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After hearing the verdict, the King was allowed a final evening with his family, whom he had not seen for almost a month during the trial. Twice on the evening of 20 January the King met with his wife, his son, and a daughter. For about an hour and…

Madame de Beaumer (d. 1766) was the first of three women editors of the Journal des Dames, a newspaper founded in Paris in 1759 to encourage women to write seriously. Little is known about her, perhaps because she was a Calvinist and Calvinists in…

Emerging from urban revolutionary politics was a workers’ movement called the sans–culottes, a reference to the attire of male artisans. Unlike their wealthier compatriots, they did not wear knee breeches, preferring pants. Thus were they named…

One of Napoleon’s first priorities was to reestablish good relations with the papacy, which had fought the revolutionary church settlement tooth and nail. Napoleon gained everything he desired in the Concordat: he appointed the bishops and…

Jacques Roux, a former priest turned radical revolutionary, became the leading voice for a group known as the "Enraged," because they expressed constant anger at the unfairness shown toward the ordinary, poor people who made up the bulk of the…

As a journalist, Marat had for the first few years of the Revolution supported the monarchy as an institution. Yet he opposed Louis personally; in this text, published in his newspaper, Journal of the Republic (but not delivered before the…

In this article, Marat characteristically expresses his concern that, although new governmental institutions had been created, they remained under the control of aristocratic influences, hostile to the Revolution. This fear that those in power were…