AP Euro French Revolution
Jacobins
A club of the Third Estate. This group met in a former Dominican priory dedicated to St. Jacques in Paris. They were the most advanced political group in the National Constituent Assembly and had pressed for a republic rather than a constitutional monarchy. They were inspired from radical influencers of the Enlightenment. A group of Jacobins became known as the Girondists assumed leadership of the Assembly. They were determined to oppose the forces of the counterrevolution.
An English statesman whose criticism of the French Revolution and other writings have earned him a reputation as a spokesman for conservatism was
Edmund Burke
Declaration of Pillnitz
Emperor Leopold II of Austria, brother of Marie Antoinette, issued this declaration which allowed them to protect the royal family of France and preserve the monarchy if the other major European powers agreed. This rendered the declaration meaningless because Great Britain would not have given its consent. The declaration was taken seriously in France, however, and revolutionaries saw the nation surrounded by aristocratic and monarchical foes seeking to undo all that had been accomplish since 1789.
Place the following events of the French Revolution in the correct chronological order I. The storming of the Bastille II. The Oath of the Tennis Court III. The meeting of the Estates General IV. The Reign of Terror V. King Louis XVI executed
III, II, I, V, IV
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
In July 1790, the National Constituent Assembly issued the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, transforming the Roman Catholic Church in France into a branch of the secular state. It provided for the election of pastors and bishops who became salaried employees of the state. The Assembly did not consult Pope Pius VI nor the French clergy about these changes. This was a major blunder of the National Constituent Assembly because it embittered relations between the French church and the state. It also created immense opposition within the French church, even from bishops. The Assembly ruled that all clergy must take an oath to support the Civil Constitution. The Assembly designated any clergy who had not taken the oath as "refractory" and removed them from their clerical functions. This turned the Roman Catholics against the revolution and the pope created a crisis of conscience and political loyalty for all Catholics, further dividing the French, between those who supported the constitutional priests and those who followed the refractory clergy.
Directory
In recognition of the danger of a legislature with only one chamber and unlimited authority, this new document provided for a legislature of two houses. Members of the upper body, or Council of Elders, were to be men over forty years of age who were either husbands or widowers. The lower Council of Five Hundred was to consist of men of at least 30 who could be either married or single. The executive body was to be a five-person Directory whom the Elders would choose from a list the Council of Five Hundred submitted. Property qualifications limited the franchise, except for soldiers, who were permitted to vote whether they had property or not.
Emigres
Many aristocrats, known as emigres, left France when it became clear that political and social order was changing. They settled in many countries on the French border where they sought to foment counterrevolution. This included the king's younger brother, Artois. In 1791, Louis XVI attempted to flee the country with his family. These people marked evidence of noticeable change in the nation, frightening nobilities.
The phrase "law is an expression of the general will" from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen shows the influence of
Rousseau
Estates General
The Assembly of Notables claimed that only the Estates General of France could consent to new taxes, a group that had not met since 1614. Eventually, the financial crisis was so desperate, and the king consented to summoning the Estate General. The three estates immediately clashed with one another. The First Estate was the clergy, the Second Estate was the nobility, and the Third Estate was everyone else in the kingdom. Every representative was male. The Third Estate made it clear that the First and Second Estate would no longer be dictating how the nation would be run.
Committee of Public Safety
The Convention established a committee of public safety and a committee of general security to carry out the executive duties of the government. The leaders who served on the Committee of Public Safety were convinced republicans who had long opposed the more vacillating policies of the Girondists. They wanted to save the revolution.
September Massacres
The Paris Commune executed or murdered about 1200 people who were in city jails. Some of these people were aristocrats or priests, but most were common criminals. The crowd assumed all the prisoners were counter revolutionaries. This brought new hostilities towards the revolutionary government.
Thermidorian Reaction
The tempering of the revolution was known as the Thermidorian Reaction, because of its association with the events of 9 Thermidor, consisted of the destruction of the machinery of terror and the establishment of a new constitutional regime. It resulted from a widespread feeling that the revolution had become too radical. It displayed a weariness of the Terror and a fear that the sans-culottes had become too powerful.
Sans-culottes
This group of revolutionaries were shopkeepers, artisans, wage earners, and factory workers. The food shortages and inflation reflected in the ongoing fall of the value of assignats made their lives more difficult. The Old Regime ignored them, and the policies of the National Constituent Assembly left them victims of unregulated economic liberty. They wanted immediate relief from food shortages and rising prices through price controls. They believed all people have a right to subsistence and resented social inequality. They were very hostile towards the aristocrats and the nobles of the Third Estate. Politically, they were anti monarchical, strongly republican, and suspicious of representative government. They believed people should influence the government.
