the French Revolution. Violence spread to the countryside, where peasants demanded the feudal system be dismantled. Fearing powerlessness, the nobility and landowners joined the National Assembly.

Illustration of the storming of the Bastille prison, in an event that has come to be seen as the start of the French Revolution ... would form the National Assembly in late June.

On August 4, 1789, the National Constituent Assembly of France decreed the equality before ... earning the nickname émigrés. The French Revolution had been unleashed.