When angry commoners stormed the Bastille in Paris on July 14, 1789, they struck a blow against one of the monarchy’s most forbidding symbols. The infamous prison no longer exists—it was destroyed in ...

In 1848, before the age of the 'new imperialism', France already claimed an overseas empire extending from the Americas to Africa and the Indian Ocean. The sole North American possession France ...

The ninth of November, 1799—the 18th of Brumaire in the calendar of the French Revolution—is often remembered as the day the Revolution ended. Napoleon Bonaparte, conqueror of Italy and scourge of ...

The period of panic and unrest called the Great Fear was triggered by deliberately spread rumours, according to methods ...

In 1793, Jacques Louis David, the official artist of the French Revolution, painted the Death of Marat as a tribute to his slain friend, the revolutionary propagandist Jean-Paul Marat, in the wake of ...