Having seized power through the coup of 18 Brumaire [9 November 1799], Bonaparte—now First Consul—set out to win public support for yet another new government. His first public pronouncement was the proclamation reprinted below, in which he claims he…
The Council of Five–Hundred, the lower house of the legislature under the Directory’s constitution, put up only token resistance to the coup of 18 Brumaire [9 November 1799]. By the following day, this body—in principle, made up of the…
Among its many lasting contributions to French and western history, the French Revolution initiated the metric system as a more rational and universally applicable way of conveying weights and measures than the various systems in place across France…
During the period of revolutionary government, the Jacobins had introduced the idea of universal, free, secular education provided by the state. The Jacobins conceived of education not only as a means of improving the citizenry’s skill level for…
Born in 1770 and married to the only surviving son of one of the greatest noble families in France, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin endured humiliation, emigration, and Terror during the first part of the revolutionary decade. Upon her return to…
The article "Woman" was written by four contributors who considered the question from four angles: medicine and the history of opinions about women’s nature; writings about women’s place in the state and marriage; the social differences between men…
Rousseau was the most controversial and paradoxical of the writers of the Enlightenment. Born in Switzerland, he published important works on politics, music, and in Emile, education. He also wrote one of the most widely read novels of the century,…
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…
Little is known about women’s grievances or feelings in the months leading up to the meeting of the Estates–General. They did not have the right to meet as a group, draft grievances, or vote (except in isolated individual instances) in the…
Stanislas Maillard was a national guardsman known for having taken a leading role in the attack on the Bastille. In 1790 he testified before a commission established by the court in Paris to investigate the events of October 1789. He exaggerates his…
