Curated playlist
People of the French Revolution
- Louis XVIIILouis XVIII spent twenty-three years as a king without a kingdom. He took the French throne in 1814.
- Augustin RobespierreAugustin Robespierre asked to be arrested alongside his brother Maximilien.
- Marquis de LafayetteThe Marquis de Lafayette lies buried in Picpus Cemetery in Paris, beneath soil carried across the Atlantic from Bunker Hill in Massachusetts. He gathered that earth himself, intending it for his grave. Americans call him simply Lafayette.…
- Louis Antoine, Duke of EnghienThe Duke of Enghien was executed over a plot that no evidence ever tied him to. Napoleon acted on false reports in 1804.
- Jean-Baptiste KléberBritain refused Kléber's deal to send his army home from Egypt, so he attacked instead.
- Louis-Guillaume OttoA diplomat's 1799 letter holds the earliest recorded use of "Industrial Revolution" in French.
- Louis Philippe IBefore he became king of France, Louis Philippe I lived above a Boston oyster house.
- Charles-François LebrunA relative stole the record of his prosecution, saving Charles-François Lebrun from the guillotine.
- Lucien BonaparteLucien Bonaparte helped his brother Napoleon seize power, then refused to live under him.
- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-PérigordNapoleon called his own diplomat "shit in a silk stocking." Talleyrand had secretly worked against him.