French Revolution

In 1789 the French people overthrew the Bourbon monarchy, abolished feudal privilege, and launched a decade of upheaval that defined modern political culture.

Overview

Fiscal crisis, Enlightenment ideas, and bread shortages forced Louis XVI to summon the Estates-General in 1789. The Third Estate declared itself a National Assembly, Parisians stormed the Bastille on 14 July, and peasant revolts pushed the abolition of feudalism and the Declaration of the Rights of Man in August. Radicalization followed: the monarchy fell in 1792, the king was executed in 1793, and the Terror killed tens of thousands before Robespierre himself went to the guillotine in 1794. Instability ended in the Napoleonic coup of 1799. The revolution gave the world the vocabulary of left and right, modern nationalism, universal rights claims, and the metric system, setting a template for every later social revolution.