Versailles under Louis XIV. His gardens were as big as the town beyond the palace. Note the miniature galleons on his ‘Grand Canal’, some of which were rowed by real galley slaves – a clear threat to potentially rebellious aristocrats.

An astonishingly un-heroic portrait of the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV in old age, circa 1705, created by Antoine Benoist, and commissioned by Louis himself By this time, Louis had lost almost all his teeth, and a botched operation had left him with a permanently suppurating palate. His personal decay was cruelly symbolic of the declining reputation of the French monarchy.

Maurice Quentin de la Tour’s portrait of Louis XV in early middle age. Louis XV is remembered as an archetypal royal hedonist, more concerned with what went on in his bedchamber than the fate of the country at large. This was a largely accurate view, but he still found time to stand up to the all-powerful aristocrats, and even tried to make government (slightly) more democratic.

Madame de Pompadour, original name Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson (‘fish’), Louis XV’s mistress turned procurer. When her own charms waned, she encouraged Louis to take very young – but unambitious – sexual partners.

The Marquis de Sade, rapist, kidnapper, (probable) murderer and self-styled ‘philosopher’. Fans of his writings ignore the fact that he was the epitome of an abusive 18th-century French aristocrat who thought himself above the law.

A satirical cartoon from 1789. Poor men wearing rustic clogs try desperately to save themselves from the many-headed tax monster.

Louis XVI. His empty, complacent gaze seems to confirm his reputation as a monarch who was disconnected from real life. On 14 July 1789, his diary entry was simply the word ‘Nothing’. In fact, however, since the start of his reign in 1774, Louis XVI had been struggling to reduce aristocratic privilege. Even in 1789, on a personal level, he was still popular with most French people.

Jacques Necker, one of Louis XVI’s finance ministers, a hero to most of the population in 1789 thanks to his attempts to end abusive taxation and improve the lot of the poor. Note the ‘Taxe’ lying at his feet, a metaphor for his radical proposals that were thwarted by the aristocrats.

Louis XVI’s wife, Marie-Antoinette, portrayed as a devoted mother in 1787, no doubt to combat the true stories about her over-spending, as well as the vicious slanders about her infidelities with both men and women. Her enemies had long since dubbed her ‘L’Autrichienne’ (The Austrian woman), a literally accurate description of her origins, but which also contained the word ‘chienne’ – French for ‘bitch’.

The height of French pre-revolutionary madness. Rich women’s hairstyles became so absurd in the late 18th century that they had to kneel in carriages. Here, the ‘Belle Poule’, inspired by a British attack on the French warship of the same name in 1778.

One of the 40,000 or so ‘cahiers de doléances’ (complaints books) commissioned by Louis XVI in 1789, allowing ordinary people to express their grievances. This one called for an end to aristocratic privilege, which it refers to as: ‘this tax so odious by nature, that causes so much hardship.’

The opening of the États généraux in Versailles on 5 May 1789. The three ‘estates’ (classes) of society – clergy, commoners and aristocrats – were separated. The women present were mere observers. Within days, the under-represented commoners rebelled and founded the Assemblée nationale.

Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first president of the Assemblée nationale, and first mayor of Paris. Too principled to survive once the Revolution mutated from a fight for democracy to political warfare, he was sentenced to be guillotined by a revolutionary tribunal in 1793.

13 July, 1789. Rioters attack the convent of Saint-Lazare in Paris, demanding money, destroying the library, and stealing food stored there for the nearby hospital. Predictably, this is one of the events of 1789 that are not commemorated these days.

20 June, 1789. Three weeks before the storming of the Bastille, the new, democratic Assemblée nationale peacefully takes power. Here, Jean Sylvain Bailly reads an oath swearing that the new parliament would meet ‘until the kingdom’s [sic] new Constitution is established’.

17 July 1789, three days after the Bastille, Louis XVI is welcomed by the Paris city council and re-affirmed as King. A constitutional monarchy had begun to function. The Paris riots were seen by most democrats as a regrettable sideshow.

