In rapid succession, revolutions broke out in what is now Belgium (1789), Switzerland (1792), the Netherlands (1794), Poland (1794) and Ireland (1798). Revolutionary French armies toppled the old oligarchies of Genoa (1797), Venice (1797), Berne (1798), and many other Italian cities and Swiss cantons. Assassination was the fate of Sweden’s King Gustavus III (1792), and Russia’s Czar Paul I (1801). England’s prime minister Spencer Perceval (1812) was murdered by a bankrupt broker, John Bellingham.
