The French Revolution

The **French Revolution** was a period of social and political upheaval in France.

## French Revolution

### Result

First French Republic

Commanders and Leaders| * King Louis XVI
* Marie Antoinette
* The Illuminati

The revolution saw the Third Estate - the middle and lower classes - overthrow the Kingdom of France in 1789 and replace it with a constitutional monarchy, later storming the Tuileries Palace in 1792 and creating a republic when King Louis XVI attempted to flee to Flanders. King Louis and his wife Marie Antoinette were beheaded by *guillotine* in 1793, as were several other monarchists or "counter-revolutionaries" during the "Reign of Terror", executed by Maximilien de Robespierre. In 1794, after thousands of random people had been executed by the insane Robespierre and the radical "Jacobin Club", the people rose up in the "Thermidorian Reaction" and had Robespierre and his Jacobins executed, ending the Reign of Terror. From 1794 to 1799, France would be ruled by a directorate and a consulate, not by a single person.

France's new republic would be invaded by the Austrian Empire and Prussia in 1792, with the European monarchies fearing that revolutions would occur in their own countries. However, the French succeeded in defeating the Austrians and taking over the Austrian Netherlands in 1793, and French nationalists declared war on Great Britain, Spain, and the United Provinces that same year. The French Revolutionary Wars would last until 1801, and they would see France conquer almost all of Europe west of the Rhine River, create the new "Batavian Republic" vassal state in the Netherlands, and conquer northern Italy from Austria. The French general Napoleon Bonaparte made a name for himself, and he became so popular that he was able to seize power in Paris in the "Coup of 18 Brumaire" in November of 1799. It would not be long before he proclaimed himself "Emperor", and the revolutionary democracy in France would come to an end.

The French Revolution, which had itself been inspired by the American Revolutionary War six years earlier, was one of the most important periods in history. It led to the rise of democracy as a major political ideology, led to women gaining more rights, led to the abolition of the slave trade (France outlawed slavery itself in 1791), and opened a chapter in European history that would come to be known as the "Napoleonic Wars", which themselves led to the decolonization of the Americas, the spread of French culture, and the rise of the Napoleonic military doctrine (regiments were now organized into divisions, corps, and armies) across the world.

# Timeline

### Background

* During Louis XV's reign, France did establish colonies in Africa and the Americas, including regions such as Senegal, Guinea, and Ivory Coast, primarily focusing on slavery, gold stealing and other resources.
* In 1719, John Law decided to offer prisoners in Paris something they could not refuse. He offered them their freedom as long as they were willing to marry a prostitute and head off to Louisiana.
* A stark social and economic divide was widening. The wealthy elite, including nobles, landowners, and members of the clergy, amassed great fortunes while exploiting the labor of the lower classes.
* 10 February 1763 - King Louis XV of France signs the Treaty of Paris with Great Britain, ending the Seven Years' War/French and Indian War and granting French Canada and the Ohio Valley to the British and French Louisiana to Spain.
* 10 May 1774 - Death of Louis XV. His son, the nineteen-year-old Dauphin Louis, becomes King Louis XVI of France, while his Austrian wife Marie Antoinette becomes Queen of France.
* 17 March 1778 - King Louis enters the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain, allying France with the nascent United States. France sends Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau and 7,000 troops to join the Continental Army, and the French and Americans end the war with a major victory at Yorktown in 1781.
* 1781 - After the end of the American Revolutionary War, France is left bankrupt, having loaned much of its treasury to the Americans and having exhausted its war chest on a losing war in the East Indies.
* 8 August 1788 - The royal treasury is declared to be empty, and the Estates-General is called into session on 5 May 1789 to agree on new taxes. The Third Estate (lower and middle classes) of France suffer from famine and high taxes, as well as continuing to abide by the feudal system.
* 25 August 1788 - Jacques Necker becomes Minister of Finance, leading to the Third Estate celebrating. He decides to double the representation of the Third Estate in the Estates-General, to the chagrin of the nobles (Second Estate) and clergy (First Estate).
* 5 May 1789 - The Estates-General convenes in Versailles, and the First and Second estates are forced to renounce their special tax privileges, while they refuse to meet with the Third Estate's representatives, who are late due to electoral issues.
* 10 June 1789 - Sieyes suggests that the Third Estate deputies should hold their own meeting, and nine clergy deputies join the Third Estate.
* 17 June 1789 - The Third Estate deputies declare themselves the "National Assembly", protesting against the lack of representation for the Third Estate as compared to the First and Second Estates.
* 20 June 1789 - King Louis XVI locks the Third Estate out of their meeting hall to prevent them from holding an assembly, so they gather in a *jeu de palme* court and swear by the "Tennis Court Oath" that they will not disband until France has a new constitution.
* 22-25 June 1789 - 50 sympathetic nobles and several clergymen, decide to join the National Assembly.
* 27 June 1789 - King Louis decides to allow for the National Assembly to convene, instructing the nobility and the clergy to meet with the Third Estate and to recognize the new assembly. He also orders his mercenaries to return to Paris.
* 6 July 1789 - The National Assembly forms a thirty-man committee to write a new constitution.
* 8 July 1789 - National Assembly leader Honore Gabriel Riqueti de Mirabeau demands that the Gardes Francaises, the military household of the king, be removed from the city and replace by a civil guard.
* 11 July 1789 - King Louis dismisses Jacques Necker as Finance Minister, and protesters and the Gardes Francaises engage in skirmishes with some of the King's German cavalrymen near the Tuileries Palace as the Lazariste monastery is looted and customs barriers are burned.
* 13 July 1789 - The National Assembly declares that it is in permanent session, forming a governing committee and an armed militia at the Hotel de Ville. Tensions rise as the revolution is about to begin.

