X-Nico

39 unusual facts about French Revolution


1789 in sports

John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset organises an international tour of English cricketers to France, but it is abandoned following the outbreak of the French Revolution

Bad Rotenfels

When the French Revolution threatened to be exported throughout Europe in 1792, Baden joined forces against France, and Rotenfels and its local hills were center-stage in many of the campaigns.

Bermuda Garrison

Following the French Revolution, a detachment of the 47th Foot was detached to Bermuda in 1793.

Bible de Souvigny

The Bible of Souvigny was saved from confiscation during the French Revolution.

Club de Clichy

During the French Revolution, the Club de Clichy formed in 1794, following the fall of Robespierre, 9 Thermidor an II (27 July 1794).

Codex Corbeiensis I

The St. Germain Library was suffered severely during the French Revolution, and Peter Dubrowsky, Secretary to the Russian Embassy at Paris acquired some of manuscripts stolen from the public libraries.

De la Rochejacquelein

De La Rochejacquelein or De La Rochejaquelein is the name of an ancient French family of the Vendée, celebrated for its devotion to the House of Bourbon during and after the French Revolution.

Effy Stonem

On her official Skins page, Effy claims she is distantly related to the 18th century French aristocrat called Cecile DeLacroix, who was beheaded during the French Revolution.

Enragés

Les Enragés (literally "the Enraged Ones") were a loose amalgam of radicals active during the French Revolution.

Felix Gras

He continued to form a trilogy of tales dealing with the late period of the French Revolution with La Terrour (The Terror) and La Terrour Blanco (The White Terror).

Forbury Gardens

As a result of the concerns sparked in England by the French Revolution, and throughout the ensuing Napoleonic Wars, the Forbury was used for military drills and parades, in addition to its well-established use for fairs and circuses.

Françoise-Augustine Duval d'Eprémesnil

Françoise-Augustine Sentuary (31 March 1749, Saint-Denis, Île Bourbon – 17 June 1794, Paris) was a notable counter-revolutionary during the French Revolution.

Fredrik Meltzer

He chose to use a Nordic cross to reflect Norway's close ties with Sweden and Denmark, and the colours red, white and blue in order to symbolize the liberal ideals associated with more or less democratic countries, such as the Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States of America, and revolutionary France.

French corsairs

During the French Revolution, the convention government disapproved of lettres de course, so Surcouf operated at great personal risk as a pirate against British shipping to India.

George Engleheart

The clothes of his sitters are much simpler, following the simple style which came into fashion in France from 1789 onwards, as a result of the Revolution.

Glina, Croatia

During the mid 18th century, Count Ivan Drašković created freemasons' lodges in several Croatian cities, including Glina, where officers and other members shared ideas of the Jacobins from the French Revolution, until Emperor Francis II banned them in 1798.

Habeas Corpus Suspension Act 1817

In his speech he said there was "a traitorous conspiracy...for the purpose of overthrowing...the established government" and referred to "a malignant spirit which had brought such disgrace upon the domestic character of the people" and "had long prevailed in the country, but especially since the commencement of the French Revolution".

Hectare

The metric system of measure was first given a legal basis in 1795 by the French Revolutionary government.

Hôtel de Ville, Lyon

In 1792 during the French Revolution, the half-relief of Louis XIV on horseback, in the middle of the facade was removed and replaced only during the Restoration by Henry IV of France, in the same posture.

Jean-Baptiste Michonis

Jean-Baptiste Michonis (1735 – 17 June 1794) was a personality of the French Revolution.

John Louis, Count of Nassau-Ottweiler

His remains were destroyed in the looting of the church during the French Revolution.

Joseph Gerrald

Returning to England in 1788, Gerrald was encouraged by the hopes raised by the French Revolution and joined the movement for political reform.

Luke Hansard

The promptitude and accuracy with which Hansard printed parliamentary papers were often of the greatest service to government—notably on one occasion when the proof-sheets of the report of the Secret Committee on the French Revolution were submitted to Pitt twenty-four hours after the draft had left his hands.

Macaroon

Later, two Benedictine nuns, Sister Marguerite and Sister Marie-Elisabeth, came to Nancy seeking asylum during the French Revolution.

Marriageable age

In France, until the French Revolution, the marriageable age was 12 years for girls and 14 for boys.

Obernburg

Adam Lux (b. 1765 - d. 1793), revolutionary at the time of the French Revolution

Paul and Pierrette Girault de Coursac

He was never governed by his ministers and during the French Revolution he pursued a consistent policy, playing the game that had been forced on him.

Princess Augusta Wilhelmine of Hesse-Darmstadt

In 1789 Maximilian's regiment rose in revolt and he and Augusta Wilhelmine fled to her parents' home in Darmstadt.

