Event · Age of revolutions · France

French Revolution

1789–1799

From the Estates-General of 1789 through constitutional monarchy, republic, and the Terror under the Committee of Public Safety, to the Directory. Death sentences and civil war tolls are estimates with ranges.

Facts

Start marker used here: Estates-General convened 5 May 1789; Bastille 14 July 1789.; Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, French Revolution
Terror: Committee of Public Safety from April 1793; Reign of Terror roughly September 1793–July 1794.; Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, French Revolution
Official death sentences: About 16,594 nationwide June 1793–July 1794 (Donald Greer). Additional prison and civil-war deaths are higher and disputed.; Source: Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror

The record

Financial crisis brought the Estates-General; within months the Bastille fell and the Declaration of the Rights of Man was adopted. War, massacre and the king's execution pushed power to the Committee of Public Safety. The guillotine, first sold as equal and humane justice, became the machine of political killing. Greer's figures show most of the officially sentenced were from the Third Estate.

Regional drownings at Nantes and the Vendée war sit beside Paris totals. Thermidor ended Robespierre in July 1794. The Revolution's emergency toolkit became a model later regimes studied.

This page files the event; Napoleon follows as the consolidation of order after Directory failure.