1681 in France

Events from the year 1681 in France.

Incumbents

15 May – The Canal du Midi is opened officially, as the Canal Royal de Languedoc.
30 September – France annexes the city of Strasbourg, previously a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Dragonnades are instituted to intimidate Huguenot families into either leaving France or converting to Catholicism. Collections are made in England for needy French refugees.
The Port of Honfleur is remodelled by Abraham Duquesne.

9 April – Nicolas Edelinck, engraver
11 April – Anne Danican Philidor, musician
26 May – Antoine-François Botot Dangeville, dancing master, dancer and ballet teacher
31 May – Joseph-François Lafitau, Jesuit missionary, ethnologist, and naturalist
6 October – Charles François de Mondion, architect and military engineer
19 October – Claude Bouhier de Lantenay, clergyman and the second bishop of Dijon
7 November – Isaac-Joseph Berruyer, Jesuit historian

16 January – Olivier Patru, lawyer and writer
24 January – Jean Baptiste Gonet, Dominican theologian
6 May – Catherine Trianon, fortune teller and accused poisoner in the famous Poison Affair
23 May – Claude Deschamps, actor and playwright
28 June – Marie Angélique de Scorailles, noblewoman
15 September – Louise Marie Anne de Bourbon, illegitimate daughter of Louis XIV of France and his Maîtresse-en-titre, Madame de Montespan
23 September – Pierre Simon Jaillot, sculptor
27 September – Henri de La Ferté-Senneterre, marshal of France and governor of Lorraine
26 November – Jean Garnier, Jesuit church historian, patristic scholar and moral theologian
10 December – Gaspard Marsy, sculptor
16 December – François Vavasseur, Jesuit humanist and controversialist
19 December – Marguerite Joly, accused poisoner in the Poison Affair, confessed under torture to several murders, sentenced to be burned at the stake
21 December – Lacuzon, Franc-Comtois leader