Quatuor concertant

The quatuor concertant is a special form of string quartet that developed in Paris around 1775 and became one of the leading genres of Parisian music until the French Revolution.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Luxembourg

Before the French Revolution, the southern part of the territory of what is now the archdiocese belonged to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Trier (then an archbishopric) and the northern part to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Liège.

Sans-culottes

The popular image of the sans-culotte has gained currency as an enduring symbol for the passion, idealism and patriotism of the common man of the French Revolution.

Seditious Meetings Act 1795

The period between 1790-1800 was one of intense lectures and public speeches in defence of political reformation, which, for the similarities with the French Revolution principles, were usually named "Jacobinic meetings".

Sophia Stacey

She eventually married in 1823 a somewhat younger army officer, Captain James Patrick Catty of the Royal Engineers, who was the son of Louis Francois Catty, who was either a refugee from the French Revolution or a French Canadian, sources differ.

Tauxe

It originated as a yeoman line in the 15th century, probably deriving its move to the bourgeousie from involvement in revenue operations ('taux' is French for 'tax' or 'tell' as in 'bank teller').

The Mountain

The Mountain (French: La Montagne) is a political group during the French Revolution whose members, called Montagnards, sat on the highest benches in the Assembly.

The Plain

The Plain (La Plaine), sometimes called the Marsh (Le Marais), was the name given to the Moderate party, in the French National Convention during the French Revolution.

Treaty of Sistova

But Austria was threatened with invasion by Prussia; also, the French Revolution had broken out, and demanded Austria's urgent attention.

Venal office

In the context of the French Revolution, a venal office refers to an office sold by the state to raise money.

Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia

From 1792 to 1796, Aosta's father had taken an active part in the struggle of the old powers against the French Revolutionary forces, but were defeated and forced to make peace.


Alliance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary

On Christmas Eve in 1800, amid the French Revolution, knowing they could face the guillotine for their actions, Peter Coudrin and Henriette Aymer de Chevalerie established the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary with a mission to spread the message of God's love manifested through the Hearts of Jesus and Mary and through the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Anarchist symbolism

During the French Revolution, the red flag was adopted by the Jacobin Club, whose members controlled the insurrectionary Paris Commune during the assault on the Tuileries, the September Massacres, and throughout the Reign of Terror.

Antoine Simon

A member of the Club of the Cordeliers, representative of the Paris Commune, on 3 July 1793, he was designated to watch over Louis XVII at the Temple,

Canoe Island French Camp

To celebrate the French Revolution and Bastille Day, a water-balloon fight (aka "Storming the Bastille") is held.

Charles Ambroise de Caffarelli du Falga

Charles Ambroise de Caffarelli du Falga (1758–1826), baron Caffarelli, was canon of Toul before the French Revolution and one of the Caffarelli brothers.

Charles E. Stanton

On July 4, 1917 he visited the tomb of French Revolution and American Revolution hero Marquis de La Fayette and (according to Pershing) said, "Lafayette, we are here!" to honor the nobleman's assistance during the Revolutionary War.

Citizen Chauvelin

The former ambassador to the United Kingdom (The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Elusive Pimpernel), Chauvelin is both a representative in the National Assembly and the chief agent of the Committee of Public Safety.

Co-cathedral

In France the bishop of Couserans (a see suppressed by the French Revolution) had two co-cathedral churches at Saint-Lizier, and the bishop of Sisteron (a see also suppressed) had a second throne in the church of Forcalquier which is still called La Con-cathédrale.

Cordeliers

The Cordeliers, also known as the Club of the Cordeliers, Cordeliers Club, or Club des Cordeliers and formally as the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Société des Amis des droits de l’homme et du citoyen), was a populist club during the French Revolution.

De la Rochejacquelein

The marquis fled abroad with his second son Louis at the beginning of the French Revolution.

Duke of Bouillon

In the wake of the French Revolution, the French Revolutionary Army invaded the Duchy of Bouillon in 1794, creating the short-lived Republic of Bouillon.

Errancis Cemetery

Errancis Cemetery or Cimetière des Errancis is a former cemetery in the 8th arrondissement of Paris and was one of the four cemeteries (the others being Madeleine Cemetery, Picpus Cemetery and the Cemetery of Saint Margaret) used to dispose of the corpses of guillotine victims during the French Revolution.

Foul Facts

The book begins at pirates, then goes through Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Vikings, Medieval Times, Aztecs, Tudors, the French Revolution, Victorians, and World War II (WWII) spies.

Guillaume Desautels

The Catholic knights won the field and thus saved Cluny, which had been (until St. Peter's in Rome just recently built) the greatest church in Western Christendom from the hands of the Protestants — only to be destroyed 200 years later by the republican mobs of the French Revolution.

House of Mérode

During the French Revolution the Austrian Netherlands were invaded by French republican troops and were incorporated into the French Republic.

