French Revolution facts
While investigating facts about French Revolution Timeline and French Revolution 1848, I found out little known, but curios details like:
Joan of Arc asked King Charles VII to exempt her village from taxes "forever." this was upheld for over 300 years until the French Revolution happened and the promise was forgotten.
how french revolution started?
During the French Revolution, Louis XVI ordered the arrest of a judge named D'Epremesnil. When the arresting officers came to the Palais de Justice, they did not know D'Epremesnil by sight, so all the judges stood up and cried "We are all D'Epremesnil!". No arrests were made that day.
What french revolution events?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what caused the french revolution. Here are 50 of the best facts about French Revolution Summary and French Revolutionary Calendar I managed to collect.
what french revolution was les miserables about?
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In her 85 years of life, Napoleon Bonaparte's mother (1750-1836) lived long enough to see the collapse of the French monarchy, the French Revolution, the crowning of her son as Emperor, his death, the collapse of his empire, and the restoration of the monarchy.
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One of the major objectives of the French Revolution was to switch all measures of time from base 12 to base 10, including a ten day week. Ironically, the experiment lasted 12 years.
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One of the selling points for introducing the guillotine during the French Revolution was equality - commoners could now enjoy the comparatively quick and painless death of decapitation just like the nobility, and would no longer have to endure brutal deaths such as those caused by hanging.
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While the guillotine was being prototyped, King Louis XVI "recommended that an oblique blade be used instead of a crescent blade, lest the blade not fit all necks". His own was "offered up discreetly as an example". He was later beheaded in 1793 during the French Revolution.
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The British tried to surrender to the French at the end of the American Revolution. French General Rochambeau refused British Brigadier General O'Hara's sword and instead pointed him towards George Washington to offer surrender.
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The French court dwarf Richebourg who was only 23 inches tall. During the French Revolution he was used to pass secret messages in and out of Paris carried by nurses and disguised in an infant’s clothing.
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The custom of the ace being over the king and queen originated after the French Revolution, to symbolize the lower classes overthrowing the nobility.
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Until 2015 a French law prohibited bakers in Paris from taking vacations at the same time, to avoid a bread shortage like the one that helped cause the French Revolution. Bakers met to decide who would be open in July and who would be open in August.
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During the French revolution, many aristocrats died/flew leaving their cooks behind. They had no job and invented restaurants. It is this hyper-competitive situation that caused French cuisine to evolve into something special.
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Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's lyricist, who wrote Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte. An ordained priest, he was banished from Venice for living in a brothel, narrowly avoided execution in the French Revolution, and wound up running a grocery store in Sunbury, Pennsylvania.
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Why french revolution started?
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"right-wing" and "left-wing" labels originated from the French Revolution, in which anti-royalists sat on the left of the French National Assembly hall and pro-royalty sat on the right.
The terms "right wing" and "left wing" originated during the French Revolution, when in the National Assembly, supporters of the king sat to the president's right and supporters of the revolution to his left. - source
The phrase "Let them eat cake" has no record of being said by Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. It was used in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's autobiography, which was written when Antoinette was 9 years old. - source
The French lost more men in battle during the American Revolution than the Americans did.
The political terms “left”, “right”, and “center” originated from the seating arrangement of the French Parliament after the French Revolution. Moderates sat in the center, conservatives on the right, etc. - source
When french revolution started?
That, while usually remembered for the French Revolution, the guillotine was used extensively by the Nazis during their time in power in Germany. As many were killed with it in Nazi Germany as were killed during the French Reign of Terror, including 10,000 people between 1944 and 1945 alone.
How french revolution ended?
After the French Revolution, the scientific community implemented along with the metric system, metric time, which failed miserably due to the fact that people did not want to deviate from a 7 day week to a 10 day week.
By the time of the french revolution, only 50% of the population of France could speak any French and less than 25% spoke it as a native language.
The terms "left" and "right" in politics appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the king to the president's right and supporters of the revolution to his left.
Madame Tussaud made wax death masks of those executed in the French Revolution including Marie Antoinette. She had been readied for the guillotine herself before being pardoned to make the death masks.
Madame Tussaud, of Wax Museum fame, was an artist in the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. During the French Revolution, she was forced to make wax death masks of both of their faces immediately after they were guillotined.