A French revolutionary army defeats the Austrians and Prussians at Valmy, and thus saves Paris from attack

After their success at Valmy, French republican armies overrun much of the Austrian Netherlands

During four September days, thugs are encouraged to massacre some 1400 aristocrats and priests held in Paris prisons

The National Convention abolishes royalty in France and establishes the first republic

George III sends Lord Macartney on an embassy to the Chinese emperor Qianlong

Beethoven leaves Bonn and goes to Vienna to study composition with Haydn

Louis XVI is guillotined after a majority of just one in the national Convention has voted for death without delay

Britain joins other European nations in war against France, mainly in naval engagements in the West Indies and Atlantic

Russia and Prussia agree on a second partition of Poland

Rebellion breaks out in the Vendée and a peasant army marches against republican Paris

25-year-old Charlotte Corday gains access to prominent republican Jean-Paul Marat and stabs him in his bath

France becomes the first nation to attempt national conscription, calling up bachelors between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five

Horatio Nelson, with his ship docked in Naples, meets Lady Hamilton, wife of the British envoy

The French Convention adopts imaginative names for the months in their new republican calendar

The Terror begins in republican France, with executions rising to more than 3000 in December

English revolutionary Thomas Paine spends nearly a year in a French prison after opposing the execution of Louis XVI

Robespierre and St Just succeed in sending Danton and his faction to the guillotine in April

French chemist Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier is guillotined for having been involved with tax collection in the ancien régime

The treaty agreed by US envoy John Jay restores some degree of friendship between the USA and Britain

Goethe and Schiller become friends, and together create the movement known as Weimar classicism

In his Science of Knowledge Johann Gottlieb Fichte contrasts the I, or Ego, and its opposing non-I, or non-Ego

Robespierre and his faction go to the guillotine in July, in the final bloodletting of the Terror

Virtuoso violinist Nicolo Paganini gives his first public performances, in churches in his native Genoa

William Blake's volume Songs of Innocence and Experience includes his poem 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'

Beethoven makes his first public appearance in Vienna as a pianist, playing either his first or second piano concerto