# The Revolution begins

* 14 July 1789 - A large armed crowd initiates the Storming of the Bastille, seeking to gain access to the large gunpowder stores within the fortress. The crowd kills garrison commander Bernard-Rene de Launay after a fight that leaves 98 Parisian mobo members dead, and Launay's head, along with those of six executed guards, are impaled on pikes and paraded through the streets in a gruesome celebration.
* 15 July 1789 - Astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly becomes Mayor of Paris, while the Marquis de Lafayette becomes the commander of the newly-formed National Guard, the citizens' militia.
* 16 July 1789 - Jacques Necker is reappointed as Finance Minister by King Louis, and the newly-elected Paris assembly votes to destroy the Bastille. Several other large cities such as Lyon and Rennes also form committees and local militias.
* 17 July 1789 - King Louis visits Paris and is welcomed at the Hotel de Ville by Bailly and Lafayette as many nobles begin to flee the country.
* 18 July 1789 -Author Camille Desmoulins calls for another revolution to establish a republic instead of a monarchy.
* 22 July 1789 - An armed mob abducts and lynches Parisian *intendant* (royal representative) Louis Benigne Francois Bertier de Sauvigny from a lamp post after accusing him of stealing grain; they also behead his father-in-law Joseph Foullon de Doue for stealing money from the poor.
* 4 August 1789 - The King appoints reformist deputies to the National Assembly, and they vote to abolish the privileges and feudal rights of the nobility.
* 23 August 1789 - Freedom of religion is legalized.
* 24 August 1789 - Freedom of speech is legalized.
* 25 August 1789 - A Group of 16 Bavarian Illuminati arrive in Paris.
* 26 August 1789 - Lafayette drafts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which is adopted by the National Assembly.
* 30 August 1789 - Camille Desmoulins leads a failed uprising at the Palais-Royal with the goal of stopping the National Assembly from granting the king veto powers.
* 11 September 1789 - The King is granted veto rights.
* 16 September 1789 - Radical writer Jean-Paul Marat publishes the first edition of *L'Ami du Peuple*, his radical newspaper that promises social and political revolution.
* 1 October 1789 - Marat spreads fake news that the King's guards trampled on the French revolutionary tricolor flag at a banquet in Versailles, leading to outrage.
* 5-6 October 1789 - Thousands of poor women (many of them armed with fish knives) and Paris National Guard troops under Lafayette take part in the Women's March on Versailles to protest the insult to the tricolor flag. The King and his family are forced to return to Paris.
* 10 October 1789 - Lafayette becomes commander of all royal troops in Paris, and Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposes the *guillotine* method of public execution.
* 19 October 1789 - The National Assembly holds its first meeting in Paris, and it declares martial law two days later.
* 24 December 1789 - Protestants are allowed to hold public office.

