Crash Course: The French Revolution

By 1789, France was deeply in debt thanks to their funding the ________ Revolution and the extravagant lifestyle of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

American

At this point, France was still at war with _______ and _______, wars that France ended up winning, largely thanks to a little corporal named ________ _________.

Austria; Britain; Napoleon Bonaparte

Meanwhile, France's monarchical neighbors were getting a little nervous about all this republic business, Leopold 2 of _______, Marie Antoinette's brother, and King William Frederick 2 of _______ together issued the Declaration of _______, which promised to restore the French monarchy.

Austria; Prussia; Pilnitz

Louis XVI responded by sending troops to Paris primarily to quell uprisings over food shortages, but the revolutionaries saw this as a provocation, so they responded by seizing the ________ Prison on July 14th.

Bastille

On August 26th, the National Assembly proclaimed the ___________ __ ______ of Man and Citizen, which lay out a system of rights that applied to every person, and made those rights integral to the new constitution.

Declaration of Rights

Some argue the revolution succeeded in spreading _____________ ideals even if it didn't bring democracy to France.

Enlightenment

This is a nice reminder that to many people at the time, the French Revolution was not primarily about fancy _____________ ideas; it was mostly about lack of ____ and a political system that made economics contractions hardest on the poor.

Enlightenment; food

In response to the crisis, Louis XVI called a meeting of the _______ _______, the closest thing that France had to a national parliament, which hadn't met since 1614.

Estates General

In 1799, Bonaparte led a coup d'état, which established him as the _____ ______ of France.

First Consul

The most radical wing of the French legislature, the ________, called for the creation of a ________.

Jacobins; republic

Disagreement developed and the Third Estate left and declared itself the ________ ________.

National Assembly

The death of Louis XVI marks the beginning of ___ _____ __ ______, the best known, or at least the most sensational phase of the revolution; the government was under the leadership of the Committee of Public Safety led by Maximilien ___________.

The Reign of Terror; Robespierre

They had a system with kings and nobles we now call the ______ regime; where the people with the money - the nobles and the clergy - never paid taxes.

ancien

The French Revolution was ultimately far more revolutionary than its American counterpart. American never had an ___________, and the American Revolution did nothing to change that polarization of wealth. What made the French Revolution so radical was its insistence on the ____________ of its ideals.

aristocracy; universality

France was an _____________.

authoritarian

After The Terror, the revolution pulled back a bit and another new ____________ was put into place.

constitution

They later met in an indoor tennis court where they swore the famous Tennis Court Oath; agreeing not to give up until the French ____________ was established.

constitution

As with the American Revolution, it's easy to conclude that France's revolution wasn't all that revolutionary. Napoleon was basically an _______, and in some ways, he was even more of an absolute monarch than Louis XVI had been.

emperor

The really radical move in the National Assembly came on August 4th, when they abolished most of the ancient regime -- ______ rights, tithes, privileges for ______, unequal taxation; they were all abolished -- in the name of writing a new constitution.

feudal; nobles

So basically the peasants were hungry, the intellectuals were beginning to wonder whether God could or should save the king, and the nobility were dithering about, and failing to make meaningful _________ ______.

financial reform

The American Revolution was ____.

good

In October of 1789, a rumor started that Marie Antoinette was hoarding _____ somewhere inside the palace of Versailles; and in what became known as the ______ _____, a bunch of armed peasant women stormed the palace and demanded that Louis and Marie Antoinette move from Versailles to Paris.

grain; Women's March

This nicely coincided with hailstorms that ruined a year's _______, thereby raising food prices and causing widespread hunger.

harvest

Dr. Joseph Guillotine, the inventor of the guillotine, envisioned it as an egalitarian way of dying. They said the guillotine was ______, and it also made no distinction between rich or poor, noble or peasant. It killed _______.

humane; equally

Louis XVI encouraged the Prussians, which made him look like an enemy of the revolution, which, of course, he was. And as a result, the Assembly voted to suspend the ________, have new elections in which everyone could vote and create a new republican constitution.

monarchy

When Napoleon himself fell, France restored the ________, these were no longer absolute monarchs who claimed that their right to rule came from God; they were ______________ monarchs of the kind that the revolutionaries of 1789 had originally envisioned.

monarchy; constitutional

Gradually the ______ came back to France, although they had mostly lost their special privileges. The ________ ______ returned, too, although much weaker because it had lost land and the ability to collect tithes.

nobles; Catholic Church

The Estates General was like a super parliament made up of representatives from the First Estate, the ______, the Second Estates, the ______, and the Third Estate, ________ ____.

nobles; clergy; everyone else

Soon, this convention decided to have a trial for King Louis XVI, who was found guilty and, by ___ vote, sentenced to die via guillotine.

one

France in the 18th century was a rich and populous country, but it had a systematic problem collecting _____ because of the way its society was structured.

taxes

The French Revolution was ________.

terrible

The Committee of Public Safety changed the measurements of ____ because the traditional measurements were so irrational and religion-y, so they renamed all the months and decided that every day would have 10 hours, and each hour 100 minutes.

time