Napoleon’s eventual acquisition of political power may be attributed partly to his success in publicizing his Egyptian campaign as a great victory for France that spread the values of the Revolution. These engravings by the writer and artist Vivant…
After Jacobin control faded, with its repression of exuberant social life as well as political diversity, the following years saw a rebirth of open pleasures. This image focuses on fashionable men and women enjoying the good life. Some contemporaries…
This painting emphasizes the populace’s participation in the storming of the Bastille, showing the urban population fighting under a red banner with muskets, swords, and pikes against the royal soldiers.
These depictions show the Festival of the Supreme Being, a massive pageant staged by Jacques–Louis David on 8 June 1794, in open air on the "Field of Reunion," formerly the royal army’s parade ground. At David’s orders, a huge mountain was erected on…
From an English periodical of 1819, this antirevolutionary print portrays the sans–culottes as drunkards anxious to destroy by fire, gallows, and guillotine rather than to work for their own good. The image satirizes the idea of sans–culotte…
This engraving, based on a color portrait by Beys, depicts the death of Robespierre on the guillotine. The executioners wear not the traditional hangman’s hood but red bonnets representing liberty. This judgment notes Robespierre’s failure to the…
This painting of the period by Gillaume Guillon Lethière shows the emotion caused by the prospect of loved ones departing for the army. Women had to part with their families in order to support the nation in its time of need. Notice the female statue…
The seal in the foreground, with its fleur–de–lys, indicates a return to royalism after France’s liberation from Napoleon. In addition, the secularism associated with the Revolution is countered with the image’s reference to the religious practice of…
A slave inspired by the French Revolution’s egalitarianism, Toussaint saw himself as French and struggled for French control of the island of Saint Domingue. Nonetheless, he had no intention of letting whites rule, for he wanted blacks to control…
