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Coup D'État of Thermidor
A 1794 coup d'état within the French Revolution against the leaders of the Jacobin Club that dominated the Committee of Public Safety. It was triggered by a vote of the National Convention to execute Maximilien Robespierre, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, and several other leaders of the revolutionary government. -
Beginning of the Estates General
The Estates-General of 1789 was a meeting of the three estates of pre-revolutionary France: clergy, nobility, and commons. Summoned by King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) to deal with financial and societal crises, it ended with the Third Estate breaking from royal authority and forming the National Assembly. -
Storming of the Bastille
On July 14, 1789, fears that King Louis XVI was about to arrest France's newly constituted National Assembly led a crowd of Parisians to successfully besiege the Bastille, an old fortress that had been used since 1659 as a state prison. -
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, adopted August 26, 1789) is an expression of universal human rights—those rights that are true at all times and in all places—that served as one of the foundational documents of the French Revolution. -
Declaration of the Rights of the Woman and the Citizen
The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, also known as the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, was written on 14 September 1791 by French activist, feminist, and playwright Olympe de Gouges in response to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. -
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The Terror
The Reign of Terror (French: la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety. -
Execution of Louis XVI.
Louis XVI. was put to death for high treason. He was accused of inciting an invasion of France by other European kingdoms, such as Austria, to put an end to the Revolution and reclaim power. Attempts to reorganize the French government in conformity with Enlightenment concepts dominated the first half of his reign. -
The Directory
The Directory (also called Directorate; French: le Directoire) was the governing five-member committee in the French First Republic from 26 October 1795 until November 1799, when it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup D'État of Brumaire and replaced by the Consulate. -
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Napoleonic Empire
The Napoleonic era from 1799 to 1815 was marked by Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power in France. He crowned himself as the first French Emperor in 1804 and sought to expand French influence across Europe. Major events include the Napoleonic Wars, the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and Napoleon's exile to Elba and later to Saint Helena. -
Coup D'État of Brumaire
The Coup of 18 Brumaire (9-10 November 1799) was a bloodless coup d'état in France that overthrew the government of the French Directory and replaced it with the French Consulate. The coup brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power and, in the view of many historians, marked the end of the French Revolution (1789-1799). -
The Consulate
The Consulate (French: Consulat) was the top-level government of the First French Republic from the fall of the Directory. The new regime was ratified by the adoption of the Constitution of the Year VIII on 24 December 1799 and headed by Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul, with Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès and Charles-François Lebrun serving as Second and Third Consuls respectively. The Three Consuls. -
Battle of Austerlitz
The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of the most important military engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. The battle occurred near the town of Austerlitz in the Austrian Empire. Around 158,000 troops were involved, of which around 24,000 were killed or wounded. The conflict came to an end with the French victory -
Napoleon's 1st Exile (Elba)
Napoleon's exile on Elba—an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea just 10 miles from the Italian mainland— took place due to him having suffered heavy defeats as well as victories, such as the disastrous Russian campaign and the defeat at Leipzig. It lasted until March of 1815, when he escaped on a brig. -
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. -
Louis XVIII, king of France
Louis XVIII of France, also called "the Desired" by his supporters, was King of France and Navarre between 1814 and 1824, being the first monarch of the Bourbon Restoration in France, except for the period known as the "Hundred Days" when Napoleon I briefly regained power. -
Napoleon's 2nd Exile (St. Helena)
Following his defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon Bonaparte was forced into exile on St. Helena in 1815 where he was guarded by members of the 53rd (Shropshire) Regiment of Foot. He remained here until his death in 1821. -
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on 18 June 1815 between Napoleon's French Army and a coalition led by the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blücher. The decisive battle of its age, it concluded a war that had raged for 23 years, ended French attempts to dominate Europe, and destroyed Napoleon's imperial power forever. -
Napoleon's Death
he physicians who conducted Napoleon's autopsy concluded that his death was from stomach cancer, exacerbated by bleeding gastric ulcers, after a huge dose of calomel – a compound containing mercury that was used as a medicine – was administered to him on the day before he died at the age of 51. -
Independence of Greece
The initial defeat of the leader of the rebels, Alexandros Ypsilantis, inspired people all over the Ottoman Empire to join the war for independence. Within a year they won control of the southern region of Greece and on March 25 1822 the rebels declared the independence of Greece. -
Charles X, king of France
He was King of France from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. -
Louis Philippe, king of France
Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, the penultimate monarch of France, and the last French monarch to bear the title "King". He abdicated from his throne during the French Revolution of 1848, which led to the foundation of the French Second Republic. -
Independence of Belgium
Following this rising Belgium separated from the Northern Netherlands. A provisional government declared independence on October 4th, 1830. -
The Zollverein
The Zollverein was the first German customs union which eliminated tariffs between the 39 member states of the German Confederation, except for Austria. -
Revolution of 1848, the Spring of Nations
The revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the springtime of the peoples or the springtime of nations, were a series of revolutions throughout Europe over the course of more than one year, from 1848 to 1849. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history to date. -
France Second Republic
The French Second Republic was the republican government of France between the 1848 Revolution and the 1851 coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte that initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. -
France's Second Empire: Napoleon III
Period in France under the rule of Emperor Napoleon III (the original empire having been that of Napoleon I). -
Spanish Liberal Biennium
The two-year period from July 1854 to July 1856, during which the Progressive Party attempted to reform the political system of the reign of Isabella II, which had been dominated by the Moderate Party since 1843 in the so-called década moderada. -
Battles of Magenta and Solferino
The battle of Magenta was not a particularly large battle, but it was a decisive victory for the Franco-Sardinian alliance. Mealwhile, the Battle of Solferino was a decisive engagement in the Second Italian War of Independence, a crucial step in the Italian Risorgimento. -
Garibaldi conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
The king of the Two Sicilies was overthrown by Giuseppe Garibaldi, after which the people voted in a plebiscite to join the Kingdom of Sardinia. The annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies completed the first phase of Italian unification, and the new Kingdom of Italy was later proclaimed. -
Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy
Victor Emmanuel II was King of Sardinia from 23 March 1849 until 17 March 1861, when he assumed the title of King of Italy and became the first king of an independent, united Italy since the 6th century, a title he held until his death -
Danish-Prussian War
The Danish War was the war between Prussia and Austria versus Denmark for the control of Schleswig-Holstein which bordered the German Confederation and Denmark. Ostensibly, the issue was the rights of the German speaking Holsteiners. -
Austrian-Prussian War
The war erupted as a result of the dispute between Prussia and Austria over the administration of Schleswig-Holstein, which the two of them had conquered from Denmark and agreed to jointly occupy at the end of the Second Schleswig War in 1864. -
French Prussian War
The immediate cause of the war was the candidacy of Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to the throne of Spain. France feared an encirclement resulting from an alliance between Prussia and Spain. -
Wilhelm I, Kaiser of the II German Reich
Wilhelm I of Germany was King of Prussia from 2 January 1861 and later the first German Emperor, until his death.