Events from the year 1703 in France.
Incumbents Monarch – Louis XIV
Events 20 February – 10 March – War of the Spanish Succession: Siege of Kehl – French forces under the command of the Duc de Villars capture the fortress of the Holy Roman Empire at Kehl, opposite Strasbourg on the Rhine. 19 March – 15 May – War of the Spanish Succession: Siege of Guadeloupe – An English expeditionary force fails to capture the island capital Basse-Terre in the French West Indies. 21 March – Jeanne Guyon is freed in Paris after more than seven years imprisonment for heresy in the Bastille. 7 September – War of the Spanish Succession: The town of Breisach is retaken for France by Camille d'Hostun, duc de Tallard. 11 October – Nine Roman Catholic residents of the village of Sainte-Cécile-d'Andorge are massacred by a mob of more than 800 Huguenot Protestants, the Camisards. A reprisal against Protestants in the nearby village of Branoux is made less than three weeks later. 30 October – More than 47 Huguenots in the village of Branoux-les-Taillades are massacred by Roman Catholic vigilantes in reprisal for the 11 October attack in Sainte-Cécile, 3.3 km away. 15 November – War of the Spanish Succession: Battle of Speyerbach (in modern-day Germany) – The French defeat a German relief army, allowing the French to take the besieged town of Landau two days later, for which Tallard is made a Marshal of France. 19 November – The Man in the Iron Mask dies in the Bastille.
Births 3 January – Daniel-Charles Trudaine, administrator and civil engineer (died 1769) 8 January – André Levret, obstetrician (died 1780) 5 January – Paul d'Albert de Luynes, archbishop (died 1788) 15 January – Henriette Louise de Bourbon, princess (died 1772) 22 January – Antoine Walsh, slave trader and Jacobite (died 1763) 31 January – André-Joseph Panckoucke, author and bookseller (died 1753) 3 February – Jean Philippe de Bela, military figure and Basque writer and historian (died 1796) 4 February – Jean Saas, historian and bibliographer (died 1774) 3 March – Charles-Joseph Natoire, rococo painter (died 1777) 4 March – Nicolas René Berryer, magistrate and politician (died 1762) 8 April – Benoît-Joseph Boussu, violin maker (died 1773) 10 April – Pierre Daubenton, lawyer (died 1776) 18 May – Jean Daullé, engraver (died 1763) 20 May – René Lièvre de Besançon, archer (died 1739) 21 June – Joseph Lieutaud, physician (died 1780) 4 August – Louis, Duke of Orléans, member of the royal family (died 1752) 15 September – Guillaume-François Rouelle, chemist (d. 1770) 29 September François Boucher, painter (died 1770) François Fresneau de La Gataudière, botanist and scientist (died 1770) 16 October – Joachim Faiguet de Villeneuve, economist (died 1781) 28 October – Antoine Deparcieux, mathematician (died 1768) 23 November – Louise Levesque, femme de lettres (died 1743) 25 November – Jean-François Séguier, astronomer and botanist (died 1784) Charles Clémencet, Benedictine historian (died 1778)
Deaths
16 May – Charles Perrault, author (born 1628) 26 May – Louis-Hector de Callière, politician, governor of Montreal (born in 1648) 26 July – Gérard Audran, engraver (born 1640) 30 November – Nicolas de Grigny, organist and composer
See also
References