Jacques Necker (1732-1804) was Louis XVI’s director-general of finance three times, from 1776 to 1781, from 1788 to 1789, and from 1789 to 1790. Jacques Necker was born on September 30, 1732, in Geneva, Switzerland, to Charles Frederick Necker, a lawyer from Custrin, Prussia, and his wife Jeanne Gautier. In 1747, Jacques was sent to [...]

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was a French General and Emperor of France. He was one of the greatest military strategist and commander in history. With him the cavalry returned as an important formation in French military doctrine as the 18th century operational mobility underwent significant change. Napoleon was regarded by the influential military theorist Carl von [...]

Frederick II (1712-1786) was king of Prussia from the Hohenzollern Dynasty from 1740 until his death in 1786. His military genius earned him the title Frederick the Great. "Negotiations without weapons," he once said, "are like music without instruments." Following this credo during his forty-six-year old reign, he began a series of wars and annexations [...]

Honore Gabriel Riqueti, count of Mirabeau, (1749 – 1791) was a French orator, writer, and politician who took part in the French Revolution. As a revolutionary, he was a moderate who favored a constitutional monarchy similar to the British system. Mirabeau carried out secret negotiations with the French monarchy in an effort to reconcile it [...]

Jacques Hebert (1757-1794) was a French journalist who wrote political satires and articles during the French Revolution. He founded a radical newspaper called "Le Père Duchesne". As an extremist revolutionary, Herbert was a republican and became an important member of the Cordeliers club. He gained the support of the French working classes through his vitriolic [...]

Camille Desmoulins (1760-1794) was a French journalist and political activist who participated actively in the events of the French Revolution, writing pamphlets against Louis XVI and the royalists who supported him. Being a close friend of Georges Danton, he was a Jacobin who favored the abolition of the monarchy as he had declared himself a [...]