French Revolution.
February 1787
Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, the French Comptroller-General of Finance, gathered the nobility and representatives of the bourgeoisie to discuss the country’s budget deficit. Calonne proposes to tax the privileged classes, but the Assembly refuses to take responsibility for this reform. Instead, the Diet proposes to convene the Estates General, which has not met since 1614.
1788: The Royal Treasury is empty; Prelude to Revolution
June 7, 1788
Grenoble Tile Day, the first revolt against the King.
July 21, 1788
Assembly of the Vizille, Assembly of the Estates-General of the Dauphine.
August 8, 1788: The royal treasury is declared empty and the Parlement of Paris refuses to reform the tax system or lend more money to the crown. To gain their support for fiscal reforms, Finance Minister Brienne scheduled a meeting of the General Assembly of the Estates, the assembly of the nobility, clergy and common people (Third Estate) on May 5, 1789, which since 1614.
August 16, 1788
The Treasury suspends government debt payments.
August 25, 1788
Brienne resigns as finance minister and is replaced by Swiss banker Jacques Necker, a favorite of the Third Estate.
French bankers and businessmen, who have always held Necker in high esteem, agree to a loan of 75 million to the state on the condition that the Estates-General will have full powers to reform the system. Necker was called the “author of the revolution” by Napoleon.
27 December 1788
Despite opposition from the nobles, Necker announces that the representation of the Third Estate will be doubled and that nobles and clergy will be allowed to sit in the Third Estate.
1789 – The Revolution Begins
January 1789
Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes publishes the pamphlet What is the Third Estate? wrote; “What is the third estate? Everything. What has it been in the political order so far? Nothing. What does it require to be? Something.” The brochure is widely distributed. King Louis XVI calls the election of delegates to the Estates General.
April 27, 1789: Riots in Paris by workers of the Réveillon wallpaper factory in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. 25 workers were killed in battles with the police.
May 2, 1789
Presentation to the king of representatives of the Estates-General at Versailles. Clergy and nobles are welcomed with formal ceremonies and processions, the third estate is not.
May 5, 1789
The Estates General, composed of representatives of the First Estate (clergy), Second Estate (nobility), and Third Estate (lower classes), met at Versailles. They are immediately divided as to whether to count by head or to give each estate equal votes.
May 6, 1789
Deputies of the Third Estate refused to meet separately from the other estates, occupying the main hall and inviting the clergy and nobility to join them.
May 11, 1789
The nobility refuse to meet together with the Third Estate, but the clergy hesitates and suspends the verification of their representatives.
May 20, 1789
The clergy give up their special tax privileges and accept the principle of tax equality.
May 22, 1789
The nobility give up their special tax privileges. However, the three states cannot agree on a common program.
May 25, 1789
Deputies of the Third Estate from Paris, delayed by electoral procedures, arrive at Versailles.
June 3, 1789
The scientist Jean Sylvain Bailly is elected leader of the representatives of the Third Estate.
June 4, 1789
After the death of seven-year-old Louis Joseph Xavier Francois, Dauphin of France, eldest son and heir of Louis XVI, his four-year-old brother Louis-Charles, Duke of Normandy, becomes the new Dauphin.
June 6, 1789
Deputies of the nobility rejected a compromise program proposed by finance minister Jacques Necker.
June 10, 1789: At the suggestion of Sieyes, the representatives of the Third Estate decided to hold their own meeting and invited the other estates to join them.
June 13–14, 1789
Nine representatives of the clergy decided to join the meeting of the Third Estate.
June 17, 1789
A dispute over votes in the Estates General leads deputies of the Third Estate to declare themselves a National Assembly. Along with some members of the clergy, they threaten to continue without the other two estates.
June 19, 1789
By a vote of 149 to 137, representatives of the clergy join the Assembly of the Third Estate.
June 20, 1789
Royal officials lock the National Assembly out of their regular session; assembly members occupy the royal indoor tennis court. They take what is called the Tennis Court Oath and promise not to break up until they give France a new constitution.
June 21, 1789
The Royal Council rejected Minister Necker’s financial program.
June 22, 1789
The new National Assembly meets in the Church of Saint Louis in Versailles. 150 representatives of the clergy and two representatives of the nobility will participate.
June 23
Louis XVI personally addresses the Estates General (Seance royale), where he annuls the decision of the National Assembly and orders the three estates to continue meeting separately. The king leaves followed by the deputies of the second estate and most of the representatives of the first estate, but the deputies of the third estate remain in the hall. When the king’s master of ceremonies reminds them that Louis has annulled their decrees, the Comte de Mirabeau, the representative of the Third Estate of Aix, boldly exclaims that “we are assembled here by the will of the people” and that they would “leave at the point of the bayonet”.
June 25, 1789
48 nobles led by Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, joined the Diet.
June 27, 1789
Louis XVI reversed course, ordered the nobility and clergy to meet with the other estates, and recognized the new Diet. At the same time, he orders to Paris reliable military units composed largely of Swiss and German mercenaries.
June 30, 1789
A mob breaks into the prison of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and frees soldiers who were imprisoned for attending meetings of political clubs.
July 6, 1789
The National Assembly created a committee of thirty to write a new constitution.
8 July 1789
With tensions mounting, the Comte de Mirabeau, representative of the Third Estate of Aix, demands that the Gardens Francaise of the King of France’s military household be moved from Paris and that a new civil guard be created. within the city.
July 9, 1789
King Louis XVI relented and urged the other two estates to join the assembly, which has the official title of the National Constituent Assembly. However, the king begins to gather troops with the intention of dispersing the body.
July 11, 1789
Necker was suddenly dismissed by Louis XVI. Parisians respond by burning unpopular customs barriers and invading and looting the Lazarist monastery. Skirmishes between cavalrymen of the Régiment de Royal-Allemand of the Royal Guard and an angry mob outside the Tuileries Palace. The Gardes Francais largely sides with the crowd.
July 13, 1789
The National Assembly declares itself in permanent session. At the Hôtel de Ville, city officials begin to form a governing committee and an armed militia.
July 14, 1789: – Attack on the Bastille. A large armed mob lays siege to the Bastille, which holds only seven prisoners but has a large supply of gunpowder that the mob wants. After several hours of resistance, the governor of Fort de Launay finally surrenders; as he leaves, he is killed by the mob. The mob also kills de Flesselles, the provost of the merchants of Paris.
July 15, 1789: Astronomer and mathematician Jean Sylvain Bailly is named mayor of Paris and Lafayette is named commander of the newly formed National Guard.
July 16, 1789: The king re-appoints Necker as finance minister and withdraws royal troops from the city center. The newly elected Paris assembly votes to destroy the Bastille fortress. Similar committees and local militias are being created in Lyon, Rennes and other large French cities.
July 17
The King visits Paris, where he is welcomed by Bailly and Lafayette at the Hotel de Ville, wearing the tricolor cockade. Several prominent members of the nobility, including the Count of Artois, the Prince de Conde, the Duke of Enghien, the Baron de Breteuil, the Duke of Broglie, the Duke of Polignac and his wife, sensed what was ahead. wave of emigrants leave France.
July 18, 1789
Camille Desmoulins begins publishing ‘La France libre’, calls for a much more radical revolution and calls for a republic that will argue that revolutionary violence is justified.
July 22, 1789
An armed mob massacres Berthier de Sauvigny, the Intendant of Paris, and his father-in-law, accused of grain speculation, in the Place de Greve.
July 28, 1789
Jacques Pierre Brissot begins publication of Le Patriote français, the influential newspaper of the revolutionary movement known as the Girondins.
August 4, 1789
The king appoints a government of reform ministers around Necker. August Decrees: The Assembly votes to abolish the privileges and feudal rights of the nobility.
August 7, 1789
Publication of Jean-Paul Marat’s “A Conspiracy Revealed to Lull the People to Sleep”, condemning the reforms of August 4 as insufficient and calling for a much more radical revolution. Marat quickly becomes the voice of the most tumultuous sans-culottes faction of the revolution.
August 23, 1789
The Assembly declares freedom of religious opinion.
August 24, 1789
The Assembly declares freedom of speech.
August 27, 1789
The Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, largely drafted by Lafayette.
28 August 1789
The Assembly debates giving the King the power to veto legislation.
30 August 1789
Camille Desmoulins organizes an uprising in the Palais-Royal to block the proposed veto for the King and force the King to return to Paris. The rebellion fails.
31 August 1789
The Constitutional Committee of the Assembly proposes a bicameral parliament and the royal veto.
September 9, 1789
The mayor of Troyes is murdered by a mob.
September 11, 1789
The National Assembly gives the King the power to temporarily veto laws for two legislative sessions.
September 15, 1789
Desmoulins published Discours de la lanterne aux Parisiens, a radical pamphlet justifying political violence and exalting the Parisian mob.
September 16, 1789
First issue of Jean Paul Marat’s newspaper, L’Ami du peuple, proposing a radical social and political revolution.
September 19, 1789
Election of a new municipal assembly in Paris with three hundred members elected by districts.
1 October 1789
At the Banquet des Gardes du Corps du Roi at Versailles, attended by Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and the Dauphin at dessert time, the royal guards donned the white royal cockade. False news quickly reaches Paris that the guards have trampled the tricolor, causing outrage.
October 4, 1789
Women’s March on Versailles.
October 5, 1789
Marat’s paper calls for a march on Versailles to protest the insult to the cocarde tricolore. Thousands of women take part in the march, joined in the evening by the National Guard of Paris led by Lafayette.
October 6, 1789
After an orderly march, a crowd of women burst into the palace. The women demand that the king and his family escort them back to Paris, and the king agrees. The National Assembly also decided to relocate to Paris.
October 10, 1789
The Assembly appoints Lafayette commander of the regular army in and around Paris. The Diet also modifies the royal title from “King of France and Navarre” to “King of the French”. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a physician, member of the assembly, proposes a new and more humane form of public execution, which is eventually named after him, the guillotine.
October 12, 1789
Louis XVI secretly writes to King Charles IV of Spain. and complains of mistreatment. The Count of Artois secretly writes to Joseph II of Austria. requesting military intervention in France.
October 19, 1789: The first meeting of the National Assembly was held in Paris in the chapel of the Archbishop’s residence next to Notre Dame Cathedral.
October 21, 1789: The Assembly declares martial law to prevent future uprisings.
November 2, 1789: The Assembly votes to make the property of the Church available to the nation.
November 9, 1789: The assembly moved to the Salle du Manege, a former stable near the Tuileries Palace.
28 November 1789: First issue of Desmoulins weekly Histoire des Revolutions de France et de Brabant, viciously attacking royalists and aristocrats.
November 30, 1789
The Breton Club is re-established in Paris at the Saint-Honore convent of the Dominicans, who were better known as the Jacobins, under the name of the Society of Friends of the Constitution
December 1, 1789
Mutiny of sailors of the French navy in Toulon who arrested Admiral d’Albert.
