Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [47]
1589 Henry IV, the first Bourbon king, ascends the throne after renouncing Protestantism; ‘Paris vaut bien une messe’ (Paris is well worth a Mass), he is reputed to have said upon taking communion at the basilica in St-Denis.
1635 Cardinal Richelieu, de facto ruler during the undistinguished reign of Louis XIII (1617–43), founds the Académie Française, the first and best known of France’s five institutes of arts and sciences.
1682 Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’, moves his court from the Palais des Tuileries in Paris to Versailles in a bid to sidestep the endless intrigues of the capital; the cunning plan works.
14 July 1789 The French Revolution begins when a mob arms itself with weapons taken from the Hôtel des Invalides and storms the prison at Bastille, freeing a total of just seven prisoners.
1793 Louis XVI is tried and convicted as citizen ‘Louis Capet’ (as all kings since Hugh Capet were declared to have ruled illegally) and executed; Marie-Antoinette’s turn comes nine months later.
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte overthrows the Directory and seizes control of the government in a coup d’état, opening the doors to 16 years of despotic rule, victory and then defeat on the battlefield.
1815 British and Prussian forces under the Duke of Wellington defeat Napoleon at Waterloo; he is sent into exile for the second time, this time to a remote island in the South Atlantic where he dies six years later.
1848 After more than three decades of monarchy, King Louis-Philippe is ousted and the short-lived Second Republic is established with Napoleon’s incompetent nephew at the helm.
1852–70 Paris enjoys significant economic growth during the Second Empire of Napoleon III and much of the city is redesigned or rebuilt by Baron Haussmann as the Paris we know today.
1870–1 Harsh terms inflicted on France by victor Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War leads to open revolt and the establishment of the insurrectionary Paris Commune.
1889 The Eiffel Tower is completed in time for the opening of the 1889 Exposition Universelle (World Exhibition) but is vilified in the press and on the street as the ‘metal asparagus’ – or worse.
1894 Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on trumped-up charges of spying for Germany but is later exonerated despite widespread conservative opposition.
1905 The emotions aroused by the Dreyfus affair and the interference of the Catholic Church leads to the promulgation of läcité (secularism), the legal separation of church and state.
1918 Armistice ending WWI signed at Fôret de Compiègne near Paris sees the return of lost territories (Alsace and Lorraine); the war, however, had seen the loss of over a million French soldiers.
1922 The doyenne at the centre of expatriate literary activity in Paris, Sylvia Beach of the Shakespeare & Company bookshop in rue de l’Odéon, publishes James Joyce’s Ulysses.
1940 After more than 10 months of le drôle de guerre (phoney war) Germany launches the battle for France, and the four-year occupation of Paris under direct German rule begins.
25 August 1944 Spearheaded by Free French units, Allied forces liberate Paris and the city escapes destruction, despite Hitler’s orders that it be torched; the war in Europe ends nine months later.
1949 Simone de Beauvoir publishes her ground-breaking and very influential study Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) just four years after French women win the right to vote.
1954 As a portent of what is to happen to the rest of its overseas empire, France loses its bid to reassert colonial control over Indochina when its forces are soundly defeated at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam.
1958 De Gaulle returns to power after more than a dozen years in the opposition to form the Fifth Republic, in which power is weighted in the presidency at the expense of the National Assembly.
1962 War in Algeria is brought to an end after claiming the lives of more than 12,000 people; three-quarters of a million Algeria-born French citizens arrive in France and many taken up residency in Paris.
1968 Paris