The French Revolution
Subjects become citizens — and the Terror follows
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The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of August 1789 set out equality before the law, freedom of expression and popular sovereignty. The revolution abolished feudal privilege, introduced the metric system and a secular state, and created the nation as a political category — with conscription and mass mobilisation as consequences. It also produced the Terror, Napoleon and twenty years of European war. Conservatism as a political doctrine was formulated in direct reaction, and Norway's 1814 constitution is one of its many descendants.
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The people of Paris stormed the Bastille prison, and soon after the king lost both his power and his head. The idea that power belongs to the people, not to a king by divine right, spread across Europe. But the revolution also ended in mass executions.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org