Europe
Damiens’s Testimony to Parlement
During the course of his trial Damiens was interrogated over fifty times by the magistrates of the Parlement of Paris and by the King’s prosecutors. The interrogators were concerned above all to determine if Damiens had accomplices and if so, what group was behind the attack.
Letter from a Patriot Claiming to Prove Damiens Had Accomplices
This pamphlet was one of the many published in France in response to the news of Damiens’s attack on the King.
Lamoignon, "The Principles of the French Monarchy" (1787)
On 19 November 1787, the King convoked the Parlement of Paris to enforce registration of an edict allowing the indebted royal treasury to borrow an additional 420 million livres. When the King appeared before the magistrates, his Keeper of the Seals, Chrétien–François de Lamoignon spoke for him.
The "Session of the Scourging" (3 March 1766)
The twelve highest royal courts, known as parlements, not only heard civil and criminal suits; they also had the responsibility of discussing and registering royal edicts before their enactment.
Parlement of Brittany
Particularly vocal in its resistance to the financial edicts of 1763 was the Parlement of Rennes, which had jurisdiction in the province of Brittany. A series of "remonstrances," issued by this court between 1763 and 1765, reveal the conflict between the parlementarians and the crown.
Père Duchesne Idealizes the Sans–culottes
The sans–culotte [without the breeches of the wealthy] became the symbol of the committed, patriotic revolutionary everyman.
Historical, Political, and Moral Essay on Revolutions, Ancient and Modern
The French novelist and essayist François–René Chateaubriand (1768–1848) was a royalist who for a time admired Napoleon. Like Burke, he denounced the revolutionary reliance on reason and advocated a return to Christian principles.
Historical Essays on the Life of Marie–Antoinette, of Austria (1783)
Although by law, political power could not pass through the Queen’s body (only male heirs could succeed to the throne in France), there was great political interest in the body of Louis XVI’s Queen, Marie Antoinette, a Habsburg princess whose marriage into the Bourbon household solidified a diplo
Edict of Toleration, November 1787
Calvinists had a long and tumultuous history in France. They first gained the right to worship according to their creed in 1598 when King Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes to end the wars of religion between Catholics and Calvinists.
Diary of a Woman at Fifty
Born in 1770 and married to the only surviving son of one of the greatest noble families in France, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin endured humiliation, emigration, and Terror during the first part of the revolutionary decade.