Every summer, France holds a military parade on the Champs Élysées to commemorate the start of the Revolution, sparked by the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789.
Yet there is rarely mention of the closing stages of the Revolution, which were marked by what became known as the Terror.
From Wednesday, a taboo-breaking exhibition at the Carnavalet History of Paris Museum will seek to put the record straight.
A satirical cartoon shows Robespierre, the revolutionary leader, last man standing as he beheads the executioner who has killed everyone else in France
BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES
The exhibition on the period called Year Two in the Revolutionary calendar, which ran from September 22, 1793 to September 21, 1794, traces the utopian dreams of the day but also the bloody reality as victims were sent to the guillotine by the cartload.
Jean-Clément Martin, emeritus professor of the history of the French Revolution