### 1790

* 22 January 1790 - Marat escapes arrest by Paris municipal police after encouraging attacks against the government through his paper, with several *sans-culottes* (revolutionary laborers) guarding him as he flees to London.
* 13 February 1790 - Religious vows and contemplative religious orders are outlawed.
* 16 February 1790 - Anne-Antoinette Diderot speaks to the people with the famous words of her husband
> “Le peuple ne sera libéré que lorsque le dernier roi sera étranglé avec les intestins du dernier pape.” (The people will only be freed when the last king is strangled with the intestines of the last pope.)
>
>
* 23 February 1790 - Parish priests are made to read the decrees of the National Assembly.
* 26 February 1790 - France's historic provinces are broken up into 83 departments, each with their own tax collection, civil and criminal jurisdictions, and even Catholic dioceses; elected assemblies would be elected at every level to ensure that every active citizen had a say in lawmaking and the capability to carry out the law uniformly and equally. This destroys the rights and privileges of specific provinces, undermining the prestige of the thirteen *Parlement* seats and elevating rural backwaters into local political, economic, and cultural hubs, equalizing the importance of each city to their local regions. Judges, mayors, assemblymen, and even priests will be elected, overwhelming local voters with the responsibility of civic participation, and leading to mass voter abstention and, ultimately, blanket non-participation later in the Revolution. Both existing nobles and new candidates will run for, and be elected to, local offices.
* 28 February 1790 - Army officers are no longer required to be from the nobility.
* 12 March 1790 - Municipalities are authorized to sell church property.
* 29 March 1790 - Pope Pius VI condemns the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
* 5 April-3 May 1790 - Pro-Catholic and anti-revolutionary riots begin in opposition to the revolutionary government's anti-clericalism.
* 17 April 1790 - The radical Cordeliers political club meets for the first time.
* 30 April 1790 - The Chevalier de Beausset, commander of Fort Saint-Jean in Marseille, is murdered as rioters take over three forts in the city.
* 18 May 1790 - Marat returns to Paris to continue publishing *L'Ami du Peuple*.
* 22 May 1790 - The Assembly gains the power to decide issues of war and peace, but not without the proposition and sanction of the king.
* 19 June 1790 - The hereditary nobility are stripped of their titles.
* 26 June 1790 - Delegates from Great Britain, the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, and the United Provinces meet at Reichenbach to discuss a military alliance against France. Prussia and Austria sort out their territorial disputes in the east in order to focus on the west, while Britain grows suspicious of Prussian expansionism, drawing out the process of forming an anti-French coalition.
* 12 July 1790 - The Civil Constitution of the Clergy attempts to transform the Catholic church into a subsidiary of the French government, but instead creates tensions between Catholics and the government.
* 14 July 1790 - On the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, the *Fete de la Federation* holiday is celebrated in Paris, with Lafayette swearing to protect the constitution, the assembly, and the king.
* 26 July 1790 - Marat demands the execution of 600 aristocrats to protect the revolution.
* 28 July 1790 - An anti-Austrian revolution, inspired by the French Revolution, breaks out in the Austrian Netherlands. France refuses to grant Austria military access to the region.
* 31 July 1790 - The National Assembly decides to take legal action against Marat and Desmoulins for their radicalism.
* 16 August 1790 - Justices of the peace replace nobles' courts, and discipline is re-established in the army.
* 4 September 1790 - The National Assembly fires Necker and takes charge of the economy.
* 21 October 1790 - The revolutionary tricolor replaces the white-and-gold *fleur de lys* flag.
* 4 November 1790 - Uprising against French government breaks out on Mauritius.
* 25 November 1790 - Slave uprising on Saint-Domingue (Haiti) against French government.
* 27 November 1790 - All clergymen are required to swear allegiance to the French government after thirty bishops sign a letter refusing to go along with religious reforms without the Pope's express approval. Forced to choose between their patriotic convictions and their faith, almost every noble ecclesiastic and bishop apart from radicals like Talleyrand refuse to take the oath, as do moderate parish priests, whose congregants often side with them in choosing God over the anti-clerical radicals. Only half of the clergy would take the oath, leading to half of the clergy being dismissed; this creates a rift between the Catholic Church and the revolutionary government.
* 3 December 1790 - Louis XVI writes to King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, requesting military intervention against the revolutionaries.

