AP®︎ European History: Topic 5.4 Flashcards

Political and social upheaval from 1789 to 1799 that destroyed France’s Old Regime, established national sovereignty and legal equality, and passed through constitutional, radical, and conservative republican phases

Pre-1789 French system of hereditary monarchy, legally privileged estates, regional differences, and an established Catholic Church

The clergy, who owned substantial land, collected tithes, and enjoyed important tax and legal privileges under the Old Regime

The nobility, who held seigneurial rights, dominated prestigious offices, and enjoyed exemptions from important direct taxes

The roughly 97–98 percent of French society comprising the bourgeoisie, urban workers, artisans, and peasants

Property-owning merchants, lawyers, officeholders, and professionals who resented aristocratic privilege and restrictions on advancement

Noble-dominated French high courts that registered royal edicts and could delay reforms through remonstrances; they were not elected legislatures

Meeting of leading nobles and clergy called in 1787 that rejected Calonne’s fiscal reforms and insisted that the Estates-General approve major taxation changes

Representative body of the three estates summoned by Louis XVI in May 1789 to address the monarchy’s fiscal crisis

Lists of grievances compiled before the Estates-General demanding reforms such as tax equality, representative government, and an end to arbitrary rule

Voting by estate gave each order one collective vote; voting by head counted individual deputies and would give the enlarged Third Estate greater influence

Abbé Sieyès’s pamphlet arguing that the productive Third Estate constituted the nation and should possess political sovereignty

Body proclaimed by Third Estate deputies on June 17, 1789, claiming authority to legislate and tax in the name of the French nation

June 20, 1789 pledge by National Assembly deputies not to separate until they had given France a constitution

Parisian seizure of a royal fortress and prison on July 14, 1789, symbolizing the defeat of arbitrary royal power through popular action

Summer 1789 rural panic in which peasants attacked manor houses and destroyed records of feudal obligations

August 1789 measures abolishing noble and clerical privileges and personal feudal obligations while making many remaining seigneurial dues redeemable

The 1789–1791 phase that abolished hereditary privilege, expanded male participation, subordinated the Church to the state, and established a constitutional monarchy

August 1789 declaration affirming natural rights, legal equality, freedom of opinion and religion, and sovereignty residing in the nation

October 1789 march led by market women that forced the royal family and National Assembly to relocate to Paris under popular pressure

Eighty-three standardized administrative units that replaced France’s varied provinces and weakened inherited regional privileges

The National Assembly’s 1789 confiscation and sale of Catholic Church property to raise state revenue

Paper notes initially backed by confiscated church lands that depreciated and contributed to inflation when issued in large quantities

1790 law making clergy salaried public officials, aligning dioceses with departments, providing for clerical elections, and requiring an oath to the state

Juring clergy swore loyalty to the revolutionary church settlement; refractory clergy refused and became a major focus of Catholic opposition

Constitution establishing a unicameral legislature, a king with executive power and a suspensive veto, and tax-qualified male voting

Under the Constitution of 1791, active male citizens met tax qualifications and could vote, while passive citizens held civil but not electoral rights

French revolutionary writer who demanded equal rights for women in the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and was executed in 1793

Olympe de Gouges’s 1791 declaration applying revolutionary equality to women and demanding political, legal, and property rights

Louis XVI’s failed June 1791 attempt to flee Paris, which severely damaged confidence in his loyalty to the constitutional revolution

Conditional 1791 Austrian-Prussian statement supporting the French royal family that revolutionaries interpreted as a threat of foreign intervention

1792 proclamation threatening Paris if the royal family were harmed, which appeared to confirm that Louis XVI’s interests aligned with the invading monarchies

August 10, 1792 attack on the Tuileries Palace by Parisian militants and provincial volunteers that suspended and imprisoned Louis XVI.

September 1792 killings of more than a thousand prisoners by crowds fearing counterrevolution as foreign armies approached Paris

Assembly elected in 1792 that abolished the monarchy, proclaimed the French Republic, tried Louis XVI, and governed during the radical phase

French victory over Prussian forces on September 20, 1792, that helped save the revolution from immediate military defeat and strengthened the new republic

The 1792–1794 phase in which a Jacobin-influenced republic used mass mobilization, economic controls, de-Christianization, and terror against internal and foreign enemies

Radical republican political club associated with centralized government, Robespierre, the Mountain, and emergency measures during the Terror

Girondins distrusted Parisian pressure and favored less centralization; the Jacobin-associated Mountain favored more radical, centralized policies

Urban artisans, shopkeepers, workers, and militants who demanded direct action, price controls, social equality, and harsh measures against counterrevolutionaries

Leading Jacobin and Committee of Public Safety member who defended terror as emergency justice necessary to preserve a virtuous republic

January 21, 1793 execution of the former king for treason, decisively rejecting sacred hereditary monarchy and intensifying domestic and foreign conflict

Uniform execution device promoted as consistent with legal equality that became the principal symbol of the Reign of Terror

Western French rebellion driven by resistance to conscription, support for refractory priests and Catholicism, local hostility, and royalism

Central executive body created in 1793 to coordinate war, administration, and internal security during the radical republic

August 1793 mass mobilization that conscripted young men and assigned other citizens to support the war effort, linking military service to citizenship

1793 law imposing ceilings on prices and wages to make necessities affordable during wartime scarcity

The 1793–1794 use of exceptional courts, surveillance, mass arrests, and executions against people classified as enemies of the revolution

1793 law broadly defining people who could be arrested and detained as suspected enemies of the revolution

Radical campaign closing or repurposing churches, removing Christian symbols, pressuring clergy to resign, and promoting alternative civic cults

Calendar dating the republic from September 1792, using new seasonal month names and ten-day weeks to break with Christian tradition

Robespierre’s deistic civic religion, introduced in 1794 as an alternative to both Catholicism and militant atheism

Militant women’s political organization founded in 1793 and suppressed when the Convention banned women’s political clubs

Overthrow and execution of Robespierre in July 1794 followed by the weakening of Jacobin institutions, terror, and economic controls

Post-Thermidor violence against former Jacobins and sans-culottes in parts of France

1795 constitution establishing property-qualified participation, a bicameral legislature, and a five-member executive

Five-director government of 1795–1799 that preserved legal equality and the end of feudal privilege but relied increasingly on military force

Napoleon Bonaparte’s November 9, 1799 overthrow of the Directory and establishment of the Consulate, conventionally ending the French Revolution

French king whose fiscal crisis led him to summon the Estates-General; his resistance and attempted flight discredited the monarchy, and he was executed in 1793