10th August 1792: Tuileries Palace stormed & French monarchy suspended

On the 10th August 1792, French revolutionary troops stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris. Referred to by some historians as ‘the Second Revolution’ the events of the 10th August suspended the monarchy under King Louis XVI.

The royal family had lived in the Tuileries since the October Days of 1789 saw them brought back to Paris from Versailles. Louis and his family were virtually imprisoned, as proved when crowds barred them from moving to their summer residence in April 1791. This may have influenced Louis to carry out the failed Flight to Varennes two months later, after which the family were more officially held under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace.

The relationship between the royal family and the people of Paris continued to decline throughout 1792. The king did himself no favours by vetoing a range of decrees passed by the Legislative Assembly, but the situation grew worse with the threat of invasion from foreign armies. By the time of the Brunswick Manifesto on 1st August that lent foreign support to the royal family, the crowds of Paris held Louis and the concept of monarchy in absolute contempt.

On the morning of the 10th August, crowds massed outside the Tuileries. With Louis opting to take shelter in the Legislative Assembly building, his Swiss Guard who were left to defend the palace were eventually overrun after they ran out of ammunition. Approximately 800 people on the king’s side were killed, and Paris was put in the hands of the revolutionaries while the royal family were sent to the Temple prison.

14th July 1789: Storming of the Bastille

The morning of the 14th July 1789 saw the beginning of the French Revolution when Parisian revolutionaries stormed the Bastille, a large fortress, prison and ammunition store that symbolised everything that was wrong with the monarchy. Despite having earlier legalised the National Assembly following the Tennis Court Oath, King Louis XVI had ordered royal troops to surround Paris and had dismissed his popular finance minister, Jacques Necker. These actions led the Parisian crowd to believe that Louis was preparing to overthrow the Assembly.

Although the Bastille had been a symbol of tyranny for its imprisonment of people without trial, when it was stormed it only contained seven prisoners. One was a deranged Irishman who believed himself to be God and Julius Caesar. In addition there was another so-called ‘lunatic’, four forgers, and the Comte de Solages – an aristocrat who had been imprisoned at the request of his own family for committing incest.

The fortress was not attacked in order to free these prisoners. The mob was much more interested in seizing gunpowder from the Bastille’s stores to use in the 28,000 muskets they had taken earlier that day from the Hôtel des Invalides. The fortress was guarded by 82 French soldiers and a further 32 Swiss mercenaries when the mob arrived. Despite initial attempts to calm the crowd the Bastille’s governor, Marquis Bernard-Rene de Launay, ordered the guards to open fire when around 300 rioters broke into the first courtyard. When a group of deserters from the French army joined the mob, de Launay surrendered. He was later beheaded by the crowd.

21st June 1791: Louis XVI’s attempts to escape from Paris in the Flight to Varennes

King Louis XVI of France and his family were caught attempting to escape Paris during the Flight to Varennes.

By the summer of 1791 the royal family had been living in the Tuileries in the heart of Paris for almost two years. They had been forced to move there from the lavish Palace of Versailles after the October Days of 1789, and felt as if they were prisoners as a result of their rapidly declining power.

The startling pace of change was viewed with alarm by the other monarchies of Europe, and this led to fear in France that the king himself was conspiring with foreign powers to topple the fledgling revolutionary government. Yet, convinced that he would find support for his rule in the countryside, on the night of the 20-21 June 1791 the king reinforced the people’s lack of trust in him.

In what became known as the Flight to Varennes, Louis and the rest of the immediate royal family fled the Tuileries under cover of darkness. The plan had been largely formulated by the Swedish Count Axel von Fersen, Marie Antoinette’s favourite who was also rumoured to be her lover.

Disguised to avoid being noticed by the palace guards, the family travelled in a large heavy coach pulled by six horses. Their slow progress meant the journey to the eastern frontier took considerably longer than had been anticipated and soon word of their escape had spread. In Sainte-Menehould they were recognised by the local postmaster who checked the king’s likeness against an assignat.

While the royal party continued their slow progress the postmaster rode ahead to the next town, Varennes, which lay just 30 miles from the Austrian border. Here the escapees were arrested and returned to Paris, the royal reputation in tatters.

20th June 1789: National Assembly swears the Tennis Court Oath

On the 20th June 1789 at Versailles in France, the National Assembly swore the Tennis Court Oath in which they vowed not to separate until a written constitution had been established for the country.

