On a sweltering summer morning in Paris on July 14, 1789, the city stirred with restless energy. King Louis XVI’s monarchy was teetering on the brink of collapse. Bread had become unaffordable, debt hemmed in every household, and whispers of change threaded through the cafés and marketplaces. Yet no one could have predicted the seismic …
There are moments in human history when the impossible becomes real—when the pent-up frustrations of a people ignite into an irreversible blaze. For France, that moment arrived on July 14, 1789, when an angry mob surged through the streets of Paris and stormed the Bastille, a medieval fortress-prison that had stood for centuries as a …
On May 16, 1770, a 14-year-old Austrian archduchess named Maria Antonia walked into a gilded future. Her marriage to the Dauphin of France, the future Louis XVI, was a diplomatic union meant to solidify peace between Austria and France. It was a wedding not of love, but of strategy. And though her crown would glitter, …