The women’s march from Paris to Versailles on 5 October 1789. In fact, they were probably less heavily armed than this, and had to struggle through mud and torrential rain. Also, it is often forgotten that the Parisiennes originally went to Versailles to ask Louis XVI’s help in obtaining bread, not to demand his head.

The marquis de La Fayette, whose National Guard failed to keep the peace during the Revolution. He is often accused of fighting his own personal battle rather than supporting political change. Note the revolutionary rosette, the ‘cocarde’, on his hat, held almost out of view.

Paris, 14 July 1790, the celebration of the first anniversary of Bastille Day. King Louis XVI was the guest of honour at the ceremony, and received an oath of allegiance from politicians and the National Guard. France was still very much a functioning monarchy.

Honoré de Mirabeau, one of the early revolutionary hotheads, was an aristocrat who became anti-authoritarian after being imprisoned for debt and adultery as a young man. However, he later turned into a royalist spy, passing messages to Louis XVI and trying to curb anti-royalist fervour in parliament.

The Constitution of 1791 – signed by Louis XVI ‘J’accepte.’ It affirmed the position of the King as head of a new, almost democratic constitutional monarchy. The Constitution included the ‘Declaration of Men’s and Citizens’ Rights’ (the French Revolution accorded very few new rights to women).

A ‘sans-culotte’. This nickname implies that they were bare-bottomed, but in fact it described poorer people who did not wear the tight breeches and stockings of the rich. Instead they sported long, loose trousers. Gangs of them would patrol the streets of Paris, challenging anyone who did not wear the revolutionary rosette.

The three most famous revolutionary politicians, Georges-Jacques Danton, Jean-Paul Marat and Maximilien de Robespierre. Three men who called for violence, only to die violently themselves.

Marat’s free newspaper, L’Ami du peuple (‘The People’s Friend’), written and published by him from September 1789 to September 1792. Almost every day, populist outrage, calls for riots and assassinations, and (frequently fake) news about the Revolution were pasted up on Paris’s walls.

September 1792, the massacre of ‘immoral’ women at La Salpêtrière prison, Paris. Most of the victims were prostitutes or adulterous wives. Ironically, before being hacked and beaten to death, many of the women were raped by their supposedly moralistic executioners. The massacres went largely uncondemned by the revolutionary authorities.

March 1792, Louis XVI (still nominally King) inspects the proposed design of the guillotine. Legend has it that he suggested the more efficient, angled blade for this humane, ‘egalitarian’ method of execution. Not that it helped him: his execution in 1793 was botched, the blade passing through the base of his skull and mutilating his lower jaw.

Louis XVI’s execution, on 21 January 1793 in the place de la Révolution (now place de la Concorde) in Paris. He was allowed to ride to the scaffold in a closed carriage, partly out of a fear that royalists might attempt a last-minute rescue.

16 October, 1793. Marie-Antoinette sketched en route to the guillotine by Jacques-Louis David. She was driven through the streets to the scaffold on an open cart, like a common prisoner, her hands tied. The former Queen’s body was buried in a mass grave, her detached head placed between her legs.

The writer Olympe de Gouges, who campaigned against slavery, and wrote the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Women and Female Citizens’, a demand for equal rights to education, property and free speech for women. These demands were largely ignored by the revolutionary government, and in 1793 she was guillotined for criticizing Marat and Robespierre for their bloodthirstiness.

During the ‘Terreur’ of 1793-94, thousands of supposed counter-revolutionaries were massacred in western France. A favourite technique in Nantes was drowning, wittily renamed ‘vertical deportation’, or when naked men and women were tied together, a ‘republican wedding’.

A satirical engraving of 1794: Robespierre is depicted hard at work, purging his critics as he tramples on the Constitution. The gravestone reads ‘here lies all of France.’ In total, during outbreaks of La Terreur, around 300,000 French citizens were killed by over-zealous revolutionaries.

In 1799, with the Revolution stalling, a young revolutionary general called Napoleon Bonaparte stepped into the power vacuum. Soon afterwards, France had an emperor who was just as absolutist as King Louis XVI or his predecessors had even been.