French Revolution
The French Revolution was a period of major social upheaval that shook France between 1787 and 1799, reaching its first climax in 1789 when the ancien régime was overthrown. It abolished feudal privileges, proclaimed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, executed Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, and founded the First French Republic — before war, the Vendée insurrection, and the Terror of 1793–94 consumed some 17,000 lives by official execution, and the Directory gave way to Napoleon Bonaparte's coup of 18 Brumaire on 9 November 1799. This fact file documents the decade from French archives and museums — the Archives nationales, the Musée Carnavalet, the Château de Versailles, and Gallica at the BnF — alongside Britannica, the UK National Archives, public-domain primary texts, and peer-reviewed scholarship, presenting contested interpretations as sourced positions.