French Revolution

On 31 May 1786 Paris relished the humiliation of Marie Antoinette as the Affaire du collier de la reine concluded in court.

It may not have been the first, argues John Hardiman in The French Revolution: A Political History, but it was the first of its kind.

Best of times or worst of times, how did the ‘greatest event that has happened in the history of man’ – as per Benjamin Disraeli – change the course of what followed?

The Writer’s Lot: Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France by Robert Darnton discovers a literary flowering in the shadow of the guillotine.

The Soldier’s Reward: Love and War in the Age of the French Revolution and Napoleon by Jennifer Ngaire Heuer and Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France by Andrea Mansker reveal romance in a time of revolt.

As Revolution broke out and turned to Terror, British citizens living in France found themselves transformed from friends of liberty to an enemy within.

The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789 by Robert Darnton is a sweeping account of events from the Parisian perspective, from disastrous wars to fights for religious toleration.

Paris was flooded with Eau de Cologne during the early years of Napoleon’s rule. Everyone was using it and everyone was selling it.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité – oranges? What does Maximilien Robespierre’s fondness for citrus fruit reveal?