The Revolution exploded from a convergence of pressures: the crown's mountain of debt, bad harvests, the tax exemptions of the privileged orders, the Enlightenment's language of 'natural rights', and the example of American independence. In May 1789 the Estates-General convened for the first time in more than a century; the Third Estate's deputies soon declared themselves an independent 'National Assembly'. On 14 July 1789 the Paris crowd stormed the Bastille — the symbolic moment that would mark the date.

The years that followed moved like a storm. In August 1789 feudal privileges were abolished and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was proclaimed; in 1791 a constitution was drafted; in 1792 the monarchy fell and the First Republic was declared; in 1793 King Louis XVI was executed. The Terror of 1793–94 turned the Revolution's own institutions against itself. In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in a coup, beginning the Revolution's transformation into a military empire.

The global impact of the French Revolution is extraordinary. Citizenship, popular sovereignty, secularism, constitutionalism, parliamentary representation — these became concepts discussed in every corner of the world for the next two centuries. The Revolution also stands as a model of how hard it can be to control the depth of change one unleashes, and how short the distance can be between ideal and terror. All the revolutionary attempts of the 19th and 20th centuries — 1848, 1871, 1917, 1949 — drew on it in some way.