December 9, 1789
The Assembly decided to divide France into departments instead of the former provinces of France.
19 December 1789
Introduction of assignat, a form of currency based not on silver but on the value of church property seized by the state.
December 24, 1789
The Assembly decided that Protestants were eligible to hold public office; Jews are still excluded.
1790 – rise of political clubs
January 7, 1790
Riots in Versailles demanding lower bread prices.
January 18, 1790
Marat publishes a scathing attack on Finance Minister Necker.
January 22, 1790
Paris city police attempt to arrest Marat for his violent attacks on the government, but he is defended by a mob of sans-culottes and flees to London.
February 13, 1790
The Congregation forbids taking religious vows and suppresses contemplative religious orders.
February 23, 179
The Assembly requires parish priests (priests) in churches throughout France to read aloud the Assembly’s decrees.
February 28, 1790
The Diet repeals the requirement that army officers be members of the nobility.
March 8, 1790
The Assembly decided to continue the institution of slavery in the French colonies, but authorized the establishment of colonial assemblies.
March 12, 1790
The Assembly approves the sale of church property by municipalities
March 29, 1790
Pope Pius VI. condemns the declaration of the rights of man and citizen in the secret consistory.
April 17, 1790
Founding of the Cordeliers Club, which meets in the former monastery of that name. He becomes one of the most vocal advocates of radical change.
April 30, 1790
Riots in Marseilles. The three forts are captured and the commander of Fort Saint-Jean, the Chevalier de Beausset, is murdered.
May 12, 1790
Lafayette and Jean Sylvain Bailly found the Society of 1789.
May 15, 1790
An Act was passed to allow the payment of manor fees.
May 18, 1790
Marat returns to Paris and continues publishing L’Ami du people.
May 22, 1790
The Assembly decided that it alone could decide on matters of war and peace, but that war could not be declared without the proposal and sanction of the King.
May 30, 1790
Lyon celebrates the revolution with the Fete de la Federation. Lille is holding a similar event on June 6. Strasbourg on June 13, Rouen on June 19.
June 3, 1790
Uprising of the biracial inhabitants of the French colony of Martinique.
June 19, 1790
The Diet abolishes the titles, orders and other privileges of the hereditary nobility.
June 26, 1790
Avignon, then under the rule of the Pope, requests to join France. The congregation, wanting to avoid a confrontation with Pope Pius VI, postpones the decision. Diplomats from England, Austria, Prussia and the United Provinces meet in Reichenbach to discuss possible military intervention against the French Revolution.
July 12, 1790
The Assembly adopts the final text on the position of the French clergy. The clergy lose their special status and are required to swear an oath of allegiance to the government.
July 14, 1790
The Fete de la Federation is held on the Champ de Mars in Paris to celebrate the first anniversary of the Revolution. The event is attended by the king and queen, the National Assembly, the government and a huge crowd. Lafayette takes a civic oath that he will be “always true to the Nation, the Law, and the King; that he will support with the utmost force the constitution ordered by the National Assembly and accepted by the King”. His soldiers take this oath, as does the king. The Fête de la Fédération is the last event to unite all the different factions in Paris during the Revolution.
July 23, 1790: The Pope writes a secret letter to Louis XVI promising to condemn the Assembly’s abolition of the special status of the French clergy.
July 26, 1790: Marat publishes a demand for the immediate execution of five to six hundred aristocrats to save the revolution.
July 28, 1790: The Assembly refused to allow Austrian troops to cross into French territory to suppress an uprising in Belgium inspired by the French Revolution.
July 31, 1790: The Assembly decided to take legal action against Marat and Camille Desmoulins for their calls for revolutionary violence.
August 16, 1790: The Assembly establishes the positions of magistrates across the country to replace the traditional courts held by local nobles.
August 16, 1790: The assembly calls for the re-establishment of discipline in the army.
August 31, 1790: Battles in Nancy between mutinous army soldiers and the city’s National Guard units supporting Lafayette and the Assembly.
September 4, 1790: Necker, Minister of Finance, is dismissed. The National Assembly looks after the public treasury.
September 16, 1790: Mutiny of the sailors of the French fleet near Brest.
October 6, 1790: Louis XVI writes to his cousin Charles IV. to the Spanish to express his hostility to the new position of the French clergy.
October 12, 1790: The Assembly dissolves the local assembly of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and reaffirms the institution of slavery.
October 21, 1790: The Assembly decided that the tricolor would replace the white flag and fleur-de-lys of the French monarchy as the emblem of France.
November 4, 1790: Rebellion in the French colony of Isle de France (now Mauritius).
November 25, 1790: Revolt of black slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti).
November 27, 1790: The Assembly decreed that all members of the clergy must take an oath to the nation, the law, and the king. The vast majority of French clergy refuse to take the oath.
December 3, 1790: – Louis XVI writes to the Prussian King Frederick William II. requesting military intervention by European monarchs to restore his authority.
December 27, 1790: 39 members of the Diet, who are also clergymen, take the oath of allegiance to the government. However, most clergy serving in the congregation refuse to take the oath.
1791 – Unsuccessful escape of the royal family from Paris.
January 1, 1791: Mirabeau elected President of the Diet
January 3, 1791: Priests are ordered to swear an oath to the nation within twenty-four hours. Most of the congregation’s clergy refuse to take the vow.
19 February 1791: Mesdames, daughter of Louis XV. and aunts of Louis XVI, leave France for exile.
February 24, 1791: Constitutional bishops who took the oath of state replaced the former church hierarchy.
February 28, 1791
Dagger Day. Lafayette ordered the arrest of 400 armed aristocrats who had gathered at the Tuileries Palace to protect the royal family. They are released on March 13.
March 2, 1791
Abolition of traditional trade guilds.
March 3, 1791
The Assembly ordered that silver items owned by the church be melted down and sold to finance the government.
March 10, 1791
Pope Pius VI. condemns the civil institution of the clergy
March 25, 1791
Diplomatic relations severed between France and the Vatican.
April 2, 1791
Death of Mirabeau.
April 3, 1791
The Assembly proposes to convert the new church of Sainte Geneviève, not yet consecrated, into a Panthéon, a mausoleum for famous French citizens.
April 13, 1791
Encyclical of Pope Pius VI. condemns the civil constitution of the clergy.
April 18, 1791
The National Guard, despite orders from Lafayette, blocks the royal family from going to the Château de Saint-Cloud to celebrate Easter.
May 4, 1791
Mirabeau’s remains are the first to be placed in the new Pantheon.
May 16, 1791: At the suggestion of Robespierre, the Assembly voted to prohibit members of the current Assembly from becoming candidates for the next Assembly.
May 30, 1791: The Assembly orders the transfer of Voltaire’s ashes to the Panthéon.
June 14, 1791: The Assembly passes the Chapelier Act, which abolishes corporations and prohibits unions and strikes.
June 15, 1791: The Diet prohibits priests from wearing church vestments outside churches.
June 20-21, 1791: Flight to Varennes. On the night of June 20-21, the King, Queen and their children slip out of the Tuileries Palace and flee in a carriage towards Montmedy.
21.-22. June 1791: The King is recognized in Varennes. The assembly announces that he has been taken against his will and sends three commissioners to bring him back to Paris.
June 25, 1791 :- Louis XVI returns to Paris. The assembly suspends his functions until further notice.
July 5, 1791: Emperor Leopold II. issues the Padua Circular calling on European royalty to come to the aid of Louis XVI, his brother-in-law.
July 9, 1791: The assembly decided that emigrants must return to France within two months or lose their property.
July 11, 1791: Voltaire’s ashes are transferred to the Panthéon.
July 15, 1791: The National Assembly declares the king inviolable and cannot be tried. Louis XVI suspended his duties pending the ratification of the new constitution.
16 July 1791: The more moderate members of the Jacobin Club break away to form a new club, the Feuillants.
July 17, 1791: A demonstration sponsored by the Jacobins, the Cordeliers and their allies carries a petition demanding the King’s removal on the Champ de Mars. The city authorities raise a red flag, a sign of martial law, and forbid the demonstration. The National Guard fire into the crowd and about fifty people are killed.
July 18, 1791: Following the events on the Champ de Mars, the Assembly prohibits incitement to riot, urges citizens to disobey the law, and seditious publications targeting Jacobins and Cordeliers. Marat goes into hiding and Danton flees to England.
August 14, 1791: A slave revolt begins in Saint Domingue (Haiti).
August 27, 1791: – Pillnitz Declaration – Proclamation of Frederick William II. Prussian and Habsburg Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Leopold II. affirms their wish “to put the King of France in a condition which will strengthen the foundations of monarchical government.” This vague statement is seen in France as a direct threat by the other European powers to intervene in the revolution.
13.-14. September 1791:- Louis XVI formally accepts the new constitution.
September 27, 1791: The Assembly declares that all men living in France, regardless of skin color, are free, but maintains slavery in the French colonies. French Jews are granted citizenship.
September 29, 1791: The Assembly limits National Guard membership to citizens who pay a certain level of taxes, thereby excluding the working class.
September 30, 1791: Last day of the National Constituent Assembly. The assembly granted amnesty to all who had been punished for illegal political activity since 1788.
October 1, 1791
First session of the new national legislature. The monarchist Claude Pastoret is elected president of the assembly.
October 16, 1791
Riots against the revolutionary commune, or city government, in Avignon. After a commune official is killed, anti-government prisoners held in the basements of the Papal Palace are massacred.
November 9, 1791: Emigrants are again ordered to return to France before January 1, 1792, under penalty of loss of property and death sentence. King Louis XVI vetoes the declaration on November 11, but asks his brothers to return to France.
November 14, 1791: Jerome Petion de Villeneuve is elected mayor of Paris with 6,728 votes to 3,126 for Lafayette. Of the 80,000 eligible voters, 70,000 abstained.
November 25, 1791: The Legislative Assembly created a Committee of Oversight to oversee the government.
November 29, 1791: Priests are again ordered to swear an oath to the government or be considered suspect.
December 3, 1791: The King writes a secret letter to Frederick William II. To Prussia, in which he calls on him to intervene militarily in France “to prevent the evils that are happening here before they invade the other states of Europe.
December 3, 1791: Louis XVI’s brothers (the Counts of Provence and Artois) refuse to return to France, citing the “moral and physical captivity in which the King is held.”
December 14, 1791: Lafayette received command of one of the three new armies established to defend the French frontier, the Army of the Center, based at Metz. The other two armies are commanded by Rochambeau (Army of the North) and Nicolas Luckner (Army of the Rhine).
December 28, 1791: The Assembly voted to call a mass army of volunteers to defend the borders of France.
1792 – War and overthrow of the monarchy.
January 23, 1792: A slave revolt in Haiti causes severe sugar and coffee shortages in Paris. Riots against food shortages; many grocery stores are looted in Paris.
February 1, 1792: French citizens are required to have a passport for inland travel.
On February 7, 1792, Austria and Prussia sign a military convention in Berlin on the invasion of France and the defense of the monarchy.
February 9, 1792: The Diet decided to confiscate the emigrants’ property for the benefit of the nation.
23 February 1792: Confrontation between army and mobs in Béthune over grain rationing.
March 7, 1792: The Duke of Brunswick is appointed commander of the joint Austro-Prussian invasion of France.
April 4, 1792: The Assembly grants equal rights to free people of color in Haiti.
April 5, 1792: The Assembly closes the Sorbonne, the center of conservative theology.
April 20, 1792: France declares war on Austria. For the next seven years, hostilities known as the French Revolutionary Wars continued between France and various European powers.
April 25, 1792: La Marseillaise, composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, is sung for the first time in Strasbourg.
April 28, 1792 :- The war begins. Rochambeau’s army invades the Austrian Netherlands.
April 30, 1792: The government issues three hundred million assignats to finance the war.
May 5, 1792: The Assembly ordered the raising of 31 new ensigns for the army.
May 6, 1792: The Royal-Allemand Regiment (Régiment de Royal-Allemand cavalerie), composed of German mercenaries, deserts the French army and joins the Austro-Prussian coalition.
12 May 1792: The Hussar regiments of Saxony and Bercheny leave the French army and join the coalition.
May 27, 1792: The Assembly orders the deportation of priests who have not signed the oath to the government, known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
June 8, 1792: The Assembly ordered an army of twenty thousand volunteers to be raised to camp outside Paris.
June 11, 1792: Louis XVI vetoes laws to deport priests and create a new army outside of Paris.
June 20, 1792: A secret insurgent committee is formed, supported by the Paris Commune and led by prosecutors Louis Pierre Manuel and Georges Danton. Demonstrators storm the Tuileries Palace and King Louis XVI indulgently wears the red cap of liberty and toasts the nation.
June 21, 1792
Assembly forbids assembly of armed citizens within city limits.
June 28, 1792: Lafayette addresses the assembly, condemning the actions of the Jacobins and other radical groups in the assembly. His proposal to organize a review of the National Guard in Paris is canceled by Pétion, the mayor of Paris.
June 30, 1792 :- Lafayette leaves Paris and returns to his army. He is condemned by Robespierre and his effigy is burned by a mob in the Palais-Royal.
July 11, 1792: As the Austrian army advances slowly toward Paris, the Assembly declares that the nation is in danger (La patriae en danger).
July 15, 1792: The assembly voted to send regular army troops, whose officers largely supported Lafayette, far beyond the city. Members of the Cordeliers Club, led by Danton, demand the convening of a Convention to replace the Legislative Assembly.
July 25, 1792: The Assembly authorizes the Paris Sections, local assemblies in each district, many of which are controlled by Jacobins and Cordeliers, to meet in permanent sessions.
July 25, 1792: Brunswick Manifesto – An Austrian commander warns that if the royal family is harmed, “exemplary and forever unforgettable revenge” will follow.
July 28, 1792: The Brunswick Manifesto is widely circulated in Paris, sparking fury against the King.
July 30, 1792: Assembly decree allows working-class citizens (those who pay no taxes) to join the National Guard. Arrival in Paris of voluntary associations from Marseille. They sing the new war anthem of the Army of the Rhine, which gradually takes their name, La Marseillaise. Fighting breaks out between new volunteers and National Guard soldiers loyal to Lafayette.
August 3, 1792: 47 of the 48 sections of Paris, mostly controlled by the Cordeliers and Jacobins, sent a petition to the Assembly demanding the King’s deposition. They are presented by Pétion, the mayor of Paris.
August 4, 1792: Paris Section No. 80 declares an insurrection on August 10 unless the King is recalled by the Assembly. At the request of the royal household, the Swiss guards at the Tuileries are reinforced and many armed nobles join them.
August 9, 1792: Georges Danton, deputy city prosecutor, and his Cordeliers allies take over the government of the city of Paris and establish the revolutionary Paris Commune. He seizes the Hôtel de Ville. They increased the number of deputies of the Commune to 288. On August 10, the Assembly recognized them as the lawful government of Paris.
August 10, 1792 :- Attack on the Tuileries Palace. The National Guard of the insurgent Paris Commune and the revolutionary Federer of Marseilles and Brittany attack the Tuileries Palace. The king and his family take refuge in the legislature. The Swiss Guards defending the palace are massacred. The Legislative Assembly temporarily suspends the king’s authority and orders the election of a new government, the Convention.
August 11, 1792: The Assembly elects a new executive committee to replace the government. Danton is appointed Minister of Justice. Municipalities are empowered to arrest suspected enemies of the revolution and royalist newspapers and publications are banned.
August 13, 1792: The Royal Family imprisoned in the temple.
August 14, 1792: Lafayette tries unsuccessfully to convince his army to march on Paris to rescue the royal family.
August 17, 1792: At the request of Robespierre and the Paris Commune, who threaten armed insurrection if the Assembly does not comply, the Assembly votes to create a revolutionary tribunal whose members are chosen by the Commune and convene a National Convention to replace the Assembly.
August 18, 1792: The Assembly abolishes religious teaching orders and those running hospitals, the last remaining religious orders in France.
August 19, 1792 :- Lafayette leaves his army and goes into exile. A coalition army of Austrian and Prussian soldiers and French emigrants led by the Duke of Brunswick crosses the northern and eastern borders into France.
August 21, 1792: The first summary judgment of the Revolutionary Tribunal and the execution by guillotine of the royalist Louis Collenot d’Angremont.
22 August 1792: The Paris Commune orders that persons are henceforth addressed as Citoyen and Citoyenne (“Citizen”) rather than Monsieur or Madame. Royalist unrest in Brittany, Vendée and Dauphiné.
September 2, 1792: Surrender without a fight at Verdun against Brunswick troops.
September 2–7, 1792: Following the news of the surrender of Verdun, the Commune orders massacres of prisoners in Paris prisons. Between 1,400 and 2,000 prisoners were massacred, the vast majority being common criminals, 17 percent priests, 6 percent Swiss guards, and 5 percent political prisoners.
September 10, 1792: The government requisitions all church objects made of gold or silver.
September 19, 1792: – Creation of the Louvre Museum with art taken from the royal collections.
September 20, 1792: The last session of the Assembly voted on a new law allowing civil marriage and divorce. The French army under Generals Dumouriez and Kellermann defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Valma. The Prussians retreat. The newly elected National Convention holds its first session behind closed doors, in the Salle du Manège, the former stables of the Tuileries Palace, and elects its presidency. Of the 749 deputies, 113 are Jacobins who sit on the highest benches in the hall, the Montagne (Mountain), hence their nickname of the Montagnards, “Horaces”.
20.-21. September 1792: A new parliament, the National Convention, meets, abolishes the monarchy and establishes a republic.
September 22, 1792: The Convention declares the abolition of royalty and the First French Republic.
September 29, 1792: French troops occupy Nice, then part of Savoy.
October 3, 1792: French troops occupied Basel, Switzerland, then ruled by the Archbishop of Basel, and declared it an independent republic.
October 23, 1792: French troops occupied Frankfurt am Main.
October 27, 1792: A French army under Dumouriez invaded the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium). They occupied Brussels on November 14.
November 19, 1792: The Convention claims the right to intervene in any country “where the people desire to recover their liberty.”
November 20, 1792: An iron box containing Louis XVI’s secret correspondence with Mirabeau and foreign monarchs was discovered in the royal apartment at the Tuileries Palace.
November 27, 1792: The Convention orders the annexation of Nice and Savoy to France.
November 28, 1792: The French army occupies Liège.
December 3, 1792: – Robespierre, leader of the Jacobins and first representative for Paris in the Convention, demands that the king be put to death.
December 4, 1792: Deputies sent by the Brussels Assembly to the National Convention express their gratitude to the Belgian people and request that France officially recognize the independence of Belgium. The Convention immediately adopts the proposed ordinance.
December 6, 1792: At the suggestion of Jean-Paul Marat, the Convention stipulates that each deputy must individually and publicly declare his vote for the death penalty for the king.
December 10, 1792: The trial of Louis XVI before the Convention begins.
December 11, 1792: Louis XVI is brought before the Convention. He will appear in person twice, on December 11 and 26.
December 26, 1792: – Defense of the King presented by his lawyer Raymond Desèze (Raymond comte de Sèze).
27-28 December 1792: Motions in the Convention asking the people to vote on the King’s sentence. The proposal is opposed by Robespierre, who declares “Louis must die so that the nation may live”. The Convention rejects the proposal that the French electors decide the king’s fate.
1793 – Execution of Louis XVI, France at war against Europe:-
January 15, 1793: The Convention declares Louis XVI guilty of conspiracy against public liberty by a vote of 707 to zero.
17 January 1793: In a twenty-one-hour vote, 361 MPs voted for the death penalty and 360 against (including 26 for the death penalty with subsequent pardon). The convention rejects the last appeal to the people.
January 21, 1793 :- Louis XVI is beheaded at 10:22 a.m. in the Place de la Revolution. Executioner Antoine Joseph Santerre orders a drumbeat to drown out his last words to the crowd.
January 24, 1793: Severance of diplomatic relations between England and France.
February 1, 1793: The Convention declares war on England and the Dutch Republic.
February 14, 1793: The Convention annexes the Principality of Monaco.
February 14, 1793: Jean Nicolas Pache is elected the new mayor of Paris.
March 1, 1793: Decree of the Convention annexes Belgium to France.
March 3, 1793: An armed insurrection by royalists against the Convention begins in Brittany.
March 7, 1793: The Convention declares war on Spain. War in the Vendee. An armed uprising against Convention rule, particularly against conscription, begins in the Vendee region of west-central France.
March 10, 1793: A revolutionary tribunal was established in Paris, with Fouquier-Tinville as its prosecutor. A failed uprising in Paris by an ultra-revolutionary faction known as the enrages, led by ex-priest Jacques Roux.
March 18, 1793: The Convention mandates the death penalty for those advocating radical economic programs, a decree directed at the outraged.
March 19, 1793
The Convention mandates the death penalty for anyone involved in the Vendee Rebellion.
March 21, 1793
Establishment of revolutionary surveillance committees (Comities de surveillance révolutionnaire) in all municipalities and their sections.
March 27, 1793 :- General Dumouriez denounces revolutionary anarchy.
March 30, 1793 :- The Convention orders Dumouriez to return to Paris, and sends four commissaires and Pierre de Ruel, the Minister of War, to arrest him.