### 1791

* 1 January 1791 - Mirabeau becomes President of the National Assembly.
* 3 January 1791 - A majority of clerical members of the National Assembly refuse to take an oath to the nation, leading to friction between Catholics and the revolutionaries.
* 24 February 1791 - Constitutional bishops replace the former church hierarchy.
* 28 February 1791 - In the "Day of Daggers", several noblemen heading to the Tuileries Palace with daggers with the goal of protecting King Louis XVI from rioters are turned away by National Guard troops under Lafayette. However, Lafayette also angers the radicals by preventing them from destroying a prison where it was rumored that a secret tunnel from the Tuileries Palace would allow the King to escape through the prison. The King and the prison are both protected, but Lafayette's popularity is destroyed. Rumors grow that the King is planning to flee Paris.
* 2 March 1791 - Traditional trade guilds are abolished.
* 25 March 1791 - Fifteen days after the Pope condemns the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the Venetian Republic and France break diplomatic relations.
* 2 April 1791 - Mirabeau suddenly dies, weakening the moderate faction of the National Assembly.
* 3 April 1791 - The Pantheon mausoleum for illustrious French citizens replaces the Church of Sainte Genevieve, and Mirabeau is laid to rest there.
* 16 May 1791 - Current National Assembly members are forbidden from taking part in the next assembly.
* 30 May 1791 - Voltaire's ashes are moved to the Pantheon.
* 15 June 1791 - Priests are forbidden from wearing ecclesiastical costumes outside churches.
* 20-21 June 1791 - The royal family slips out of the Tuileries Palace in royal servants' clothes, attempting to flee to the Austrian Netherlands. Their flight to Varennes, in which the royals attempt to flee to a royal garrison at Montmedy for escort out of the country ends on 21 June 1791 when the postmaster of Montmedy recognizes the Queen from his time in the cavalry and recognizes the king's distinctive nose from an *assignat* note. The army forces the royals to return to Paris, where the King's functions are suspended by the assembly. Both Paris and the border provinces begin to fear that Austria will invade any day, and the borders are closed, while the National Assembly and Jacobin Club declare a permanent session.
* 5 July 1791 - Leopold II of Austria asks for the royal houses of Europe to help his brother-in-law Louis XVI.
* 9 July 1791 - *Emigres* are threatened with the forfeiting of their holdings in France if they do not return within two months.
* 16 July 1791 - The revolutionary Jacobin Club splits between the monarchist Feuillants and the liberal Jacobins.
* 17 July 1791 - The city of Paris raises a red flag, meaning a declaration of martial law, as members of the ultra-radical Cordeliers club march on the Champ de Mars with a petition demanding the king's removal after the moderate Assembly promotes the thinly-veiled fiction that the King had been abducted during the Flight to Varennes. Lafayette and the National Guard gun down 50 protesters in the Champ de Mars massacre.
* 18 July 1791 - The National Assembly forbids citizens to incite riots, encourage illegal actions, and to write for seditious publications; Marat and Georges Danton go into exile.
* 27 August 1791 - In the Declaration of Pillnitz, Austria and Prussia threaten to intervene in France to strengthen the monarchic government. This agreement enables Prussia to leave the British orbit (as Britain proved an unreliable ally) and align towards Austria.
* 14 September 1791 - King Louis is forced to accept the French Constitution of 1791, which abolishes the nobility, and ensures that everyone is equally represented before the law.
