Voltaire and the Calas affair
1762 · Event
Jean Calas, a Protestant merchant of Toulouse, is broken on the wheel for supposedly murdering a son who wanted to convert to Catholicism — a son who had in fact killed himself. Voltaire, convinced of the injustice, spends three years mobilising Europe with pamphlets and his Treatise on Toleration until the verdict is annulled and the family compensated: the Enlightenment's first great public-opinion campaign, fought under his war cry 'écrasez l'infâme'.
On these timelines: The Enlightenment, Master, France, Christianity, Major Religions
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Around 1762
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- Seven Years' War (1756)
- Jacobite rising of 1745 (1745)
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- American Declaration of Independence (1776)
- American Revolution (1775)
- French Revolution (1789)
- Haitian Revolution (1791)
- Latin American wars of independence (1808)
- Industrial Revolution begins (1760)