April 1, 1793 :- Dumouriez arrests the commissaires of the Convention and Minister of War and hands them over to the Austrians,
April 3, 1793 :- Convention declares Dumouriez outside the law. Arrest of Philippe Egalite, a deputy and head of the Orléans branch of the royal family, who had voted for the execution of Louis XVI, his cousin.
April 4, 1793 :- Dumouriez fails to persuade his army to march on Paris, and goes over to the Austrians on April 5.
April 5, 1793 :- Jean Paul Marat is elected head of the Jacobin Club.
April 6, 1793 :- Committee of Public Safety established by the convention to oversee the ministries and to be chief executive body of the government. Its first nine members included Bertrand Barere, Pierre Joseph Cambon and Georges Danton. First session of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
April 12, 1793 :- The Convention votes to arrest Marat for using his newspaper L’Ami du peuple to incite violence and murder, and demand to suspend the convention. Marat goes into hiding.
April 15, 1793 :- The mayor of Paris, Jean Nicolas Pache, demands that the Convention expel 23 deputies belonging to the moderate Girondin faction.
April 24, 1793 :- Marat was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and was acquitted of all charges. His release caused riotous celebrations by his supporters.
May 3, 1793 :- The rebels of the Vendée, led by the aristocrats Charles de Bonchamps and Henri de La Rochejaquelein, capture Bressuire.
May 4, 1793 :- At the demand of the Paris section of Saint-Antoine, the Convention fixes a maximum price for grain.
May 24, 1793 :- At the demand of the Girondins, the Convention orders the arrest of the ultra-revolutionary enragés leaders Jacques Rene Hebert and Jean Varlet.
May 25, 1793 :- The Paris Commune demands the release of Hebert and Varlet.
May 26, 1793 :- At the Jacobin Club, Robespierre and Marat call for an insurrection against the convention. The Paris Commune begins preparing a seizure of power.
May 27, 1793 :- Release of Hebert and Varlet.
May 30, 1793 :- The leaders of Lyon rebel against the convention, arresting the local Montagnard and enragés leaders.
May 31, 1793 :- Insurrection of 31 May-2 June 1793. An armed crowd of sans-culottes organized by the Commune storms the hall of the convention and demands that it disband. The deputies resist.
June 2, 1793 :- The sans-culottes and soldiers of the Paris Commune, led by Francois Hanriot, occupy the hall of the convention and force it to vote for the arrest of 29 Girondins deputies, and two ministers, Clavier and Lebrun.
June 6, 1793 :- Revolts against the Montagnard coup d’etat in Marseille, Nimes, and Toulouse.
June 7, 1793 :- Bordeaux rejects the new government.
June 10, 1793 :- Montagnards gained control of the Committee of Public Safety. Despite the Revolution, scientific research continues. Opening of the National Museum of Natural History.
June 13, 1793 :- Leaders of departments opposing the new government meet in Caen. About sixty departments are in revolt against the Montagnard government in Paris.
June 24, 1793 :- Ratification of the new Constitution by the National Convention.
June 25, 1793 :- Jacques Roux, leader of the ultra-revolutionary enragés, presents his program to the convention.
June 26, 1793 :- Robespierre denounces the enragés before the convention.
June 30, 1793 :- Robespierre and Hebert lead a delegation of Jacobins to the Cordeliers Club to demand the exclusion from the club of Roux and the other ultra-revolutionary leaders.
July 3, 1793 :- The eight-year-old Louis XVII, king of France in the eyes of the royalists, is taken from Marie Antoinette and given to a cobbler named Antoine Simon on orders from the National Convention.
July 4, 1793 :- Marat violently denounces the enrages.
July 13, 1793 :- Charlotte Corday assassinated Jean-Paul Marat in his bath. At her trial, she declares, “I killed one man to save a hundred thousand.”
July 17, 1793 :- Charlotte Corday is tried and sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal for murdering Marat. She is guillotined after her trial.
July 27, 1793 :- Robespierre elected to the Committee of Public Safety. The Convention institutes the death penalty for those who hoard scarce goods.
August 1, 1793 :- The Convention declares a scorched earth policy against all departments rebelling against its authority. The Convention adopts the principles of the metric system. On order by decree of the convention, a mob profaned the tombs of the Kings of France at the Basilica of Saint-Denis.
August 2, 1793 :- Marie-Antoinette was transferred from the Temple to the Conciergerie.
August 8, 1793 :- The Convention sends an army led by General Kellermann to lay siege to the rebellious city of Lyon.
August 22, 1793 :- Robespierre is elected the president of the convention.
August 23, 1793 :- Levee en masse voted by the convention. All able-bodied non-married men between ages 18 and 25 are required to serve in the army.
August 25, 1793 :- Soldiers of the Convention capture Marseille.
August 27, 1793 :- Anti-Convention leaders in Toulon invite the British fleet and army to occupy the city.
September 4, 1793 :- Sans-culottes occupy the convention and demand the arrest of suspected opponents of the Revolution, and the creation of a new revolutionary army of 60,000 men.
September 17, 1793 :- Convention adopted a new Law of Suspects, permitting the arrest and rapid trial of anyone suspected of opposing the Revolution. Start of Reign of Terror.
September 18, 1793 :- Convention re-establishes revolutionary government in Bordeaux. Opponents are arrested and imprisoned.
September 21, 1793 :- All women are required to wear a cocarde tricolore.
September 29, 1793 :- The Convention passes the General Maximum, fixing the prices of many goods and services, as well as maximum salaries.
October 3, 1793 :- The Convention orders that Marie-Antoinette be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal. Additional moderate deputies are accused and excluded from the Assembly; a total of 136 deputies are excluded.
October 5, 1793 :- To break with the past and replace traditional religious holidays, the Convention adopts the newly created Republican Calendar : Year I is declared to have begun on September 22, 1792.
October 9, 1793 :- Lyon is recaptured by the army of the convention.
October 10, 1793 :- A decree by the Convention puts the new Constitution on hold. On a proposal from Saint-Just, the Convention declares that “The government of France is revolutionary until peace.”
October 12, 1793 :- The Convention decrees that the city of Lyon will be destroyed in punishment for its rebellion, and renamed Ville-Affranchie. Marie-Antoinette is summoned before the Revolutionary Tribunal and charged with treason.
October 16, 1793 :- During the Reign of Terror, a period during which radical elements of the government enact harsh measures against those they consider enemies, Marie-Antoinette is executed by guillotine. The Reign of Terror is overseen by Maximilien Robespierre. The Army of the Convention defeats the Austrian Army at the Battle of Wattignies.
October 17, 1793 :- The Army of the Convention under Generals Jean-Baptiste Kléber and Francois Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers defeats the Vendeen rebels at Cholet.
October 20, 1793 :- The Convention orders the repression of the ultra-revolutionary enragés.
October 28, 1793 :- The Convention forbids religious instruction by clerics.
October 30, 1793 :- The Revolutionary Tribunal sentences the 21 Girondins deputies to death.
October 31, 1793 :- The 21 Girondins deputies are guillotined.
November 3, 1793 :- Olympe de Gouges, champion of rights for women, accused of Girondin sympathies, is guillotined.
November 7, 1793 :- Philippe Egalite is guillotined.
November 8, 1793 :- Madame Roland is guillotined in the purge of Girondins. Before her execution, she cries: “Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name!”
November 9, 1793 :- Former finance minister Brienne is arrested at Sens.
November 10, 1793 :- The Cathedral of Notre Dame is re-dedicated as a Temple of Reason into the civic religion of the Cult of Reason.
November 12, 1793 :- The astronomer and former mayor of Paris, Jean Sylvain Bailly, is executed on the Champ de Mars for his role in suppressing a demonstration there on July 17, 1791.
November 17, 1793 :- On Robespierre’s orders, supporters of Danton are arrested.
November 20, 1793 :- Danton returns to Paris, after being absent since October 11. He urges “indulgence” toward opponents and “national reconciliation”.
November 23, 1793 :- The Paris Commune orders the closing of all churches and places of worship in Paris.
November 25, 1793 :- Convention votes to remove Mirabeau’s remains from the Panthéon and replace them with those of Marat.
December 5, 1793 :- The Cordelier deputy Camille Desmoulins, supporting Danton, publishes an appeal for national reconciliation.
December 12, 1793 :- Defeat of the rebel Vendéen army at Le Mans.
December 19, 1793 :- Withdrawal of the British from Toulon, following a successful military operation conceived and led by a young artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte.
December 23, 1793 :- The Army of General Francois Joseph Westermann destroys the Vendeen army at Savenay. Six thousand prisoners were executed.
December 24, 1793 :- To punish the rebellious city of Toulon, the Convention renames it Port-la-Montagne.
1794 – The fury of the Terror :-
January 8, 1794 :- At the Jacobins, Robespierre denounces Fabre d’eglantine, one of the instigators of the September massacres, father of the Republican calendar, and ally of Danton.
January 13, 1794 :- Arrest of Fabre d’eglantine for alleged diversion of state funds.
January 29, 1794 :- Death of Henri de la Rochejaquelein, royalist and military leader of the Vendéens, fighting at Nuaille.
February 4, 1794 :- The Convention votes to abolish slavery in French colonies.
February 5, 1794 :- Robespierre lectures the convention on the necessity for the Terror: “The foundations of a popular government in a revolution are virtue and terror; terror without virtue is disastrous; and virtue without terror is powerless. The Government of the Revolution is the despotism of liberty over tyranny.”
February 6, 1794 :- Napoleon Bonaparte was promoted to general for his role in driving the British from Toulon.
February 6, 1794 :- Recall of Jean-Baptiste Carrier from Nantes. As official delegate of the convention, he was responsible for the drownings at Nantes of as many as ten thousand Vendéen prisoners, in barges deliberately sunk in the Loire River.
February 10, 1794 :- Jacques Roux commits suicide in prison.
February 22, 1794 :- In a speech at the Cordeliers Club, Hébert attacks both the factions of Danton and Robespierre.
March 4, 1794 :- At the Cordeliers Club, Jean-Baptiste Carrier calls for an insurrection against the convention.
March 11, 1794 :- The Committees of Public Safety and General Security denounced a planned uprising by the Cordeliers.
March 13, 1794 :- Saint-Just, President of the convention, denounces a plot against liberty and the French people. Hébert and many other Cordeliers are arrested.
March 15, 1794 :- Robespierre tells the Convention that “All the factions must perish from the same blow.”
March 20, 1794 :- Arrest of General Hoche, a member of the Cordeliers. He was freed in August after the fall of Robespierre.
March 21, 1794 :- Trial of the Hébertists begins. To compromise them, they are tried together with foreign bankers, aristocrats and counter-revolutionaries.
March 24, 1794 :- Hebert and leaders of the Cordeliers were condemned to death and guillotined.
March 27, 1794 :- The philosopher and mathematician Condorcet is arrested. He is found dead in his cell two days later.