Isaac René Guy le Chapelier

Le Chapelier introduced a motion in the National Assembly which prohibited guilds, trade unions, and compagnonnage (as well as the right to strike).

Jean Philippe Goujon de Grondel

In 1792, during the French Revolution, he was denounced as an aristocrat and thrown into prison, but once again, for just a few days; and almost immediately upon his release he was elected by the inhabitants of Nemours commanding general of the national guards of their city, serving until the following year.

Jean-Pons-Guillaume Viennet

Viennet was the son of National Convention-member Jacques Joseph Viennet and nephew of the priest Louis Esprit Viennet who, aged 40, was made curate of the église Saint-Merri in Paris and who in the early phase of the French Revolution in 1790 preached a sermon on the civil constitution of the clergy.

Joseph Hyacinthe François de Paule de Rigaud, Comte de Vaudreuil

Following the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, which marked the beginning of the French Revolution, Vaudreuil, in the company of his old royal comrade, the comte d'Artois, left Versailles on horseback for the Austrian Netherlands.

Langthwaite

It is home to a pub ('The Red Lion'), a shop and an unusual commissioners' church of 1817, which was one of many then built with money provided by Parliament in an attempt to counteract atheism and free thinking after the French Revolution.

Law of 22 Prairial

It was one of the ordinances passed during this stage of the French Revolution, by means of which the Committee of Public Safety simplified the judicial process to one of indictment and prosecution.

Louisa Beresford, Marchioness of Waterford

Incorporated in the design was carved medieval stonework from the Norman Benedictine Abbey of St Peter at Jumieges and from the Grande Maison des Les Andelys, both of which structures had fallen into disrepair after the French Revolution.

Margaret Mulvihill

Her non-fiction work includes a biography of Charlotte Despard (1989), a biography of Benito Mussolini (1990), an account of the French Revolution (1989), and The Treasury of Saints and Martyrs (1999).

Mariastein Abbey

The abbey was secularised twice, in 1792, because of the French Revolution, and in 1874, as a result of a conflict between the state and the Roman Catholic Church known as Kulturkampf, after which the monks were obliged to seek refuge first in France, at Delle, and then, when in 1902 they were expelled as a result of legal changes in France, for a short time at Dürrnberg near Hallein in Austria, and finally in Bregenz, also in Austria.

Missa in tempore belli

Four years into the European war that followed the French Revolution, Austrian troops were doing badly against the French in Italy and Germany, and Austria feared invasion.

Modérantisme

During the French Revolution, modérantisme or the faction des modérés (faction of the moderates) was the name given to the Girondists and then to the Dantonistes by the Montagnards.

Palais des papes of Sorgues

It remains today as ruins, because the palace was dismantled during the French Revolution by the builders that the town of Sorgues had sold.

Roman Catholic Diocese of Grenoble-Vienne

Before the French Revolution it was a suffragan diocese of the archbishopric of Vienne and included the deanery or see at Savoy, which in 1779, was made a bishopric in its own right, with the see at Chambéry.

Romanticism and the French Revolution

William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley all shared the same view of the French Revolution as it being the beginning of a change in the current ways of society and helping to better the lives of the oppressed.

Rue de l'Abbaye

The abbot's garden also exists to this day and was the scene of one of the most sombre episodes of the French Revolution, the September Massacres of the 2nd to 5 September 1792.

Sitotroga cerealella

Its common name refers to Angoumois, the pre-revolutionary province of France from which it was first scientifically described by G.-A. Olivier in 1789.

Solesmes Abbey

Peter's Abbey, Solesmes (Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes) is a Benedictine monastery in Solesmes (Sarthe, France), famous as the source of the restoration of Benedictine monastic life in the country under Dom Prosper Guéranger after the French Revolution.

Souvenir napoléonien

The society studies and makes known the history of the First and Second French Empires, from the time of the French Revolution, the imperial family, and the institutions, places, and people who were part of this history.

Steffeln

After the occupation of the lands on the Rhine’s left bank by French Revolutionary troops in 1794 and the French annexation of the Austrian Netherlands between 1795 and 1797, Steffeln became the seat of a mairie (“mayoralty”) in the Canton of Kronenburg, the Arrondissement of Malmedy and the Department of Ourthe, whose seat was in Liège.

The Penny Dreadfuls

This takes place during the French Revolution and covered an imagined meeting in prison between Maximilien Robespierre and the imprisoned Marie-Therese, the 16-year-old daughter of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

William Colgate

Robert Colgate (1758–1826) was an 18th-century English farmer, politician and sympathiser with the American War of Independence and French Revolution, whose republican ideals impelled him to leave their farm in Shoreham, Kent in March 1798 and emigrate to Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States of America, after which the family settled on a farm in Harford County, Maryland.