TIME

French Revolution

1789–1799

A watercolour of the storming of the Bastille, with smoke over the fortress towers and an armed crowd in the foreground.

Recorded HistoryFrench Revolution

A crisis becomes revolution.

In May 1789 Louis XVI summoned the Estates-General in a fiscal crisis, and on 14 July a Paris crowd took the Bastille.

In August the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The monarchy fell in 1792, and Napoleon seized power on 9 November 1799.

1789–1799, placed on the scale of its era on a line leading toward now.

Era
Recorded History
Period
1789–1799
Edition
1/1
Status
Not Released
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Background artwork

Jean-Pierre Houël, The Taking of the Bastille, 14 July 1789, watercolour, dated to 1789. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica, btv1b103025148. Public domain. An artist’s view of the best-known day of the Revolution, not a photograph. Cropped to remove the caption.