March 30, 1794 :- Danton, Camille Desmoulins and their supporters arrested.
April 2, 1794 :- Trial of Danton before the Revolutionary Tribunal. He uses the occasion to ridicule and insult his opponents.
April 4, 1794 :- The Convention decrees that anyone who insults the justice system is excluded from speaking, barring Danton from defending himself.
April 5, 1794 :- Danton and Desmoulins are convicted and guillotined the same day.
April 8, 1794 :- Robespierre makes accusations against the Convention delegate Joseph Fouché at a meeting of the Jacobins.
April 10, 1794 :- The members of the alleged Conspiracy of Luxembourg, a diverse collection of followers of Danton and Hebert and other individuals, are put on trial. Seven are acquitted and nineteen are condemned and executed, including Lucile Desmoulins, the widow of Camille Desmoulins, General Arthur Dillon, who had fought in the American Revolutionary War, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, Francoise Hébert, the widow of Jacques Hébert, and the defrocked Bishop Gobel.
April 14, 1794 :- At the request of Robespierre, the Convention ordered the transfer of the ashes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the Pantheon.
April 15, 1794 :- A report to the convention by Saint-Just calls for greater centralization of the police under the control of the Committee for Public Safety.
April 19, 1794:- By the Treaty of the Hague, between Britain and Prussia, Britain agrees to fund an army of 62,000 Prussian soldiers to continue the war against France.
April 20, 1794 :- In a report to the convention, the deputy Billaud-Varenne delivers a veiled attack against Robespierre: “All people jealous of their liberty should be on guard even against the virtues of those who occupy eminent positions.”
April 22, 1794 :- Malesherbes and the deputies Isaac Rene Guy le Chapelier and Jacques Guillaume Thouret, four times elected president of the Constituent Assembly, were taken to the scaffold.
April 23, 1794 :- Robespierre creates a new Bureau of Police attached to the Committee of Public Safety, in opposition to the existing police under the Committee of General Safety.
May 7, 1794 :- Robespierre asks the convention to decree “that the French people recognize the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul”, and to organize celebrations of the new cult.
May 8, 1794 :- The chemist Antoine Lavoisier, along with twenty-six other former members of the Ferme générale, is tried and guillotined
May 10, 1794 :- Arrest of Jean Nicolas Pache, the former mayor of Paris, followed by his replacement by Jean-Baptiste Fleuriot-Lescot, a close ally of Robespierre. Execution of Madame Elisabeth, the sister of Louis XVI.
June 2, 1794 :- Naval battle between British and French fleets off Ouessant. The French lose seven warships, but a convoy carrying grain from the United States is able to dock in Brest.
June 4, 1794 :- Robespierre was unanimously elected president of the convention.
June 8, 1794 :- Festival of the Supreme Being, conducted by Robespierre. Some deputies visibly show annoyance with his behavior at the Festival.
June 10, 1794 :- Law of 22 Prairial – As the prisons are full, the Convention speeds up the trials of those accused. Witnesses are no longer required to testify. From June 11 to July 27, 1,376 prisoners were sentenced to death, with no acquittals, compared with 1251 death sentences in the previous fourteen months. The convention also gives itself the exclusive right to arrest its own members.
June 12, 1794 :- Without naming names, Robespierre announces to the Convention that he will demand the heads of “intriguers” who are plotting against the convention.
June 24, 1794 :- Carnot foresighted despatched a large part of the Parisian artillery to the front.[16]
June 26, 1794 :- French forces under Jourdan defeat the Austrians at the Battle of Fleurus.
June 29, 1794 :- Dispute within the Committee of Public Safety. Billaud-Varenne, Carnot and Collot d’Herbois accuse Robespierre of behaving like a dictator. He leaves the committee and does not return before July 23.
July 1, 1794 :- Robespierre speaks at the Jacobin Club, denouncing a conspiracy against him within the convention, the Committee of Public Safety, and the Committee of General Security.
July 8, 1794 :- French forces under Generals Jourdan and Pichegru capture Brussels from Austrians.
July 9, 1794 :- Robespierre speaks again at the Jacobin Club, denying he has already made lists, and refusing to name those he plans to arrest.
July 14, 1794 :- At the request of Robespierre, Joseph Fouche is expelled from the Jacobin Club.
July 23, 1794 :- Alexandre de Beauharnais is tried and executed; his widow Joséphine de Beauharnais became Napoleon’s mistress, and his wife in 1796. Robespierre attends a meeting of reconciliation with the members of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, and the dispute seems settled.
July 25, 1794 :- The poet André Chénier is among those guillotined.
July 26, 1794 :- Robespierre gives a violent speech at the convention, demanding, without naming them, the arrest and punishment of “traitors” in the Committees of Public Safety and General Security. The Convention first votes to publish the speech, but Billaud-Varenne and Cambon demand names and attack Robespierre. The Convention sends Robespierre’s speech to the Committees for further study, without action.
July 27, 1794 :- Marie Therese de Choiseul, the princess of Monaco is executed. Her execution would be one of the last during the Reign of Terror.
July 27-28, 1794 :- Robespierre was overthrown in the National Convention. He is executed the next day, signaling the end of the Reign of Terror. Soon after, the National Convention was dissolved, making way for a government consisting of a five-person Directory and a bicameral legislature.
July 28, 1794 :- At two in the morning, soldiers loyal to the Convention take the Hotel de Ville without a fight. Robespierre is wounded in the jaw by a gunshot, either from a gendarme or self-inflicted. His brother is badly injured jumping from the window. In the morning, Robespierre and his supporters are taken to the Revolutionary Tribunal for formal identification. Since they have been declared outside the law, no trial is considered necessary. In the evening of July 28, Robespierre and his supporters, including his brother, Saint-Just, Couthon and Hanriot, 22 in all, are guillotined.
July 29, 1794 :- Arrest and execution of seventy allies of Robespierre within the Paris Commune. In all, 106 Robespierrists are guillotined.
August 5, 1794 :- Inmates of Paris prisons arrested under the Law of Suspects are released.
August 9, 1794 :- Napoleon Bonaparte is arrested in Nice, but released on August 20.
August 24, 1794 :- The Convention reorganizes the government, distributing power among sixteen different committees.
August 29, 1794 :- First anti-Jacobin demonstration in Paris by disaffected young middle-class Parisians called Muscadins.
August 30, 1794 :- French army retakes Conde-sur-l’Escaut. All French territory is now freed of foreign occupation.
August 31, 1794 :- The Convention puts Paris under the direct control of the national government.
September 1, 1794 :- The Musee des Monuments français was founded to protect religious architecture and art threatened with destruction.
September 13, 1794 :- The Abbe Gregoire, a member of the convention, coins the term “vandalism” to describe destruction of religious monuments across France
September 18, 1794 :- The Convention stops paying officially sanctioned priests and stops maintaining church properties.
September 21, 1794 :- The remains of Marat are placed in the Panthéon.
October 1, 1794 :- Confrontations in the meetings of the Paris sections between supporters and opponents of the Terror.
October 3, 1794 :- Arrest of the leaders of the bands of armed sans-culottes in Paris.
October 6, 1794 :- A French army captures Cologne.
October 22, 1794 :- Foundation of the Central School of Public Works, the future Ecole Polytechnique
November 9, 1794 :- Muscadins attacked the Jacobin Club. The attack was repeated on November 11.
November 12, 1794 :- The Convention orders the suspension of meetings of the Jacobin Club.
November 19, 1794 :- Treaty of London between the United States and England calls for joint suppression of French corsairs and a blockade of French ports.
December 3, 1794 :- The Convention forms a committee of sixteen members to complete work on the Constitution of 1793.
December 8, 1794 :- Seventy-three surviving Girondin deputies are given seats again in the convention.
December 16, 1794 :- Conviction and execution of the Jacobin Carrier for ordering the mass execution of as many as 10.000 prisoners in the Vendée
December 24, 1794 :- The Convention repeals the law setting maximum prices for grain and other food products.
1795 – The Directory Replaces the Convention :-
January 19, 1795 :- French army of Pichegru captures Amsterdam.
January 21, 1795 :- French cavalry capture the Dutch fleet, trapped in the ice at Den Helder.
February 2, 1795 :- Confrontations between Muscadines and sans-culottes in Paris streets.
February 5, 1795 :- The semi-official government newspaper Le Moniteur Universel condemns the past incitement to violence and terror by Marat and his allies.
February 8, 1795 :- Removal of the remains of Marat and three other extreme Jacobins from the Pantheon.
February 14, 1795 :- Several former Jacobin leaders in Lyon, who conducted the Terror there, are assassinated, beginning the so-called First White Terror.
February 17, 1795 :- An amnesty granted to former Vendéen rebels, restoring freedom of religion.
February 21, 1795 :- On a proposal by Boissy d’Anglas, the Convention proclaims freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.
February 22, 1795 :- In the convention, the deputy Rovère demanded the punishment of Jacobins who carried out the Terror. Former Jacobin leaders in several cities placed under arrest. Four Jacobins in Nîmes who conducted the Terror there were assassinated.
March 2, 1795 :- The Convention ordered the arrest of Barère, Villaud-Varenne, Collot d’Herbois and Vadier, the Jacobins who had orchestrated the downfall of Robespierre.
March 5, 1795 :- In Toulon, arrest of the Jacobins who had carried out mass executions of the population.
March 8, 1795 :- Riot in Toulon by sans-culottes, who executed seven imprisoned émigrés.
March 17, 1795 :- Food riots in Paris.
March 19, 1795 :- Grain supplies in Paris are exhausted. The assignat falls to eight percent of its original value.
March 21, 1795 :- On a proposal by Sieyès, the Convention votes on the death penalty for leaders of movements who try to overthrow the government.
March 28, 1795 :- Beginning of the trial of Fouquier-Tinville, the head of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who conducted the trials during the Terror.
April 1, 1795 :- Insurrection of 12 Germinal, Year III. Sans-culottes invade the Convention, but leave when the National Guard arrives. Paris is declared in a state of siege. The Convention ordered the deportation to French Guiana of Barere, Billaud-Varenne, and Collot d’Herbois, and the arrest of eight extreme-left deputies.
April 2, 1795 :- The French army under Pichegru suppresses an armed uprising in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
April 5, 1795 :- Signature of a peace agreement between Prussia and France in Basel. Prussia accepts the French annexation of the left bank of the Rhine.
April 10, 1795 :- Convention orders the disarmament of Jacobins who were involved in the Terror.
April 11, 1795 :- The Convention restores civic rights to all citizens declared outside the law since May 31, 1793.
April 19, 1795 :- Assassination of six Jacobins involved in the Terror in Bourg-en-Bresse.
April 23, 1795 :- The Convention names a commission of eight members to revise the Constitution.
May 2, 1795 :- Agreement of last Vendéen rebels to lay down their arms in exchange for amnesty.
