• Monarch: Louis XV^[1]

• 16 March – Louis Antoine de Bougainville returns to Saint-Malo, following a three-year circumnavigation of the world with the ships La Boudeuse and Étoile, with the loss of only seven out of 330 men; among the members of the expedition is Jeanne Baré, the first woman known to have circumnavigated the globe (she returns to France some time after Bougainville and his ships).
• 8 May – Battle of Ponte Novu begins between royal French forces and the native Corsicans.
• 9 May – Battle of Ponte Novu ends, marking the end of the Corsican War and paving the way for French dominance over the island.
• 23 October – Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrates a steam-powered artillery tractor (or 'automobile').^[2]

January to June edit

• 1 January – Marie-Louise Lachapelle, midwife (died 1821)
• 10 January – Michel Ney, Marshal of France (died 1815)
• 31 January – André-Jacques Garnerin, inventor of the frameless parachute (died 1823)
• 1 March – François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers, general (died 1796)
• 9 March – Adélaïde Binart, neoclassical painter (died 1832)
• 29 March – Jean-de-Dieu Soult, Marshal General of France and three times Prime Minister of France (died 1851)
• 10 April – Jean Lannes, general (mortally wounded in battle) (died 1809)
• 13 April – Charles Mathieu Isidore Decaen, general (died 1832)
• 21 April – Alexandre-Antoine Hureau de Sénarmont, artillery general (died 1810)
• 25 April – Marc Isambard Brunel, engineer (died 1849 in the United Kingdom)

July to December edit

• 29 July – Louis-Benoît Picard, playwright (died 1828)
• 15 August – Napoleon Bonaparte, military and political leader (died 1821 in Saint Helena)
• 23 August – Georges Cuvier, naturalist and zoologist (died 1832)
• 10 October – Augustin Alexandre Darthé, Revolutionary (executed 1797)
• 28 December – Auguste Hilarion, comte de Kératry, poet, novelist, historian and politician (died 1859)

Full date unknown edit

• Barthelemy Lafon, Louisiana Creole architect, engineer, city planner, surveyor and smuggler (died 1820 in the United States)

• 5 April – Marc-Antoine Laugier, Jesuit priest and architectural theorist (born 1713)
• 01 August – Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche, astronomer (born 1722)
• 23 September – Michel Ferdinand d'Albert d'Ailly, astronomer (born 1714)
• 3 November – Diane Adélaïde de Mailly, third of the five de Nesle sisters (born 1713)