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Early Modern (1450 CE - 1800 CE)

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Petition of Women of the Third Estate to the King (1 January 1789)

Little is known about women’s grievances or feelings in the months leading up to the meeting of the Estates–General in November 1789. They did not have the right to meet as a group, draft grievances, or vote (except in isolated individual instances) in the preparatory elections.

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"Petition of the Jews of Paris, Alsace and Lorraine to the National Assembly" (28 January 1790)

When the Jews of Paris and the eastern provinces presented their case to the National Assembly, they leaned heavily on the precedent of granting full rights to the Protestants and on the language of human rights philosophy.

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"Memorandum to Her Majesty the Queen Concerning the Diamond Necklace Affair" (1786)

Controversy surrounding the Queen reached a fever pitch in 1785–86 in what was known as the "diamond–necklace affair." A court schemer, Jeanne de la Motte, wove a complex web of intrigue, in which she convinced Cardinal Louis de Rohan—an aristocrat from a long–standing noble family who was determ

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"Letter to Fréron: Émigrés Return" by Thérèse Bouisson

Once in power, the Directorial government appeared poised to preserve the gains of the Revolution while undoing what some considered the excesses of the period of Jacobin ascendancy.

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"Letter from a Gentleman in Paris to His Friend in London" (1757)

The news of Robert–François Damiens’s attack on the King and his subsequent trial spread rapidly and generated great interest across France and all of Europe.

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"La Chalotais" Affair

In the spring of 1765, the regional conflict between the Breton Parlement and the King spilled over to a higher level when the Parlement of Paris took up the case of Breton parlementary ally La Chalotais and began issuing its own remonstrances defending the regional Parlement’s power (issued 3 Ma