May 4, 1795 :- Massacre of twenty-five Jacobins imprisoned in Lyon.
May 7, 1795 :- The former chief prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, and the fourteen jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal are condemned to death and guillotined.
May 20, 1795 :- Armed uprising against the Convention by Jacobins and sans-culottes. They invade the hall of the convention and kill deputy Féraud. The army responds quickly and clears out the hall. The Convention votes on the arrest of the Deputies involved in the uprising.
May 21, 1795 :- New uprising of Jacobins and sans-culottes in Paris; they occupy the Hôtel de Ville.
May 22, 1795 :- Third day of uprising in Paris. The Convention ordered the army to occupy the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
May 24, 1795 :- The army secures the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and disarms and arrests the participants in the uprising.
May 28, 1795 :- The last Jacobin former members of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security are arrested.
May 31, 1795 :- The Convention abolishes the Revolutionary Tribunal.
June 8, 1795 :- Death of the 10-year-old Louis XVII imprisoned in the Temple. His uncle in exile, the comte de Provence, inherits the title as Louis XVIII, king of France.
June 10, 1795 :- The Convention decriminalizes the emigres who fled France after the Jacobin seizure of power on May 26, 1793.
June 12, 1795 :- Deputies who supported the May 20-22 uprising are put on trial.
June 17, 1795 :- Suicide of six deputies condemned to death for participation in the May 20-22 uprising.
June 23, 1795 :- The rebels of the Vendée, under Charette, resumed their rebellion. In support of the Chouans, an army of émigrés, under the command of Joseph de Puisaye, landed at Quiberon.
June 26, 1795 :- An army of four thousand royalist émigrés is landed by the British in the Bay of Carnac in Brittany.
June 30, 1795 :- The royalist army of émigrés in Brittany is defeated in front of Vannes by General Hoche. The Chouans are forced to abandon Auray. The royalist army retreated to the peninsula of Quiberon, where on July 7 they were besieged by Hoche.
July 15, 1795 :- Two thousand more royalist emigres landed at Quiberon, where they also were trapped by Hoche.
July 17, 1795 :- The French Army of the Western Pyrenees in Spain under Moncey captures Vitoria-Gasteiz and takes Bilbao on July 19.
July 21, 1795 :- The royalist army in Quiberon surrenders. 748 emigres are executed by firing squad.
July 22, 1795 :- The Peace of Basel is signed between Spain and France. France receives from Spain the western portion of the island of Saint-Domingue (now the Dominican Republic). With Spain out of the war, France is at war only with Austria and England.
August 9, 1795 :- The Convention orders the arrest of Joseph Fouché and several other Montagnard deputies.
August 15, 1795 :- The Convention adopted the Franc as the French monetary unit.
August 22, 1795 :- Constitution of the Year III (Constitution de l’An III), the new Constitution, is adopted by the convention. It calls for an upper and lower house of the parliament, on the American and British models, and an executive Directory of five members. According to the terms of the Constitution, two-thirds of the deputies of the new Assembly are former deputies of the convention.
September 23, 1795 :- Approved by a national referendum, the new Constitution comes into effect.
October 5, 1795 :- An armed royalist uprising threatens the convention. On the orders of Paul Barras, in charge of the defense of Paris, General Bonaparte leads the army against the uprising. He uses cannons with grapeshot to break up a rebel gathering in front of the church of Saint-Roch, rue Saint-Honore.
October 12, 1795 :- Beginning of elections to the new chambers of the legislature, the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients. Montagnard army officers dismissed under the convention are reintegrated into the army.
October 23, 1795 :- The assignat falls to just three percent of its nominal value. Twenty billion (20,000,000,000) notes in circulation.
October 26, 1795 :- Bonaparte is named commander in chief of the Army of the Interior.
October 31, 1795 :- The first Directory is elected by the legislature; its members are Louis Marie de La Revelliere-lepeaux, Jean-Francois Rewbell, Etienne-francois Letourneur, Paul Barras and Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes, who declines to serve and is replaced by Lazare Carnot.
December 10, 1795 :- The legislature votes on a forced loan of six hundred million francs to be taken from the wealthiest French citizens.
December 26, 1795 :- The daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, Madame Royale, imprisoned in the Temple since August 1792, is exchanged for a group of republican prisoners held in Austria.
December 31, 1795 :- Armistice on the Rhine halting combat between the French and Austrian armies.
1796 – Napoleon’s campaign in Italy :-
January 2, 1796 :- Creation by the Directory of the Ministry of the Police, under Merlin de Douai.
January 21, 1796 :- Commemoration of the anniversary of Louis XVI’s execution. Director Rewbell gives a speech denouncing the extremism of the left.
January 25, 1796 :- The Directory is given the provisional power to name the administrators of cities.
January 26, 1796 :- The royalist and rebel leader Nicolas Stofflet tries to restart the War in the Vendée.
February 2, 1796 :- Wolfe Tone, leader of the Irish revolutionaries, arrives in France, seeking military support to liberate Ireland.
February 19, 1796 :- The government stops issuing assignats, which have lost most of their value. Thirty-nine billion (39,000,000,000) are in circulation.
February 20, 1796 :- The United States and Britain extend their treaty of November 19, 1794. Relations between France and the United States deteriorated.
February 23, 1796 :- The Vendéen rebel and royalist leader Nicolas Stofflet is captured and executed by firing squad in Angers the following day.
February 28, 1796 :- On the orders of the Directory, General Bonaparte closes the extreme leftist Club du Panthéon, founded by a follower of Marat.
March 2, 1796 :- The Directory names General Bonaparte the commander of the Army of Italy.
March 9, 1796 :- Marriage of Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais, the widow of Alexandre de Beauharnais, a French general and political leader guillotined during the Reign of Terror.
March 18, 1796 :- The Directory replaces the assignat with two billion four hundred million Mandats territoriaux, which can be used to purchase nationalized property. Within three weeks they lose eighty percent of their value.
March 23, 1796 :- Francois de Charette, last leader of the royalist rebellion in Vendee, is captured and executed by firing squad in Nantes.
March 30, 1796 :- Francois-Noel Babeuf, known as “Gracchus Babeuf”, the ultra-leftist leader and precursor of Communism, forms an insurrectional committee and movement, called Les Egaux (“the Equals”), to overthrow the government. They held a demonstration in Paris on April 6.
April 10, 1796 :- Bonaparte begins his Italian campaign with victories over the Austrians at Montenotte (April 12) and the Sardinians at Millesimo (April 13).
May 2, 1796 :- Babeuf’s followers and the remaining Montagnards form a common plan to overthrow the Directory.
May 9, 1796 :- Bonaparte forces an armistice upon the Duke and Duchess of Parma.
May 10, 1796 :- Bonaparte defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Lodi.
May 15, 1796 :- Treaty signed in Paris between the Directory and king Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia. The king agrees to cede Savoy and Nice to France.
May 19, 1796 :- In Milan, Bonaparte promises “independence” for Italy.
May 20, 1796 :- The Austrians renounce the armistice along the Rhine, and the war resumes on that front.
June 4, 1796 :- Bonaparte begins the siege of Mantua, the last Italian city held by Austria.
June 5, 1796 :- Bonaparte signs an armistice with the king of Sicily.
June 12, 1796 :- Bonaparte’s army entered Romagna, one of the Papal States.
June 22, 1796 :- End of the civil war in the west of France, with the submission of Georges Cadoudal and the departure of Louis de Frotte for England.
June 23, 1796 :- Bonaparte signs the Armistice of Bologna with the Holy See, which permits the French occupation of the northern Papal States.
July 9, 1796 :- The Island of Elba is occupied by the British.
July 10, 1796 :- A new Austrian army under Wurmser arrives in Italy.
July 16, 1796 :- General Kléber captures Frankfurt.
July 18, 1796 :- French army under General Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr captures Stuttgart.
July 20, 1796 :- General Hoche is named head of an army to invade Ireland in support of the Irish independence movement.
August 5, 1796 :- Bonaparte defeated the Austrians under Wurmser at the Battle of Castiglione. The Austrian army retreated to Tyrol.
August 19, 1796 :- Treaty of alliance signed between France and Spain at San Ildefonso.
September 8, 1796 :- Bonaparte defeated the Austrians under Wurmser at the Battle of Bassano.
September 9, 1796 :- Failed insurrection at the Grenelle army camp Paris by followers of Gracchus Babeuf, and diehard Montagnards, infiltrated by agents of the police.
October 5, 1796 :- Spain, now allied with France, declares war on Britain.
October 10, 1796 :- The thirty-two leaders of the September 9-10 Babeuf uprising are tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to death.
October 16, 1796 :- Bonaparte encourages the proclamation of a Cispadane Republic in northern Italy, composed of Modena and some of the Papal states.
November 2, 1796 :- Austria sends two more armies to northern Italy to confront Bonaparte.
November 15-17, 1796 :- Decisive victory of Bonaparte over the Austrians at the Battle of Arcole.
December 4, 1796 :- Abrogation of the harshest parts of the October 25, 1795 laws punishing émigrés and refractory priests.
December 15-17, 1796 :- Departure from Breast of a fleet carrying a French army commanded by Hoche to invade Ireland.
December 24-25, 1796 :- Storms dislocate the French invasion fleet off the coast of Ireland and force it to return to France.
1797 – Bonaparte chases the Austrians from Italy :-
January 7, 1797 :- A new Austrian army commanded by General Jozsef Alvinczi is sent to fight General Bonaparte in Italy.
January 14, 1797 :- Bonaparte defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Rivoli.
February 2, 1797 :- Surrender of last Austrian forces in Italy, in Mantua, to Bonaparte.
February 9, 1797 :- Bonaparte occupies Ancona to force Pope Pius VI to negotiate with him. Negotiations begin February 12.
February 14, 1797 :- Defeat of the Spanish fleet, ally of the French, at the Battle of Cape Saint Vincent.
February 19, 1797 :- Pius VI cedes Comtat Venaissin and the northern portion of the Italian papal states to the new Cispadane Republic.
February 20, 1797 :- Beginning of the trial of Babeuf and his leading followers at the High Court of Justice in Vendome.
March 2, 1797 :- The Directory authorizes French warships to capture U.S. ships, in retaliation for the British-US treaty of February 20, 1796.
March 9, 1797 :- Bonaparte begins a new offensive in Italy against the army of the Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen.
March 18, 1797 :- French voters are required to take an oath of fidelity to the government before voting on April 18.
April 7, 1797 :- After a series of victories by Bonaparte, the Austrians agreed to negotiate.
April 18, 1797 :- Preliminary Treaty of Leoben; Austria gives up its claim to the Austrian Netherlands (“Belgian Provinces”); a secret agreement divides the territories of Venice between Austria and France. Results of partial elections for the legislature. 205 of the 216 deputies running are defeated, and many are replaced by royalists.
