French Revolution

During the French Revolution (1789-1799) democracy and republicanism replaced the absolute monarchy in France, and the French sector of the Roman Catholic Church was forced to undergo radical restructuring. While France would oscillate among republic, empire, and monarchy for 75 years after the First Republic fell to a coup d'état by Napoléon Bonaparte, the revolution nonetheless spelled a definitive end to the ancien régime, and eclipses both subsequent revolutions in France in the popular imagination. It is widely seen as a major turning point in continental European history, from the age of absolutism to that of the citizenry, and even of the masses, as the dominant political force.

Reference

• Wikipedia: The French Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

External link

• The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814

by F.A.M. Mignet (1824) - full text of book on the French Revolution.