Faced with enormous financial difficulties, Louis XVI had called a meeting of the Estates General that first convened in early May. This involved representatives of the three Estates – the clergy, the nobility and the non-privileged common people known as the Third Estate – meeting with the king at Versailles in an attempt to solve the economic crisis. However, the allocation of votes was unfair so the representatives of the Third Estate separated themselves from the main group and met separately. On the 13th June, by which time they had been joined by some nobles and the majority of the clergy, they declared themselves the National Assembly.

However, when the king ordered their usual meeting room to be closed and guarded by soldiers, the National Assembly feared that the king was about to force them to disband. The National Assembly instead relocated to a nearby building used for playing jeu de paume, a forerunner of modern tennis, where they swore the oath. The Tennis Court Oath therefore didn’t really happen in a tennis court, but the name has stuck.

The Oath was significant for being a collective action by French citizens against their king. Faced with such opposition Louis finally relented and, on June 27th, he ordered the remaining nobles to join the National Assembly and ended the Estates General.

16th June 1958: Execution of Hungarian Communist leader Imre Nagy

On June 16th 1958, Hungarian Communist politician Imre Nagy was executed. Arrested after Soviet forces brought the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 to an end, Nagy was found guilty of treason in a secret trial and executed by hanging.

Nagy had been sacked from his position as Chairman of the Council of Ministers in April 1955 due to his independent attitude that favoured a “New Course” in Socialism. Although his moderate reforms were met with hostility from the USSR, they garnered significant support within Hungary where opposition to the hard-line government of Mátyás Rákosi had grown since the death of Stalin in 1953. Nagy’s popular support led to him being appointed Prime Minister on October 24th 1956, the day after the Revolution began.

After a week of violence, Nagy recognised the crowd’s desire for political change. Despite being an ardent Marxist he began moves towards introducing a multiparty political system and, on November 1st, announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and its status as a neutral country. This proved too much for Khrushchev in the USSR, who moved his troops into Budapest and seized control of most of the city by the 8th November. Nagy took refuge in the Yugoslavian embassy, but was arrested when he was given false promises of safe passage to leave Hungary on the 22nd November.  He, and other leading members of the deposed government, were imprisoned in Romania until 1958 when they were returned to Hungary for trial.

News of Nagy’s trial and execution were only made public after the sentence had been carried out.

10th June 1916: Battle of Mecca starts the full Arab Revolt

The Arab Revolt began fully on June 10th 1916 when Grand Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the guardian of the holy city of Mecca, ordered his troops to attack the Ottoman Caliphate’s garrison in the city. Hussein’s troops, drawn from his tribe, significantly outnumbered the Ottoman soldiers but were considerably less well equipped. Consequently, despite impressive initial gains, Hussein’s troops were unable to win the battle until Egyptian troops sent by the British arrived to provide artillery support.

Through correspondence with Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner of Egypt at the time, Hussein had become convinced that the Revolt would be rewarded with an independent Arabian empire stretching through the Middle East. The British supported the Revolt as it distracted tens of thousands of Ottoman troops from joining other fronts in the First World War.

Captain T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia for his involvement in the Revolt, did not join with the Arab forces until October 1916. Although he was just one of many British and French officers who worked closely with the Arabs during the Revolt, newspaper reports of his guerrilla tactics and close relationship with Hussein’s sons Faisal and Abdullah earned him fame.

The Revolt was an enormous success, but the outcome was not what was agreed in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence. The British and French instead divided the land according to the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement that they had negotiated between themselves in 1916. Hussein was given the Hejaz region in the Arabian Peninsula, but was defeated in 1925 by Ibn Saud.

7th May 1794: Robespierre establishes Cult of the Supreme Being

On the 7th May 1794, just a few weeks before the Law of 22nd Prairial that created the Great Terror, Maximilien Robespierre formally announced the creation of the Cult of the Supreme Being in a meeting of the National Convention.

The Cult had been devised almost exclusively by Robespierre, and followed a period of dramatic de-Christianisation that had seen the French Church stripped of its authority.  The Republic had fought hard to remove the influence of the Church from politics, with even the calendar being changed to remove all religious connotations.

What made the Cult of the Supreme Being unique as the state religion was that it recognised that God had created the universe, but that he did not interfere or intervene in its operation.  Therefore, humans were responsible for their own actions and destinies.  In the words of Robespierre, the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul were, “constant reminders” of the virtuous way people should live their lives in the Republic.

