From the City Hall, the crowd that had gathered on the morning of 14 July crossed the Seine River and sacked the royal veterans’ hospital known as the Invalides, where it hoped to capture arms. In Berthault’s engraving, the scene appears chaotic. The…
Even though popular action had unseated the Legislative Assembly and replaced it with the Convention, the elections that followed had not satisfied the radicals of Paris and their artisanal followers. From 31 May to 2 June 1793, these Parisians…
In June 1793, the French governor of Saint Domingue, Thomas–François Galbaud, tried to raise a revolt of the whites against republican commissioners sent from France. To defeat him, the commissioners promised freedom to the slaves who would fight on…
The extremely respectful view of sans–culotte militancy is evident in this image, engraved by the revolutionary sculptor Berthault and based on a painting by Fragonard, the son of the famous old regime painter. Imitating an old master’s interior…
On 6–7 December 1793, Jean–Baptiste Carrier, a deputy sent by the Convention to suppress the insurrection at Nantes, accepted, if he did not in fact welcome, a measure proposed by the local Revolutionary Tribunal to fill seven boats with an estimated…
Lyon’s rebellion against the central government in September 1793 had terrible repercussions that seemed only to worsen with the initiation of collective trials and immediate executions by firing squad. The one depicted here on 4 December 1793 took…
From Berthault’s series of great moments of the Revolution, this engraving depicts the victorious entry of the republican French forces into the southern Netherlands (currently Belgium) on 21 January 1795, where a "sister republic" of Batavia would…
From Berthault’s series of great moments in the Revolution, this engraving presents a version of events on 6 October 1789 favorable to the King. Reminiscent of orderly ceremonial royal appearances, this image suggests that the outcome stemmed from…
