1860 in France

Incumbents

• Monarch - Napoleon III

  Events

• 23 January - Cobden-Chevalier Treaty Free Trade treaty is signed between the United Kingdom and France.
• 9 April - Typesetter Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville sings "Au clair de la lune" into his phonautograph, producing the world's earliest known sound recording of a song. However, it would not be converted back into audible sound until 2008.
• 18 October - At the end of the Second Opium War, British and French troops enter the Forbidden City in Beijing.
• 24 October - Convention of Peking signed by Chinese with Britain and France.

  Arts and literature

Births

• 11 February - Rachilde, author
• 25 June - Gustave Charpentier, composer
• 16 August - Jules Laforgue, poet
• 20 August - Raymond Poincaré, statesman, five times Prime Minister of France, President of France

  Deaths

• 29 January - Stéphanie de Beauharnais, consort of Karl, Grand Duke of Baden
• 14 March - Louis Antoine Jullien, conductor
• 24 June - Jérôme Bonaparte, youngest brother of Napoleon, who made him king of Westphalia
• 22 August - Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, painter
• 17 December - Désirée Clary, wife of King Charles XIV of Sweden and a one-time fiancée of Napoleon Bonaparte

  Full date unknown

• Carron du Villards, ophthalmologist