April 27, 1797 :- Massacre of anti-French insurgents in Verona by French army.
April 30, 1797 :- The Directory ratifies the Treaty of Leoben.
May 2, 1797 :- Bonaparte declares war on Venice.
May 12, 1797 :- Revolutionaries overthrow the government council (Patriciate) of Venice.
May 16, 1797 :- Bonaparte begins negotiations with the Doge of Venice, Ludovico Manin.
May 20, 1797 :- New session of the French legislature begins. The royalist Pichegru is chosen president of the Council of Five Hundred, and another royalist, Francois Barbe-marbois becomes president of the Council of Ancients. A drawing of lots removes the moderate republican Etienne-francois Letourneur. He was replaced by the royalist diplomat Francois Barthélemy on June 6.
May 26, 1797 :- The political agitator Babeuf and one supporter, Darthe, are sentenced to death. They were executed in Vendôme on May 27.
June 4, 1797 :- First meeting of the Cercle Constitutionnel, a club of prominent moderate republican deputies. Its leaders include Sieyes, Talleyrand, and Garat.
June 14, 1797 :- Bonaparte installs a new government in Genoa, with the aim of creating a new Ligurian Republic.
June 24, 1797 :- The Director Paul Barras contacts General Hoche, seeking support for a coup d’etat against the royalist majority in the two Councils.
June 27, 1797 :- The royalist majority in the Councils repealed the law of October 25, 1795, which added punishments against refractory priests and emigres.
June 28, 1797 :- French troops land on Corfu, previously owned by Venice. General Hoche sends 15,000 soldiers from the Rhine to Brest via Paris, on the pretext of planning an invasion of Ireland.
July 3, 1797 :- Talleyrand proposes a French expedition against Egypt.
July 9, 1797 :- The French support the formation of the Cisalpine Republic, composed of the former Cispadane Republic and Lombardy.
July 16, 1797 :- Conflict within the Directory between Barthelemy and Carnot, favorable to the monarchists, and the three pro-republican directors, Barras, La Revelliere-lepeaux, and Rewbell.
July 17, 1797 :- The army of Hoche arrives within three leagues (see also: Units of measurement in France before the French Revolution] of Paris, a violation of the Constitution. The royalist Councils protest.
July 20, 1797 :- Barras produces evidence that General Pichegru was in secret correspondence with Louis XVIII and the monarchists. Carnot joins sides with the three republican directors.
July 25, 1797 :- The Councils vote a law forbidding political clubs, including the republican Cercle Constitutionnel.
July 27, 1797 :- Bonaparte sends General Augereau to Paris as military commander of the city, to support a coup d’état against the royalists.
August 16, 1797 :- Bonaparte writes to the Directory, proposing a military intervention in Egypt “to truly destroy England”.
September 4, 1797 :- Coup d’état of 18 Fructidor against the royalists in the legislature. Augereau arrests Barthelemy, Pichegru, and the leading royalist deputies.
September 5, 1797 :- The Directory forces the Councils to adopt new laws annulling the elections of 200 royalist deputies in 53 departments, and deporting 65 royalist leaders and journalists.
September 8, 1797 :- Election of two new republican directors, Merlin de Douai and Francois de Neufchateau, to replace Carnot and Barthelemy.
September 23, 1797 :- General Augereau, who carried out the September 4 coup, is named commander of the new Army of the Rhine.
September 29, 1797 :- Directory instructs Bonaparte to win major concessions in negotiations with Austria, and, in the event of refusal, to march on Vienna.
October 17, 1797 :- Signature of peace between Austria and France in the Treaty of Campo Formio. Austria obtains Venice and its possessions, while France receives Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine River as far as Cologne.
December 21, 1797 :- Bonaparte meets with the Irish leader Wolfe Tone to discuss a future French landing in Ireland.
December 28, 1797 :- Anti-French riots in Rome, and murder of a French general, Mathurin-Leonard Duphot.
December 29, 1797 :- Pope Pius VI apologizes to France for the Rome riots; apologies are rejected by the Directory.
1798 – New republics in Switzerland and Italy; an election annulled; Bonaparte invaded Egypt :-
January 5, 1798 :- The French legislature passes a law authorizing a loan of eighty million francs to prepare an invasion of England.
January 11, 1798 :- The Directory orders General Berthier and his army to march on Rome to punish the papal government for the murder of General Duphot.
January 12, 1798 :- Bonaparte presents a plan for an invasion of England to the Directory.
January 18, 1798 :- The legislature authorizes French ships to seize neutral ships carrying British merchandise.
January 24, 1798 :- The Vaud region of Switzerland, with French support, declares independence from the Swiss government in Bern.
January 26, 1798 :- The Directory authorizes French troops to intervene on behalf of the Swiss uprising in Vaud against the Swiss government.
February 10, 1798 :- Berthier and his army enter Rome.
February 14, 1798 :- Talleyrand presents to the Directory a project for a French conquest of Egypt.
February 15, 1798 :- General Berthier, in Rome, proclaims a new Roman Republic, under French protection.
February 23, 1798 :- Bonaparte recommends to the Directory the abandonment of the invasion of England, and an invasion of Egypt instead.
March 5, 1798 :- The Directory approves Bonaparte’s plan to invade Egypt.
March 6, 1798 :- The French army captures Bern.
March 9, 1798 :- The Parliament of German states, meeting in Rastadt, accepts the annexation of the left bank of the Rhine by France.
March 22, 1798 :- Under the sponsorship of General Brune, an assembly in Aarau proclaims a Helvetic Republic.
April 4, 1798 :- Following the French model, the new Helvetic Republic declares itself a secular republic.
April 9-18, 1798 :- Elections for one-third of the seats in the French legislature.
April 26, 1798 :- The Traite de Reunion formally unites the Republic of Geneva (fr) with the French Republic.
May 7, 1798 :- A report to the Council of Five Hundred declares that the French elections were irregular, and recommends exclusion of candidates of the far left.
May 11, 1798 :- By the Law of 22 Floreal Year VI, the Council of Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred invalidate the election of 106 Jacobin deputies.
May 15, 1798 :- Jean Baptiste Treilhard is elected to the Directory in place of François de Neufchâteau.
May 19, 1798 :- Bonaparte and his Armee d’Orient set sail from Toulon for Egypt.
May 23, 1798 :- Anti-British uprising begins in Ireland; the Irish rebels believe that Bonaparte is sailing to Ireland.
June 9-11, 1798 :- Bonaparte invades and captures Malta.
July 1-2, 1798 :- Bonaparte lands in Egypt and captures Alexandria.
July 14, 1798 :- Irish uprising suppressed by the British army.
July 21, 1798 :- Bonaparte defeated the Mamluks at the Battle of the Pyramids.
July 24, 1798 :- Bonaparte and his army enter Cairo.
August 1, 1798 :- Admiral Nelson and the British fleet destroy the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile, stranding Bonaparte in Egypt.
August 6, 1798 :- A French fleet and expeditionary force sails for Ireland to aid the Irish rebels, though the rebellion is already defeated.
August 22, 1798 :- French troops under General Humbert land at Killala, in northwest Ireland.
August 27, 1798 :- General Humbert defeats a British force at the Battle of Castlebar, and declares an Irish republic.
September 2, 1798 :- Suppression of a royalist revolt in the south of the Massif Central in France and the arrest of its leaders.
September 5, 1798 :- The Jourdan law requires all French men between twenty and twenty-five to perform military service.
September 9, 1798 :- The forces of General Humbert are surrounded by the British army at the Battle of Ballinamuck and forced to surrender.
September 16, 1798 :- A new French expeditionary force sails from Brest to Ireland.
September 24, 1798 :- The French government calls 200,000 men for military service.
October 8, 1798 :- Francois de Neufchâteau, Minister of the Interior, creates the first Higher Council on Public Education.
October 11, 1798 :- French fleet and expeditionary force defeated off the coast of Ireland; six of eight warships captured.
October 12, 1798 :- Belgian peasants rebel against obligatory service in the French army.
October 21, 1798 :- Population of Cairo rebels against French occupation. Rebellion suppressed by Bonaparte on October 22.
November 4, 1798 :- Directory orders deportation of Belgian priests, blamed for peasant uprising.
November 5, 1798 :- A Russian-Turkish fleet blockades Corfu occupied by the French army.
November 16, 1798 :- Austria and England agree to cooperate to force France back to its 1789 boundaries.
November 23-24, 1798 :- Directory, desperate for money, imposes new real estate tax and additional taxes based on the number of doors and windows.
November 27, 1798 :- The army of the King of Naples captures Rome.
December 4, 1798 :- French troops defeat Belgian rebels at Hasselt and massacre insurgents. End of peasant uprising in Belgium.
December 6, 1798 :- French army under Jean Étienne Championnet defeats the army of the King of Naples and his wife at the Battle of Civita Castellana.
December 14, 1798 :- French army under Championnet recaptures Rome.
December 21, 1798 :- French army attacks Naples and forces King of Naples to take sanctuary on the flagship of Admiral Nelson.
December 29, 1798 :- Alliance (Second Coalition) between Russia, Britain and the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily against France signed.
1799 – the Consulate seizes power; End of the Revolution :-
January 10, 1799 :- The army of General Championnet captures Capua.
January 23, 1799 :- French army occupies Naples.
January 26, 1799 :- Proclamation of a new republic in Naples, named Parthénopéenne by the Directory
February 1, 1799 :- Victory of General Louis Desaix over the Mamluks at Aswan completes the French conquest of upper Egypt.
February 3, 1799 :- Conflict between Generals Championnet and Faipoult over the command of French troops in Naples.
February 6, 1799 :- Championnet orders the expulsion of Faribault from Naples.
February 20, 1799 :- Bonaparte marches his army from Cairo toward Syria. Bonaparte defeats a Turkish army and occupies Arish in the Sinai Peninsula.
February 24, 1799 :- The Directory orders the arrest of General Championnet. General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan assembles the Army of the Danube and prepares to cross the Rhine and invade German states and Austria.
March 1-2, 1799 :- French armies under Jourdan and Bernadotte crossed the Rhine.
March 3, 1799 :- French troops in Corfu surrender, after a long siege by a Russian-Turkish fleet.
March 7, 1799 :- Bonaparte captures Jaffa in Palestine. Some of his soldiers are infected with the plague.
March 11, 1799 :- Bonaparte visits the hospital for plague victims in Jaffa.
March 12, 1799 :- The Directory declares war on Austria and on the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
March 19, 1799 :- Bonaparte lays siege to Saint-Jean-d’Acre in Palestine.
March 21, 1799 :- French troops enter the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
March 23, 1799 :- Army of General Massena defeated by Austrians at Battle of Feldkirch.
March 25, 1799 :- Defeat of Jourdan by Austrians at Battle of Stockach.
