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The commission investigating the October Days took testimony from twenty–five women who had participated, including Marie–Rose Barré, a twenty–year old unmarried lace–worker, whose testimony is excerpted below. Barré had been one of the women chosen…

In response to the news that royal soldiers had desecrated a symbol of national rejuvenation, the revolutionary cockade, Marat published in his newspaper, The Friend of the People, the following letter calling for all patriotic citizens to take up…

Rainsford’s sympathy for the revolt in Haiti did not seem to extend to the influence of ideas imported from revolutionary France, which appear to have been at the heart of Ogé’s rebellion.

Marie Gouze (1748–93) was a self–educated butcher’s daughter from the south of France who, under the name Olympe de Gouges, wrote pamphlets and plays on a variety of issues, including slavery, which she attacked as being founded on greed and blind…

Marie Gouze (1748–93) was a self–educated butcher’s daughter from the south of France who under the name Olympe de Gouges wrote pamphlets and plays on a variety of issues, including slavery, which she attacked as being founded on greed and blind…

An Englishman acclaimed as a hero of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine had been elected to the Convention by radicals in Paris. However, his international perspective and Anglo–American background (including a Quaker upbringing) inclined him…

Just after the Festival of 14 July, leaders of some of the more radical Parisian sections drafted, on behalf of the French nation, a petition calling on the Legislative Assembly to take emergency measures to ensure "the salvation of the people" by…

As demonstrations spread across Paris on the morning of 14 July, Pierre–Victor Besenval, commander of the royal soldiers stationed in the capital, contemplated ordering his men to suppress the protests. However, as reports poured in from across the…

In 1763, with the Seven Years’ War having gone badly for France and the treasury facing ever greater shortfalls, the crown issued a series of new edicts on fiscal matters, necessary in large measure to pay off the war debts, which would extend the…

Later in the 1750s, the Parlement turned its attention from religious controversy to royal fiscal policy. With the outbreak of yet another war—the Seven Years’ (or French and Indian) War against Britain—the royal treasury needed even more revenues,…