1864 in France

Incumbents

• Monarch - Napoleon III

Events

• 10 April – Second French intervention in Mexico: Treaty of Miramar.
• 4 May – Société Générale bank established in Paris.
• 14 May – The Orgueil meteorite falls to earth.
• 19 June – American Civil War: Battle of Cherbourg - Confederate States Navy CSS Alabama is sunk in a single-ship action with USS Kearsarge in la Manche off the coast of Cherbourg Harbour.
• 5-6 September – Bombardment of Shimonoseki: An international naval fleet including three French ships defeats Japanese daimyō Mōri Takachika in the Shimonoseki Straits of Japan.

Arts and literature

• April – Charles Baudelaire leaves Paris for Belgium in the hope of resolving his financial difficulties.
• 11 May – The Winged Victory of Samothrace arrives at the Louvre.
• 26 May – Alexandre Dumas, fils marries Nadejda Naryschkine. His father, Alexandre Dumas, père, returns to Paris from Italy.
• 17 December – Jacques Offenbach's opéra bouffe La Belle Hélène receives its first performance at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris.
• Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth is published.

Births

• 24 January – Marguerite Durand, actress, journalist and suffragette.
• 1 March – Étienne Destot, radiologist and anatomist.
• 16 March – Lucien Cayeux, sedimentary petrographer.
• 10 May – Léon Gaumont, inventor, engineer, film pioneer and industrialist.
• 11 November – Maurice Leblanc, novelist and short story writer.
• 16 November – Stéphane Javelle, astronomer
• 24 November – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, painter.
• 8 December – Camille Claudel, sculptor and graphic artist.
• 28 December – Henri de Régnier, poet.

Deaths

• 28 January – Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron, engineer and physicist.
• 1 February – Princess Louise Marie Thérèse of France, Petite-Fille de France.
• 2 March – Jean Alaux, painter.
• 4 March – John James Appleton, diplomat
• 21 March – Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, painter.
• 27 March – Jean-Jacques Ampère, philologist.
• 29 April – Charles Julien Brianchon, mathematician and chemist.
• 22 May – Aimable Pélissier, Marshal of France.
• 13 July – Célimène Gaudieux, musician and innkeeper.
• 31 July – Louis Christophe François Hachette, publisher.
• 7 August – Olympe-Philippe Gerbet, Roman Catholic Bishop and writer.
• 1 September – Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin, social reformer.