Napoleon III is among 83,000 French prisoners captured by the Germans at Sedan in the Franco-Prussian war

A French government of national defence deposes Napoleon III and proclaims the third French republic

The Prussian king, William I, is proclaimed emperor of a united Germany in the palace at Versailles

Troops of the new German empire march through Paris in a victory parade at the end of the Franco-Prussian war

An uprising results in the Paris Commune, followed by the siege of the city by French government forces

The Paris communards are overwhelmed in a battle at the Père Lachaise cemetery, which is followed by brutal reprisals

French author Émile Zola publishes The Fortune of the Rougons, the first in a 20-novel series that he calls Les Rougon-Macquart

Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud move together to Brussels, and then to London, where they live a dissolute bohemian existence

Verlaine is sentenced to two years in prison, at Mons in Belgium, after shooting and wounding Rimbaud in a drunken rage in Brussels

French painter Edgar Degas finds inspiration in the onstage and backstage world of ballet dancers

A group of French artists, including Renoir, Monet and Degas, exhibit their work independently in the Paris studio of the photographer Nadar

French critic Louis Leroy uses the term 'impressionism' to ridicule Monet's Impression, Sunrise, and unwittingly names a movement

Georges Bizet's opera Carmen has its premiere in Paris and meets at first with a lukewarm response

An agreement is signed between France and Britain to cooperate in the construction of a tunnel beneath the Channel

The chaotic government finances of Egypt are placed under joint French and British control

A congress in Paris, with Ferdinand de Lesseps as president, decides to construct a canal from coast to coast in Panama

Gustave Flaubert dies, with his novel Bouvard et Pécuchet incomplete

France invades Tunisia from Algeria, and in the Treaty of Bardo forces the bey of Tunis to accept the status of a French protectorate

Following Lady Waldegrave's death in 1879, the Strawberry Hill estate is sold first to an American hotel company and then on, in 1883 to Baron de Stern.

French artist Claude Monet moves to Giverny, where he creates and paints a famous lily pond

Verlaine publishes Les Poètes maudits, short studies of various 'cursed poets' – including Rimbaud

The Statue of Liberty, by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, is assembled in Paris before being shipped across the Atlantic

Louis Pasteur uses rabies inoculation to save the life of 9-year-old Joseph Meister, bitten by a rabid dog

Leaving his family in Copenhagen, French artist Paul Gauguin returns to Paris to paint full-time

French painter Georges Seurat develops the dotted style of impressionism that becomes known as Pointillism