* 27 September 1791 - All men, regardless of color, are freed in France itself, and Jews are granted citizenship.
* 29 September 1791 - National Guard positions are reserved for citizens who pay a certain level of taxes, excluding the working class in favor of the *bourgeoisie*.
* 1 October 1791 - The Legislative Assembly replaces the National Assembly. Almost no clerics or nobles are elected to the Legislative Assembly; of the 745 delegates, only a handful are drawn from the old First and Second Estates. Robespierre's "self-denying decree" also prevents old Assemblymen from being re-elected, leading to the rise of a new generation of revolutionary leaders. Many of the delegates come from the countryside, and have at least two years of experience in revolutionary politics in their home departments; many are also former National Guardsmen or municipal politicians. Only 10% of "active citizens" voted, and the new Legislative Assembly members are primarily well-off property owners and lawyers, and many have a vested interest in solidifying the new order. Only around 130 immediately join the Jacobins, while 250-350 join the Feuillants and 300-400 joined no club at all, forming a persuadable middle which would eventually be won over by the Jacobins.
* 16 October 1791 - Royalists begin riots against the Avignon Commune, killing a commune official; revolutionary mobs respond by massacring anti-government prisoners.
* 9 November 1791 - *Emigres* are ordered to return to France by 1 January 1792, lest they be sentenced to death and their property forfeited. King Louis asks for his brothers to return to France, despite vetoing the proposition.
* 29 November 1791 - After Jacques Pierre Brissot and his allies convince the Legislative Assembly that declaring war on the German princes harboring the Royalist emigres would help expose traitors at home (including secret reactionaries, nonjuring priests, and even the royal family), the Assembly sends a delegation to the King to demand that the King issue an ultimatum to the German princes, demanding that they expel the princes or face war. The King agrees, supporting war with the hope that Austria would respond militarily, crush the overmatched French army, march unopposed on Paris, and free the royal family from the revolutionaries.
* 3 December 1791 - King Louis writes a secret letter to King Friedrich Wilhelm II, demanding Prussian intervention in France as his brothers refuse to return to France.
* 14 December 1791 - The King announces that the ultimatum has been issued: the German princes must disperse the emigres by 15 January 1792, or it would be war. Lafayette is given command of the Army of the Centre, Rochambeau is given command of the Army of the North, and Nicolas Luckner is given command of the Army of the Rhine.
* 21 December 1791 - While the German princes accepted the ultimatum, the Austrians issued a counter-ultimatum warning the French that, if they attacked the German princes, Austria would attack France. The Austrian threat seemingly confirms Brissot's conspiracy theories about Austria plotting an invasion of France, restoring the revolutionaries' hopes of a war to expose the traitors within France, and leading to the Legislative Assembly listening to what Brissot had to say. The Assembly eagerly pushed for war with Austria, and King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette also support a direct war with Austria with the hopes of being saved. Anti-war politician and Feuillant leader Barnave retires to Dauphine. Austrophobia, support for exposing the counter-revolutionaries within France, and potential economic benefits aid in the process of France's warmongering.
* 28 December 1791 - The Assembly orders for the creation of a mass volunteer army to defend France's borders.

