Browse Items (347 total)

In July 1793, faced with a restive populace angered by continuing shortages of food in Paris, the Convention followed the lead of the sections in blaming the high price of bread on "profiteers" in the countryside, who were taking advantage of their…

After a three–month trial, the magistrates found Damiens guilty of parricide against the person of the King on 26 March 1757. In a final interrogation, Damiens is once again asked about accomplices. He then denies having them.

The abolition of the feudal system, which took place during the famous night session of 4–5 August 1789, was precipitated by the reading of a report about the misery and disturbances in the provinces. The report was adopted in a fervor of enthusiasm…

The abolition of the feudal system, which took place during the famous night session of 4–5 August 1789, was precipitated by the reading of a report on the misery and disturbances in the provinces. The voting was carried in a fervor of enthusiasm and…

News traveled slowly from the colonies back to France, and the first word of the emancipations in Saint Domingue aroused suspicion if not outright hostility in the National Convention. Many of the original members of the Society of the Friends of…

Once the uprising of May 1795 had been suppressed, the government set up a military tribunal, which gathered denunciations of presumed rioters. This one gives a good sense of the charges made and the kind of language used ("infernal sect of Jacobin…

A common theme in libels was to compare the royal family to animals. This pamphlet parodies the Queen and her entourage as animals in a zoo, emphasizing how the courtly way of life at Versailles seemed bizarre to the rest of the French people. (The…

This article appeared in the newspaper Revolutions of France and Brabant, under the headline: "Horrible maneuvers of the Austrians at the Tuileries Palace to bring civil war to France . . ." and discusses various rumors making the rounds that the…

Camille Desmoulins, an aspiring journalist and author of an anti–aristocratic pamphlet, had been closely following political events. Like many observers, he interpreted Necker’s dismissal as evidence that the King would soon use the troops stationed…

In the spring of 1790, there was much debate in the Constituent Assembly and in the press over who should have the power to declare war or peace under the new constitution—the King or the legislature? On 22 May, the Count de Mirabeau fashioned a…