March 28, 1799 :- Bonaparte tries unsuccessfully to capture Saint-Jean-d’Acre.
April 1, 1799 :- Bonaparte fails again to take Saint-Jean-d’Acre.
April 3, 1799 :- Jourdan resigns as commander of the Army of the Danube. His army pulled back to the west bank of the Rhine on April 6.
April 9, 1799 :- Beginning of legislative elections in France to replace one-third of members.
April 10, 1799 :- Pope Pius VI, a prisoner of the French, is transferred to France.
April 14, 1799 :- The Austrian army of Melas and the Russian army of Alexander Suvorov join Italy.
April 16, 1799 :- Bonaparte defeats the Ottoman army led by Abdullah Pasha al-Azm at the Battle of Mount Tabor.
April 18, 1799 :- French elections result in a major loss for supporters of the government, and a victory for the extreme left.
April 24, 1799 :- Bonaparte fails a third time to capture Saint-Jean-d’Acre.
April 27, 1799 :- Alexander Suvorov’s Russo-Austrian army defeats French forces under General Moreau at the Battle of Cassano.
April 29, 1799 :- Suvorov enters Milan.
May 1, 1799 :- Bonaparte fails for a fourth time to capture Saint-Jean-d’Acre.
May 10, 1799 :- Fifth and last attempt by Bonaparte to capture Saint-Jean-d’Acre. He lifted the siege on May 17.
May 16, 1799 :- As the result of the system of drawing lots, Rewbell leaves the Directory and is replaced by Sieyès, who is seen as a moderate leftist.
May 19, 1799 :- An English fleet lands soldiers at Ostend in Belgium. The expedition fails, and withdraws the following day.
May 26, 1799 :- Russo-Austrian army enters Turin.
June 4–6, 1799 :- Massena is forced to withdraw his forces from Zurich.
June 14, 1799 :- Bonaparte returns to Cairo.
June 16, 1799 :- A serious struggle begins between the newly elected left-wing members of the Council of Five Hundred and the Directory, due to the string of French military defeats. The legislature demands new measures for “public safety”.
June 17, 1799 :- The Council of Five Hundred and Council of the Ancients annul the election of Jean Baptiste Treilhard to the Directory and replace him with a leftist member, Louis-jerome Gohier.
June 18-19, 1799 :- Two royalist members of the Directory, Philippe-Antoine Merlin de Douai and La Revelliere-lepeaux, are forced to resign, under threat of being brought to trial by the Councils. They are replaced by two moderate leftists, Roger Ducos, and Jean-Francois-Auguste Moulin. (Coup of 30 Prairial Year VII )
June 19, 1799 :- A French army under Etienne Macdonald is defeated by the Russians under Suvorov at the Battle of the Trebia.
June 19, 1799 :- Another reversal in Italy: the French garrison of Naples surrenders.
June 28, 1799 :- The Council votes to demand a forced loan of one hundred million francs from wealthy citizens to equip new armies.
July 5, 1799 :- Two commanders with neo-Jacobin sympathies are promoted by the Directory: Joubert is named new commander of the Army of Italy, and Championnet is chosen to command the Army of the Alps.
July 7, 1799 :- A neo-Jacobin club, the Societe des amis de la Liberté et de l’égalité (“Society of the Friends of Liberty and Equality”), is founded in Paris.
July 12, 1799 :- The Council of Five Hundred votes a new law on hostages, demands lists of royalists be made in each department, and brings accusations against former members of the Directory with royalist tendencies.
July 14, 1799 :- At a celebration of the anniversary of the Revolution, General Jourdan calls for “bringing back the pikes”, the weapons of the Jacobin street mobs during the Terror. On the same day, Sieyes gave a speech denouncing the new Jacobins.
July 17, 1799 :- An Ottoman army under the command of Seid Mustafa Pasha, transported to Egypt by Sidney Smith’s British fleet, lands at Abukir.
July 25, 1799 :- Bonaparte defeated Seid Mustafa Pasha’s Ottoman army at the Battle of Aboukir.
August 6, 1799 :- Royalist uprisings in Toulouse and Bordeaux. Both are quickly suppressed by the army.
August 13, 1799 :- Sieyes orders the closing of the new Jacobin Club in Paris.
August 15, 1799 :- Defeat of the French Army of Italy under General Joubert at the Battle of Novi. Joubert is killed.
August 18, 1799 :- The Council of Five Hundred decides, by a vote of 217-214, not to arrest and try the former members of the Directory accused of royalist sympathies.
August 23, 1799 :- Bonaparte has had no news from France in six months. The British admiral Sir Sidney Smith sends him a packet of French newspapers, which he reads in one night. He hands over command of the army to General Kléber and leaves Egypt with a small party aboard the frigate La Muiron.
August 29, 1799 :- Pope Pius VI dies, a French prisoner, in Valence. Championnet, prominent among the Jacobin generals, is named new commander of the Army of Italy.
September 13, 1799 :- General Jourdan, leader of the Jacobins in the army, asks the Council of Five Hundred to declare a state of national emergency.
September 14, 1799
Council of Five Hundred refuses to declare a state of national emergency. The Director Sieyes obtains the resignation of Jean Bernadotte as Minister of War, on the grounds that Bernadotte was planning a Jacobin coup d’etat.
September 15, 1799
The royalist leaders in the west of France, including the Breton Chouan leader Georges Cadoudal, meet to organize a new uprising against Paris.
September 24, 1799
The royalist military commander Louis de Frotte lands in Normandy to take charge of the new uprising.
September 25-26, 1799
General Massena defeats the Russian-Austrian army of Alexander Rimsky-Korsakov at the Second Battle of Zurich.
September 29, 1799 :- The Russian army under Suvorov is forced to retreat across the Alps.
October 6, 1799 :- A French-Dutch army under General Brune defeats a Russian-British force at the Battle of Castricum. The British and Russians withdrew their troops from the Netherlands.
October 9, 1799 :- Bonaparte lands at Saint-Raphael.
October 14, 1799 :- Sieyes invites General Moreau to organize a coup d’etat against the Jacobins in the Councils, but Moreau refuses.
October 16, 1799 :- Bonaparte arrives in Paris for public celebrations.
October 17, 1799 :- Bonaparte is received by the Directory.
October 19, 1799 :- The royalist forces in the west, the Chouans, capture Nantes, but are forced to withdraw the next day.
October 23, 1799 :- The Russian Czar Paul I orders the withdrawal of Russian troops from the war against the French. Lucien Bonaparte, younger brother of General Napoléon Bonaparte, is elected President of the Council of Five Hundred.
October 23-29, 1799 :- Royalist forces in Brittany and the Vendee briefly capture several cities, but are quickly driven out by the French army.
November 1, 1799
Bonaparte meets with Sieyes; the two men dislike each other but agree to a parliamentary coup d’etat to replace the Directory.
November 3, 1799
Bonaparte meets with Fouché, the Minister of Police, who agrees not to interfere with a coup d’etat.
November 6, 1799
The Councils of the Ancients and the Five Hundred offer a banquet to Bonaparte at the former church of Saint Sulpice.
November 7, 1799
General Jourdan proposes that Bonaparte join him in a Jacobin coup d’etat against the Directory. Bonaparte refuses.
November 8, 1799
Bonaparte dines with Cambacérès and arranges the final details of the coup d’état
November 9, 1799
Military leader Napoleon Bonaparte overthrows the Directory and declares himself first consul, or leader, of France. He is later named emperor.
November 10, 1799
As proposed by Bonaparte, the members of the two Councils are transported to the château of Saint-Cloud. 6,000 soldiers have been assembled by Bonaparte there, soldiers who are largely hostile to the Councils because of delays in their pay. Bonaparte speaks first to the Council of the Ancients, explaining the need for a change in government. The upper Council listens in silence and votes without opposition to accept Bonaparte’s proposal. Bonaparte then addresses the Council of Five Hundred, meeting in the orangerie of the domain of Saint-Cloud. Here his reception is much different: the Jacobin members protest angrily, insult and shout down Bonaparte, threatening to declare him outside the law, which would have led to his immediate arrest. While the Council debated in great confusion inside, Lucien Bonaparte takes Bonaparte outside, and tells the waiting soldiers that the deputies had tried to assassinate Bonaparte. The soldiers, furious, invade the meeting hall and chase out the deputies at the point of bayonets. In the absence of the opposition deputies, two parliamentary commissions named Bonaparte, Sieyes and Duclos as the provisional consuls of a new government.
November 11-22, 1799
Bonaparte and the two other Provisional Consuls form a new government, Berthier as minister of War, Talleyrand in charge of foreign relations, Fouche as minister of Police, and Cambaceres as minister of Justice.
December 1, 1799
Bonaparte rejects a constitution proposed by Sieyes.
December 24
The Councils, now firmly under the control of Bonaparte, adopt the Constitution of the Year VIII. The new Consulate is formally established, with Bonaparte as First Consul, Cambaceres as Second Consul, and Charles-Francois Lebrun as Third Consul. Traditional histories mark this date as the end of the French Revolution.
Conclusion
The Revolution nevertheless freed the state from the trams of its medieval past, releasing such unprecedented power that the revolutionaries could defy, and Napoleon conquered, the rest of Europe. Moreover, that power acknowledged no restraint: in 1793 unity was imposed on the nation by the Terror. Europe and the world have ever since been learning what infringements of liberty can issue from the concepts of national sovereignty and the will of the people.
(FAQ) Questions and Answers about the Timeline of the French Revolution
Q-1. When did the French Revolution begin?
Ans. The French Revolution began on May 5, 1789, with the convocation of the Estates General.
Q-2. What was the general staff?
Ans. It was a representative assembly consisting of three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the common people.
Q-3. What event marked the beginning of the radical phase of the revolution?
Ans. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, is often seen as the symbolic beginning of the radical phase.
Q-4. When was the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen adopted?
Ans. The Declaration was adopted on August 26, 1789, and proclaimed the equality and rights of citizens.
Q-5. What was the Reign of Terror?
Ans. The Reign of Terror took place between 1793 and 1794 and was marked by mass executions and political purges.
Q-6. When was Louis XVI executed?
Ans. Louis XVI was executed on January 211793,93 by guillotine.
Q-7. What is the significance of the thermodynamic reaction?
Ans. The Thermidor reaction in July 1794 marked the end of the radical phase that led to the fall of Robespierre and a more moderate government.
Q-8. When did Napoleon Bonaparte come to power?
Ans. Napoleon seized power in a coup on November 9, 1799, ending the revolutionary era.
Q-9. What is the significance of the Napoleonic Code?
Ans. The Napoleonic Code, established in 1804, was a comprehensive legal system that influenced many modern legal codes.
Q-10. When did the French Revolution officially end?
Ans. The French Revolution officially ended with the establishment of the French Consulate in 1799, marking the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte.