Charles Dickens famously called the era of the French Revolution the best and worst of times. For 10 years, from 1789 to 1799, France struggled to inaugurate a new European order based on the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In the process, men wrote constitutions, women marched for bread, politicians condemned innocent people to death, and a little Corsican general named Napoleon Bonaparte came to dominate the continent. Read about this remarkable period of European history in The French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon.