1864 in France

Incumbents

• Monarch - Napoleon III

  Events

• 10 April - Second French intervention in Mexico:.
• 4 May - Société Générale bank established in Paris.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 31 July - Louis Christophe François Hachette, publisher.
• 7 August - Olympe-Philippe Gerbet, Roman Catholic Bishop and writer.
• 1 September - Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin, social reformer.
• Full date unknown - Joseph Déjacque, anarcho-communist poet and writer.