Curated category
People of the War of the First Coalition
- NapoleonListen to the story of Napoleon, the Corsican outsider who rose through a revolution and rewrote the laws of a continent. Follow the thread to St Helena.
- Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount NelsonHoratio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, died on the 21st of October 1805 with his fleet still fighting around him, a French marksman's bullet lodged in his…
- Francis II, Holy Roman EmperorOn the 6th of August 1806, a Habsburg monarch signed away a thousand years of European tradition. Francis II declared the bond tying him to the states of the…
- William Pitt the YoungerWilliam Pitt the Younger became Britain's prime minister at the age of 24, the youngest person ever to hold that office in British or world history.
- Louis XVILouis XVI asked one last question on the morning of his execution: "Any news of La Pérouse?" The explorer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, had…
- Maximilien RobespierreMaximilien Robespierre was born in Arras on the 6th of May 1758. Thirty-six years later, on the 28th of July 1794, he was executed without trial, sent to the…
- Ferdinand I of the Two SiciliesFerdinand I of the Two Sicilies was born in Naples on the 12th of January 1751, a third son with no obvious future as a king.
- Marie AntoinetteMarie Antoinette stepped down from an open cart in the Place de la Revolution on the 16th of October 1793. She trod on her executioner's shoe and apologized…
- Karl Mack von LeiberichKarl Freiherr Mack von Leiberich was born on the 25th of August 1752 in Nennslingen, a small town in the Principality of Ansbach.
- Charles IV of SpainCharles IV of Spain was born on the 11th of November 1748 in Naples, where his father was then ruling as King of Naples and Sicily.
- Joachim MuratJoachim Murat, born on the 25th of March 1767 in a small town in southwestern France, died facing a firing squad on the 13th of October 1815 in Pizzo Calabro.
- Jean-Baptiste KléberJean-Baptiste Kléber was stabbed four times in a garden in Cairo on the 14th of June 1800 by a theology student who had pretended to beg from him.
- Michel NeyMichel Ney stood before a firing squad in Paris on the 7th of December 1815 and refused to wear a blindfold. His reason was simple and devastating: he had…