A month later, on the 20th Prairial (otherwise known as the 8th June 1794), Robespierre ordered a national celebration known as the Festival of the Supreme Being.  The most significant celebrations were in Paris, where a huge man-made papier-mâché mountain was built on the Champs de Mars.  This event is seen by many as marking the pinnacle of Robespierre’s influence.  However, within just 8 weeks the Thermidorian Reaction had removed him from power and executed him.

25th April 1792: First execution using the guillotine

The 25th April 1792 saw the world’s first use of the guillotine as a method of execution.  Nicolas Jacques Pelletier, a French highwayman found guilty of killing a man during one of his robberies, was the guillotine’s first – but by no means last – victim.

Pelletier’s status as a common criminal was significant.  Prior to the French Revolution, beheading as a form of execution had been reserved for the nobility.  Commoners were usually subjected to longer and arguably more painful deaths through hanging, or worse.  To end the privilege of the nobility, the National Assembly therefore made decapitation the only legal form of execution.

It was recognised that manual beheading was, however, still a gruesome form of execution.  On 10th October 1789, physician Joseph Guillotin argued that every execution should be swift and mechanical.  The National Assembly agreed, acknowledging that capital punishment should simply end life, not purposefully cause pain as well.

Another physician, Antoine Louis, was appointed to lead a committee to develop a quick and efficient decapitation machine.  Although Guillotin was a member of this committee, it is actually therefore Antione Louis who is credited with the device’s invention, even though it carries the Guillotin’s name.

As for the highwayman Pelletier, his execution went smoothly – much to the disappointment of the crowd who expected better ‘entertainment’.  Excited to see the new machine in action, they were disappointed at its speed and efficiency.

16th April 1917: Lenin arrives back in Russia in the sealed train after a decade in exile

Vladimir Lenin arrived in Russia after a decade of self-imposed exile.

Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party, had left Russia in 1907 after Tsar Nicholas II cancelled many of the reforms he had promised following the 1905 revolution. While abroad he remained busy organising Bolshevik groups and publishing Marxist works, but following the February Revolution and the abdication of the Tsar in 1917 he began making plans to return to Russia.

The country had been weakened by the exhausting toll of the First World War and this, combined with disastrous food shortages, had prompted the popular revolt that overthrew the Tsar. In his place the Provisional Government ruled the country, and they opted to continue the war effort despite strong opposition from the Russian people.

German officials were keen to further destabilise the situation. Despite being at war, Lenin and other Bolshevik exiles were granted permission to return to Russia from Switzerland through Germany in a ‘sealed train’. This meant that Lenin and his companions were never legally recognised as being in Germany.

The group then took a ferry to Sweden followed by a second train to Finland, arriving at Finland Station in Petrograd on 16 April. The next day Lenin published the April Theses in which he denounced both the Provisional Government and the First World War, and claimed that Russia was “passing from the first stage of the revolution…to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.”

Less than seven months later the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in the October Revolution.

11th February 1979: Iranian Revolution overthrows the Shah

On the 11th February 1979 Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, was overthrown as a result of the Iranian Revolution. His overthrow saw the end of the 2,500 year old monarchy in Iran and ushered in a theocracy overseen by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Under the Shah, Iran enjoyed immense wealth built on an abundant supply of oil, although the vast majority of the population continued to live in poverty. The Shah, who had come to power in 1941, tried to secure support by using oil money to modernize Iran. However these reforms, known as the ‘White Revolution’ were interpreted by some as pandering to Western ideals that went against Iran’s traditions.

Despite the establishment of the brutal SAVAK secret police, a growing number of Iranians were increasingly turning against the Shah. They found a leader in the Muslim scholar Ayatollah Khomeini who, despite being forced into exile in 1964, continued to be a vocal critic of the Shah’s government. He played down his intention to establish an Islamic government, focusing instead on his desire to overthrow the Shah.

On September 8th 1978, over 500 people were killed by soldiers on what became known as ‘Black Friday’. The Shah’s attempts to restore calm had no effect on the public, who continued to call for his removal.

Recognising that his overthrow was becoming inevitable, the Shah and his wife left Iran on January 15 for the USA. Khomeini returned to Iran two weeks later. Finally, on the 11th February the Supreme Military Council ordered all troops back to their barracks, effectively handing control to Khomeini and his supporters.

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