Cahiers de Doleances
a list of grievances, registered by local electors, to be presented to the king by representatives who came to the palace. These documents typically criticized government waste, indirect taxes, church taxes and corruption, and the rights of the aristocracy. They also requested more frequent meetings of the Estates General, more equitable taxes, more local control of administration, unified weights and measurements to facilitate trade and commerce, and a free press. Primarily, people were asking for equality of rights among the king's subjects. These made it clear that the French government was in need of major reforment.
Parlements
a provincial appellate court. Twenty-five years after the Seven-Years' War there was a stalemate between the aristocracy and the monarchy as royal ministers attempted to tax the nobility. They were met with opposition from the Parlement of Paris and provincial parlements. Neither Louis XV and Louis XVI could resolve this dispute. Rene Maupeou was appointed as chancellor and he was determined to break the parlements and increase taxes on the nobility. He abolished the parlements and exiled their members. The parlements spoke for the aristocracy, however, they appeared to have the public's support. The parlements were using the language of liberty and reform to defend their cause, maintaining the public's support.
All of the following are accurate statements about the French Revolution EXCEPT
a. France had a non-representative government before and after the French Revolution b. the Revolution destroyed the vestiges of feudalism c. the ideals of the French Revolution spread throughout Europe D. THE REVOLUTION FAILED TO END THE LEGAL INEQUITIES BETWEEN THE CLASSES e. the Revolution influenced French society to measure status by ability rather than by birth
During the Reign of Terror, the Committee of Public Safety sought to do all of the following EXCEPT
a. suppress independent sans-culotte activity b. protect the revolution from from its domestic foes C. ESTABLISH A SEPARATION BETWEEN STATE AND RELIGION d. drive foreign armies out of France e. prevent runaway inflation
Assignats
government bonds that the Assembly authorized the issuance of in December 1789. Their value was guaranteed by the revenue to be generated from the sale of church property. A limit was created on the quantity of assignats to be issued, however, the bond proved so acceptable that they began circulating as currency amongst the public. The Assembly ended up issuing many more than they initially intended to liquidate the national debt and create a large body of new property owners with a direct stake in the revolution. Eventually, the value of assignats fell and inflation increased, stressing on the urban poor.
The cahiers de doleances of 1789 generally demanded
government reforms
Charles Alexandre Calonne
minister of finance who encouraged internal trade, lower some taxes, and transform peasants' labor services on public works into money payments. He believed in removing internal barriers to trade and reduce government regulation of the grain trade. Calonne wanted to introduce a new land tax that all landowners would have to pay regardless of their social status, then the monarchy would have gotten rid of other indirect taxes. Calonne wanted to establish new local assemblies made up of landowners to approve land taxes, with voting power relying on the amount on land a person owned rather than social status. This all would have undermined the political and social power of the aristocracy.
The political views of the Girondists were
more moderate than the view of other Jacobins.
What accounts for the involvement of peasants in counterrevolutionary movements directed against the French Revolutionary government?
opposition to dechristianization and abolition of the monarchy
The term "Great Fear" refers to
panic in the countryside that fanned the flames of rebellion.
The assignats of the French Revolutionary era were
paper currency backed by church lands
The greatest number of victims under "The Terror" were from which social group?
peasants
When the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, Louis XVI
relented after the storming of the Bastille
he seizure of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 was important because it
represented a successful attack on the tyranny of the Old Regime
During the era of the French Revolution, the Thermidorean Reaction
terminated the Reign of Terror and led to the execution of Robespierre
What was responsible for the convening of the Estates General in 1789?
the French government's near bankruptcy
What was a result of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy?
the church was made a department of the French state
Jacques Necker
the new royal director-general of finances. He was a swiss banker who produced a public report in 1781 which suggested that the situation was not as bad as it was feared. He believed that if the expenditures for the American war were removed, the budget was in in surplus. It also revealed that a large portion of royal expenditures went to pensions for aristocrats and other royal court favorites. Aristocratic circles were angered, followed by Necker leaving office. This made it more difficult for government officials to claim a real need to raise new taxes.
The principal French tax, the taille, was paid by
the peasantry almost exclusively
Great Fear
this movement swept across much of the French countryside, coupled with the popular urban disturbances. Rumors of royal troops being sent into the rural districts intensified the peasant disturbances that begun that spring. This "Great Fear" was met with the burning of chateaux and the refusal to pay feudal dues. Peasants were determined to take possession of food supplies and land that they considered to be rightfully theirs. They believed that these rights and property were lost through the fault of administrative tightening of the collection of feudal dues during the past century.
The new Republican calendar of 1793
was part of an effort at dechristianization
