QCHS AP Euro Chapter 20 The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era: 3D Gallery

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

Great-great-great-grandson of Louis XIV, Louis XVI was only 20 years old when assumed the French throne in 1774. His grandfather, Louis XV, left him a monarchy in a state of perpetual financial crisis. Louis XVI made his own contributions to this crisis, increasing the debt greatly by his involvement in the American war of Independence. Unlike his great-great-great-grandfather Louis XIV, the Sun King, Louis XVI is a much weaker leader.

An alliance between French House of Bourbon and House of Hapsburgs of Austria was created as King Louis XVI married Marie Antoinette. Antoinette would be a symbol of the lavish and wasteful lifestyle of French nobility.

The Awakening of The Third Estate.

Political cartoon showing church and
nobility recoiling in fear.

The Tennis Court Oath, Jacques-Louis David, (1791)

After Louis XVI locked out representatives of the Third Estate, they meet in a near tennis court and sworn, "never to separate, and to meet wherever circumstances demand until a constitution of the kingdom is established and affirmed on solid foundations." Thus the National Assembly come to be.

Jacques-Louis David was an influential painter in the royal court in France during the 1780s. Two other of his painting are featured in this gallery (The Death of Marat & Napoleon Crossing the Alps). Notice the three figures in the center, each one representing one of the three estates of French society. Click here to exam more symbols David painted in The Tennis Court Oath.

Storming of the Bastille

14 July 1798. The irate citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille, a royal armory that also served as a prison for a handful of debtors. The storming of the Bastille became the great symbol in the revolutionary legend of the overthrow of tyranny and oppression of the Old Regime.

Jean-Pierre Houël (1798)

Women’s March on Versailles

October 1789. 6000 Parisian women march to the palace at Versailles to complain about the high cost and shortages of bread. The women and other revolutionaries storm the palace, chasing Marie Antoinette out of her bedroom. Louis XVI agrees to relocate the royal court back to Paris.

The Death of Marat

Read the Image Discovery box on page 607 in your textbook. Complete the three questions as homework.

Execution of Louis XVI

The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838 is an oil painting by the English artist J. M. W. Turner. HMS Temeraire was one of the last second-rate ships of the line to have played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. [more]

Napoleon Crossing the Alps

Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. [more]

Slave Revolt in Saint Domingue, 1791

Slaves revolting against the French in Saint Domingue in 1791. Napoleon sent an army to restore colonial rule in 1799, but yellow fever decimated the French soldiers, and the rebels defeated the weakened French army in 1803.

See John Green explain the relationship between the Haitian Revolution and Napoleon here.

Retreat from Moscow

This 1835 painting by De Boisdenier depicts the suffering of Napoleon's Grand Army on the retreat from Moscow. The Germans were to meet a similar fate more than 100 years later when they invaded Russia without adequate supplies for the harsh winter.

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QCHS AP Euro Chapter 20 The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era