### 1792

* 23 January 1792 - As a result of the Haitian Revolution, sugar and coffee shortages occur in Paris. Food riots break out as shops are looted by rioters.
* 25 January 1792 - France declares that the Treaty of 1756 was broken beyond repair due to Austrian aggression, and the King is ordered to warn the Austrians that, if they did not stand down by 1 March, France would declare war. The King tells the Assembly that he had already warned the Austrians to back down, and is waiting for their response.
* 7 February 1792 - Austria and Prussia sign a military convention to invade France and defend the monarchy after treating King Louis' ultimatum with defiance. Within the week, Prussia develops a campaign strategy and sends representatives to Vienna to coordinate an attack, with the most pessimistic estimates anticipating a two-month war.
* 9 February 1792 - The property of the *emigres* is officially confiscated.
* 7 March 1792 - Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick is named to command an Austro-Prussian invasion of France.
* 20 March 1792 - The National Assembly declares war on the Holy Roman Empire, starting the French Revolutionary Wars. The declaration of war does not arrive in Austria until 30 April.
* 25 April 1792 - *La Marseillaise*, the national anthem of France, is sung for the first time in Strasbourg.
* 28 April 1792 - Rochambeau's army invades the Austrian Netherlands on the same day as Austria's declaration of war on France.
* 29 April 1792 - The advance guard of the French invasion of Flanders, led by Irish commander Theobald Dillon, is defeated in a skirmish with Austrian forces at the Battle of Marquain. The experienced French cavalry flee at the sight of Austrian artillery, causing the inexperienced French volunteers to follow them. Dillon is forced to flee to Lille, where his troops, claiming that Dillon was a "traitor" and "aristocrat" who had conspired with the Austrians to lose his own army, lynch him from a lamp post.
* 5 May 1792 - 31 battalions are raised to fight against the Austrians and Prussians.
* 6 May 1792 - The King's German mercenary cavalry desert to the Coalition forces.
* 27 May 1792 - Priests who have not signed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy are ordered to be deported.
* 8 June 1792 - An army of 20,000 volunteers is ordered to be raised in Paris.
* 20 June 1792 - Demonstrators invade the Tuileries Palace after the King vetoes the deportation of non-juring priests and the gathering of 20,000 National Guardsmen in Paris; their stated goal is to plant a liberty tree at the palace to commemorate the third anniversary of the Tennis Court Oath. The mob demands the Legislative Assembly investigate the King's alleged role in sabotaging the French war effort. King Louis wears a red liberty cap and drinks to the health of the nation to condescend to the rioters.
* 21 June 1792 - Armed gatherings in Paris are banned.
* 28 June 1792 - Lafayette denounces the actions of radical Jacobins in the Assembly after briefly leaving his army, and an effigy of him is burned on 30 June after he leaves Paris and returns to his army. Lafayette secretly reaches out to the Austrians, seeking a truce while his army restores order in Paris to save the King from mob violence. However, Lafayette finds himself without allies and quietly returns to the front rather than leading his army into Paris.
* 14 July 1792 - A third *Fete de la Federation* is held to celebrate Bastille Day. Radicalized National Guard companies (*federees*) from the countryside, who had fought counter-revolutionary plots on the front, are invited to attend the feast, and the festivities demanded patriotic action.
* 25 July 1792 - The government authorizes permanent sessions of the Jacobins and Cordeliers, among other political clubs. That same day, the Duke of Brunswick warns that the French people would face exemplary and eternally memorable revenge if the royal family was harmed.
* 30 July 1792 - "Passive citizens" (peasants and laborers) are allowed, and encouraged, to join the National Guard. That same day, Marsellaise National Guardsmen arrive in Paris, bringing with them their patriotic song *La Marseillaise*, and they pledge allegiance to Georges Danton's "Coordinating Committee" of Cordeliers, Jacobins, and sans-culottes who meet at the Hotel de Ville to plot the overthrow of the monarchy.
* 3 August 1792 - 47 of Paris' 48 sections demand the removal of the king.
* 4 August 1792 - Paris Section #80 proclaims an insurrection on 10 August if the Assembly does not remove the king, leading to armed nobles and the Swiss Guards being reinforced at the Tuileries Palace.
* 9 August 1792 - Deputy City Prosecutor Georges Danton proclaims the insurrectionary commune, becoming the legal government of Paris the next day. They take over the Hotel de Ville from the old Paris Commune government, and they increase the number of commune deputies to 288.
* 10 August 1792 - 20,000 Parisian mob members and National Guard volunteers storm the Tuileries Palace in the 10 August insurrection, massacring the Swiss Guards as the king is arrested by the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly orders the creation of the National Convention.
* 11 August 1792 - Royalist newspapers and publications are banned by the revolutionary government, with Danton becoming Minister of Justice.
* 14 August 1792 - Lafayette fails to convince his army to march on Paris to rescue the royal family.
* 17 August 1792 - Maximilien Robespierre and the Paris Commune create a revolutionary tribunal and summon a National Convention to replace the Legislative Assembly.
* 19 August 1792 - Lafayette abandons his army and goes into exile, and the Austrian, Prussian, and French emigre army of Ferdinand of Brunswick invades northern France.
* 22 August 1792 - The Convention decrees that people should be formally addressed as *Citoyen* or *Citoyenne* (both meaning "citizen") instead of *Monsieur* or *Madame*/*Mademoiselle* ("Mister" and "Missus/Miss"). On that same day, royalist uprisings break out in the Vendee.
* 2 September 1792 - Verdun surrenders to the Austrians and Prussians.
* 2-7 September 1792 - Up to 1,395 prisoners are murdered by Parisian mobs in the September Massacres as the Coalition armies approach Paris, with Marat encouraging the massacres with the goal of killing all royalist sympathizers in the city to prevent a pro-Coalition revolt. 17% were priests, 6% were Swiss Guards, and 5% political prisoners.
* 10 September 1792 - All church objects made of gold or silver are requisitioned by the government.
* 19 September 1792 - The Louvre Museum is created with art taken from royal collections.
* 20 September 1792 - In its last session, the National Assembly legalizes civil marriage and divorce; the 749-seat National Convention is held that same day, and the 113 Jacobins in the convention pick the highest benches, leading to them being nicknamed "The Mountain". That same day, the Prussians and Austrians are defeated at the Battle of Valmy, a French victory that leads to patriotic fervor skyrocketing.
* 22 September 1792 - The constitutional monarchy is abolished and replaced by the French First Republic.