French Revolution timeline – 1792-95

This French Revolution timeline lists significant events and developments in the period 1792 to 1795. This timeline has been written and compiled by Alpha History authors. If you would like to suggest an event for inclusion in this timeline please contact Alpha History.

1792

January 1st: The Legislative Assembly declares the beginning of an “Era of Liberty”.
January 23rd
: Food riots break out in Paris and recur sporadically for the next two months.
February 9th: The Legislative Assembly decrees that the property of emigres now belongs to the nation.
March 3rd: The mayor of Etampes, a town just outside Paris, is lynched for refusing to fix food prices.
March 10th: The king appoints a ministry dominated by Girondins and led by Brissot.
April 20th: The king addresses the Legislative Assembly and, under advice from Girondin ministers, asks the assembly to declare war on Austria, Hungary and Bohemia. The assembly votes to declare war, with only seven dissenters. This marks the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars.
June 13th: The king dismisses the interior minister, Jean-Marie Roland. This leads to tension between the king and the Legislative Assembly.
June 18th: Lafayette asks the Legislative Assembly to outlaw the Jacobin clubs. This request is refused.
June 20th: A crowd invades the Tuileries, demanding that the king withdraw his vetoes. The king is pressured to wear a red liberty cap and publicly humiliated.
July 11th: Early military defeats and the threat of a Prussian invasion lead the Legislative Assembly to declare “La Patrie en danger”. The government is now given emergency powers.
July 25th: The Duke of Brunswick, commander of a joint Austrian-Prussian military force, issues the Brunswick Manifesto, threatening Paris with destruction if the king is harmed.
August 10th: The Tuileries Palace is invaded by Parisians and republican soldiers. The king takes refuge in the Legislative Assembly, then is arrested and imprisoned. Soldiers of the Swiss Guard at the Tuileries are massacred. In the coming days the Legislative Assembly suspends the king, quashes his vetoes and establishes a national convention based on universal voting rights.
August 14th: The new minister of justice, Georges Danton, issues a warrant for the arrest of Lafayette and dismisses him as commander of the National Guard. Lafayette attempted to defect but was captured and detained by Austrian forces.
August 17th: The formation of an ‘extraordinary tribunal’, a forerunner to the revolutionary tribunals.
August 22nd: Royalist riots break out in the Vendee, Brittany and Dauphine.
August 26th: All priests are ordered to take an oath of loyalty to the government or face deportation.
September 2-6th: The September Massacres in Paris result in around 1,200 deaths. The vast majority killed are imprisoned royalists and clergymen.
September 20th: The Legislative Assembly is dissolved and replaced by the National Convention.
September 21st: The first session of the National Convention votes unanimously to abolish the monarchy.
September 22nd: The National Convention votes unanimously to abolish the monarchy and declares Year I of the Republic.
September 21st: The National Convention votes to introduce a decimalised revolutionary calendar, beginning with Year I of the First Republic.
September 23rd: Girondin deputies in the National Convention criticise Marat for instigating the September Massacres.
October 10th: The Convention forbids the use of old forms of address, replacing them with the more egalitarian citoyen and citoyenne.
December 11th: The trial of Louis XVI begins before the National Convention.

