Louis XVI and his family attempt to flee from Paris to the border but are captured at Varennes

Stationed at Valence, Napoleon becomes president of the local Jacobin club and makes radical speeches against the nobility and clergy

Thomas Paine publishes the first part of The Rights of Man, his reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France

France declares war on the Austrian emperor, an event that plunges Europe into more than 20 years of conflict

In a first demonstration of the gullotine, a highwayman is beheaded in a Paris square

A French officer, Rouget de Lisle, writes a stirring anthem for France, soon to be known as the Marseillaise

Thomas Paine moves hurriedly to France, to escape a charge of treason in England for opinions expressed in his Rights of Man

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

Napoleon's soldiers capture Toulon and his artillery fire forces the Anglo-Spanish fleet to withdraw from the harbour

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

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

Civil war breaks out in Corsica and Napoleon's family flees to France

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

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

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

The Netherlands, forced by invasion into the French camp, is transformed into the Batavian republic