# 1703 in France

Events from the year 1703 in France

## Incumbents

* Monarch – Louis XIV

## Events

* 20 February – 10 March – War of the Spanish Succession: Siege of Kehl – French forces under the command of the Duc de Villars capture the fortress of the Holy Roman Empire at Kehl, opposite Strasbourg on the Rhine.
* 19 March – 15 May – War of the Spanish Succession: Siege of Guadeloupe – An English expeditionary force fails to capture the island capital Basse-Terre in the French West Indies.
* 21 March – Jeanne Guyon is freed in Paris after more than seven years imprisonment for heresy in the Bastille.
* 7 September – War of the Spanish Succession: The town of Breisach is retaken for France by Camille d'Hostun, duc de Tallard.
* 11 October – Nine Roman Catholic residents of the village of Sainte-Cécile-d'Andorge are massacred by a mob of more than 800 Huguenot Protestants, the Camisards. A reprisal against Protestants in the nearby village of Branoux is made less than three weeks later.
* 30 October – More than 47 Huguenots in the village of Branoux-les-Taillades are massacred by Roman Catholic vigilantes in reprisal for the 11 October attack in Sainte-Cécile, 3.3 km away.
* 15 November – War of the Spanish Succession: Battle of Speyerbach (in modern-day Germany) – The French defeat a German relief army, allowing the French to take the besieged town of Landau two days later, for which Tallard is made a Marshal of France.
* 19 November – The Man in the Iron Mask dies in the Bastille.

## Births

* 3 January – Daniel-Charles Trudaine, administrator and civil engineer (died 1769)
* 8 January – André Levret, obstetrician (died 1780)
* 5 January – Paul d'Albert de Luynes, archbishop (died 1788)
* 15 January – Henriette Louise de Bourbon, princess (died 1772)
* 22 January – Antoine Walsh, slave trader and Jacobite (died 1763)
* 31 January – André-Joseph Panckoucke, author and bookseller (died 1753)
* 3 February – Jean Philippe de Bela, military figure and Basque writer and historian (died 1796)
* 4 February – Jean Saas, historian and bibliographer (died 1774)
* 3 March – Charles-Joseph Natoire, rococo painter (died 1777)
* 4 March – Nicolas René Berryer, magistrate and politician (died 1762)
* 8 April – Benoît-Joseph Boussu, violin maker (died 1773)
* 10 April – Pierre Daubenton, lawyer (died 1776)
* 18 May – Jean Daullé, engraver (died 1763)
* 20 May – René Lièvre de Besançon, archer (died 1739)
* 21 June – Joseph Lieutaud, physician (died 1780)
* 4 August – Louis, Duke of Orléans, member of the royal family (died 1752)
* 15 September – Guillaume-François Rouelle, chemist (d. 1770)
* 29 September
** François Boucher, painter (died 1770)
** François Fresneau de La Gataudière, botanist and scientist (died 1770)
* 16 October – Joachim Faiguet de Villeneuve, economist (died 1781)
* 28 October – Antoine Deparcieux, mathematician (died 1768)
* 23 November – Louise Levesque, femme de lettres (died 1743)
* 25 November – Jean-François Séguier, astronomer and botanist (died 1784)
* Charles Clémencet, Benedictine historian (died 1778)

## Deaths

* 16 May – Charles Perrault, author (born 1628)
* 26 May – Louis-Hector de Callière, politician, governor of Montreal (born in 1648)
* 26 July – Gérard Audran, engraver (born 1640)
* 30 November – Nicolas de Grigny, organist and composer