1793

January 14th: The National Convention votes on the fate of the king, all 693 deputies finding him guilty. The Convention also votes 424 to 283 that there shall be no appeal.
January 20th: The National Convention votes against a reprieve for the king and confirms a sentence of death.
January 21st
: King Louis XVI is executed, guillotined in the Place de la Révolution in Paris.
February 1st: The National Convention declares war on Britain and Holland.
February 13th: The formation of the First Coalition, a European military alliance of Britain, Austria, Prussia, Holland, Spain and Sardinia.
February 24th: The National Convention orders the conscription of 300,000 men for the army.
March 10th: The first Revolutionary Tribunal is created.
March 10-16th: The beginning of uprisings in the Vendee in western France. The Vendee rebels are angered by conscription, attacks on the clergy and the execution of the king.
March 26th: The Committee of Public Safety, a 12-man emergency committee with wide-ranging powers, is established by the National Convention.
April 1st: Frustrated by the progress of the war and the events of the revolution, the French general Dumouriez defects to the Austrians.
April 6th: The Duke of Orleans, now styled as Philippe Égalité, is arrested.
April 14th: The National Convention votes to impeach Jean-Paul Marat, over allegations he published material calling for violent insurrection.
April 24th: Marat is acquitted by the Revolutionary Tribunal.
May 4th: The National Convention, under pressure from the sans-culottes and Paris sections, passes the first Maximum Price Law, fixing the price of grain.
May 18th: Girondins in the National Convention establish a committee, the Commission of Twelve, to investigate anti-government activity in the Paris Commune and sections.
May 24th: The Commission of Twelve orders the arrest of the radical journalist Jacques Hébert and some of his followers. They are released three days later, after pressure from the sans-culottes.
May 26th: Jacobins in the National Convention vote to abolish the Commission of Twelve.
May 31st: The sans-culottes and sections begin demonstrations across Paris. They demand the removal of the Girondins from the National Convention, a purge of government bodies, voting rights and fixed bread prices.
June 2nd: The sans-culottes, now joined by units of the National Guard, march on the National Convention. The Convention orders the expulsion and arrest of 29 Girondin deputies.
June 24th: The National Convention passes the Constitution of Year I, also known as the Constitution of 1793 or the ‘Jacobin Constitution’.
July 13th: Jean-Paul Marat is stabbed to death by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin supporter, while he was bathing.
July 17th: The National Convention orders the abolition and renunciation of all feudal rights and dues, without compensation or delay.
July 17th: Moderate counter-revolutionaries in Lyon execute the Jacobin mayor.
July 27th: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Saint-Just are elected to the Committee of Public Safety.
August 1st: The National Convention adopts the metric system as the national system of measurement.
August 9th: Revolutionary forces lay siege to Lyon.
August 10th: The Festival of Unity and Indivisibility, celebrating the first anniversary of the storming of the Tuileries.
August 15th: All public officials are required to take an oath to the new 1793 constitution.
August 23rd: The National Convention decrees the levee en masse.
September 5th: Again the sans-culottes and Paris sections march on the National Convention, which responds by declaring terror the “order of the day” and expanding the Revolutionary Tribunals.
September 17th: The National Convention passes the Law of Suspects, broadening the definition of suspects.
September 29th: The Maximum Price Law is extended to all foods.
October 5th: The National Convention formally adopts the revolutionary calendar.
October 9th: Lyon falls to revolutionary forces after a siege lasting two months.
October 10th: The National Convention declares that emergency war measures will remain in place until there is peace. The implementation of the Constitution of 1793 is suspended.
October 16th: Marie Antoinette is guillotined, two days after a trial before the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal.
October 24th: The National Convention adopts the French revolutionary calendar, containing 10 months per year and 10 days per week.
October 31st: The execution of Girondinist leaders begins, continuing for the next month. Among those guillotined are Brissot, Vergniaud, Fauchet, Madame Roland, Bailly and Barnave.
November 6th: Philippe Égalité, the former Duke of Orleans, is also guillotined.
November 10th: The Festival of Liberty is declared in Paris.
November 23rd: The Paris Commune closes all the city’s churches. Notre Dame cathedral is renamed the Temple of Reason.
December: Republican forces gain the upper hand over rebellious peasants in the Vendee.
December 4th: The National Convention passes the Law of 14 Frimaire, or the Law of Revolutionary Government, further increasing the power of the Committee of Public Safety.

1794

February 4th: The National Convention abolishes slavery in all French colonies.
February 15th: The red, white and blue tri-colour is adopted as the national flag of France.
March 24th: The execution of Jacques Hebert and several of his followers.
March 30th: Georges Danton is arrested for alleged corruption; his trial in the Revolutionary Tribunal begins three days later.
April 5-6th: The execution of Danton, Desmoulins and their supporters, following a show trial.
May 7th: Robespierre delivers a speech to the National Convention, outlining his proposal for the Cult of the Supreme Being. The Convention endorses his proposal.
May 23rd: A public servant, Henri Admirat, is arrested after firing a pistol at Jean-Marie Collot, a member of the CPS. Admirat had planned to assassinate Robespierre but was unable to locate him.
May 24th: Cecile Renault, a 16 year old girl armed with two daggers, is arrested trying to enter Robespierre’s apartments.
June 4th: Robespierre is elected president of the National Convention.
June 8th: The Festival of the Supreme Being is celebrated on the Champ de Mars.
June 10th: The National Convention passes the Law of the 22 Prairial, increasing the power of tribunals, removing the rights of defendants and declaring all penalties to be punishable by death.
July 26th: Robespierre addresses the National Convention and launches an attack on his opponents. He also has several of them expelled from the Jacobin club.
July 27th: After overnight plotting, Robespierre’s opponents orchestrate his deposition and arrest. Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon and others are executed without trial the following day.
August 1st: The Law of 22 Priairial is repealed by the National Convention.
August 5th: The re-formed government orders a mass release of political prisoners.
August 11th: The Committee of Public Safety is stripped of its executive powers.
August: The commencement of the White Terror, a campaign of purges and persecution of Jacobins.
September 18th: The National Convention renounces the ‘constitutional church’ and the Cult of the Supreme Being.
November 12th: All Jacobin Clubs are ordered to close down.
December 8th: Surviving Girondinist deputies who were expelled from the National Convention in June 1793 are reinstated.
December 24th: The National Convention repeals the Maximum Price Law.

1795

February-July: A series of peace treaties are signed, seeking to wind down the revolutionary war in Europe.
April: Bread riots erupt in Paris.
May 31st: Revolutionary Tribunals are formally abolished.
June 8th: The death of the Dauphin, the uncrowned Louis XVII.
August 22nd: Constitution of 1795 is passed, outlining a new system of government that includes a five-man executive (the Directory) and a bicameral assembly (the Council of Elders and the Council of Five Hundred).
October 26th: The Thermidorian Convention ends with the dissolution of the National Convention.


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This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation:
J. Llewellyn and S. Thompson, “French Revolution timeline 1792-95”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/french-revolution-timeline-1792-95/.