The French Revolution

“The second revolution that engulfed France over the course of 1792 reached its climax in December, with an astonishing, world-changing spectacle, which held all the eyes of Europe spellbound: Louis Ca...

““From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world’s history, and you can all say you were present at its birth!” By September 1792, the Prussians, under the leadership of the f...

“In the summer and Autumn of 1792 - with the Prussians bearing down on Paris, the streets thronged with the stirring swell of the Marseillaise, but also the rotting bodies of those brutally killed duri...

“‘Still more traitors, still more treason…’ It is 1792 and France has been at war since April; it is not going well. In Paris, the Tuileries Palace has been stormed, and the royal family imprisoned. Me...

““Let us march! Let us march! May impure blood water our fields!” Written after the declaration of war against Austria in 1792, “La Marseillaise” was born in the provinces of France, away from the Pari...

“The war between revolutionary France and the allied powers of Prussia and Austria has reached fever pitch, and in early August 1792, the latter party threaten a terrible vengeance on Paris should harm...

“During the "Ancien Regime", royal executioners held an unholy status, and would strike up fear in the crowds as they walked the streets of Paris. But with the Revolution, the role of executioners in s...

““You have shaken off the yoke of your despots, but surely this was not to bend the knee before a foreign tyrant…” It’s January 1792, and one of the largest factions in revolutionary France, the Girond...

“Welcome to Season 2 of The French Revolution Revolutionary fervour threatens to engulf the streets of Paris, as demonstrators have gathered on the Champ de Mars to sign a petition demanding the remova...

“Twelve months after the dramatic Women’s March on Versailles, the Revolution proper was well into its stride, and while Paris overflowed with a sense of unbridled political freedom, the King and Queen...

“By the summer of 1789 the different sections of the Revolution were at loggerheads, and the recently created National Assembly riven in two. Both factions, the radicals on the left and the more modera...

“Alongside violence, the French Revolution is a story of principles and values. It is the ultimate intersection of brutality and Enlightenment idealism, as epitomised by the Fall of the Bastille. So to...

““It was violence that made the revolution revolutionary”. The storming of the Bastille is viewed by many across the world as a moment of celebration, when the French people were liberated from the sha...

“In the summer of 1788, a monstrous storm swept across France, wiping out the crucial wheat harvest. With the nation already in the throes of political and financial calamity, this meteorological disas...

“With seismic antecedents such as the Glorious Revolution in England and the American War of Independence, what was it about the French Revolution that saw it become arguably the most important episode...

“In August 1785 a shocking affair came to light which would prove so detrimental to the reputation and standing of the French King Louis XVI, and more especially his already unpopular wife, Queen Marie...

“The French Revolution is one of the great seismic events of global history. A devouring conflagration of bloodshed, violence and utopianism, it changed France and then latterly the whole of Europe for...