AP European History Chapter 19
Thermidorian Reaction
A tempering of the revolution. Consisted of the destruction of the machinery of terror and the institution of a new constitutional regime. This was in response to the Reign of Terror, which was getting out of hand.
The Reign of Terror
A year-long period during which Robespierre and the Jacobins executed thousands enemies of the republic by way of the guillotine. Its first victims were Marie Antoinette and the royal family. Eventually ended with the execution of Robespierre himself.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
Adopted August 26, 1789, created by the National Assembly to give rights to all (except women)
Mountain
An extreme Jacobin who worked with the sans-culottes to carry the revolution forward and win the war. Called this because of their seats high in the assembly hall.
Marie Antionette
Austrian wife of Louis XVI. Hated by all of France for a variety of reasons. Did NOT say "let them eat cake". EVER. That am NOT fact. She was executed during the Reign of Terror.
National Constituent Assembly
Eventually some members of the Second Estate, and some more clergy members broke off from the Estates General and joined the National Assembly, making this.
White Terror
Executions of former terrorists. People who were involved in the Reign of Terror were attacked and sometimes murdered. Jacobins were executed a little more due process than they gave to others. Done by religious peoples.
Departments
France was split into a myriad of these when it was reorganized. They were all equal in size to keep a balance of power.
Estates General
France's traditional national assembly with representatives of the three estates, or classes, in French society: the clergy, nobility, and commoners. The calling of the Estates General in 1789 led to the French Revolution.
Émigrés
French nobles or aristocrats that left France because of the French Revolution.
Assignats
Government bonds that had a guaranteed value thanks to the confiscation of church lands.
Cahiers de Doleances
Grievances- Criticized the governtment's wastefullness, indirect taxation, church taxes and corruption, and rights given to the aristocracy. Begin to demand more equal rights.
Declaration of Pilnitz
Issued by Leopold II and Frederick William II, this promised that Austria and Prussia would intervene in France to protect the royal family and preserve the monarchy if the other major European powers agreed.
Sans-Culottes
Meaning "without breeches", these were Parisian working people who were hostile to the aristocracy and fiercely republican. However, they feared representative government.They teamed up with the Jacobins to carry out a second revolution.
Bastille
Medieval fortress that was converted to a prison stormed by peasants for ammunition during the early stages of the French Revolution.
Tennis Court Oath
National Assembly got locked out of their meeting spot. (most historically relevant janitorial blunder EVER!) The Nat'l Assembly meets in a tennis court , where they take an oath to not break up until they have a constitution.
Law of 22 Prairial
Passed by Robespierre, this permitted the revolutionary tribunal to convict suspects without hearing substantial evidence. The Reign of Terror grew even more fanatical.
Cult of the Supreme Being
Passed by the Convention, this provided for the worship of the Supreme Being as a state cult. A form of deism, it provided a religious basis for the new secular French state.
Republic of Virtue
People who attended the Convention believed they had created this in which civic virtue would flourish in place of aristocratic and monarchical corruption.
Gabelle
Tax on salt during pre-revolutionary France-included in the Estate's list of grievances.
Refractory priests
Term for the clergy who did not take the oath to support the Civil Constitution. Louis XVI and his family favored them.
Temple of Reason
The Convention decreed that Cathedral of Notre Dame to be one of these.
Directory
The executive body of the new French government. it was comprised of five people who were chosen by the Elders from a list submitted by the Council of Five Hundred.
Chapelier Law
This law kept peasants and workers from forming labor unions, and they were left at the mercy of the free market.
Deputies on Mission
Trusted members sent by the legislature into the provinces to enforce dechristianization by closing churches, prosecuting clergy and believers, and sometimes forcing priests to marry.
Edmund Burke
Writer of "Reflections on the Revolution in France." This conservative British statesman regarded the revolution as blind rationalism.
Abbe Sieyes
Wrote an essay called "What is the 3rd estate" Argued that lower classes were more important than the nobles and the government should be responsible to the people. The royal council responded by doubling the size of the Third Estate's representative body in the Estates General.
The Great Fear
a vast panic that spread quickly through France in 1789; peasant rebellions bacame part of the Great Fear; citizens, fearing invasion by foreign troops that would support the French monarchy, formed militias
Rene Maupeou
appointed by Louis XV as chancellor,was determined to break the parlements and increase taxes on nobility, he abolished the parlements and exiled their members to different parts of the country, wanted to make the administration more efficient. Would have succeeded, but Louis XVI fired him just before he saved the country because he wanted to maintain popularity. XP
Girondists
A group of Jacobins within the Legislative Assembly that was determined to oppose a counterrevolution. Additionally, they wanted war on Austria to preserve the revolution.
Jaques Necker
A hired financial expert. He wanted to reform government and the economy by abolishing tariffs and reduce court spending. Also wanted to remove the patronage on the nobility that was such a drain on the national coffers.
Jacques Danton
A leader of the Committee of Public Safety. A key leader in the Reign of Terror before he too fell victim to it.
Levee en Masse
A military requisition on the French population issues by Lazare Carnot. It drafted males into the army and directed economic production to military purposes.
National Guard
A militia formed by Marquis de Lafayette to fight for the people.
Olympe de Gouges
A proponent of democracy, she demanded the same rights for French women that French men were demanding for themselves. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality. She lost her life to the guillotine due to her revolutionary ideas.
Maximilien Robespierre
Became the most powerful leader of the Committee of Public Safety. Ran the Reign of Terror and even betrayed his allies. He was eventually arrested and executed.
Committee of Public Safety
Created by the Convention to perform the executive duties of government, this committee exercised almost dictatorial power.
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy
Made the clergy into a branch of the state. Bishoprics were conformed to the borders of the departments, and clergy members were made paid employees of the state.
September Massacres
The Paris Commune executed or murdered about 1,200 people who were in the city jails on the assumption that all were counterrevolutionaries.
National Assembly
The Third Estate got pissed and left the Estates General. They formed their own party with some sympathetic members of the clergy and called it this.
Convention
The body called by the Legislative Assembly to write a constitution. It declared France a republic.
Active v. Passive citizens
The citizenry of France were divided into these two categories when being reorganized under the Constitution of 1791. Men who payed an annual land tax equal to three days' labor would be allowed to vote on an elector, who would pick a member of the new legislature.
Citizen Capet
The family name of extremely distant forebears of the royal family. Louis XVI was put on trial as mere _____.
Etienne Charles de Brienne
The financial minister of France who succeeded de Calonne. Was initially against the land tax of de Calonne's, but as soon as he entered office, he looked at the books and realized that de Calonne was right, and France was in serious trouble.
Jacobins
The major group within the Legislative Assembly . They were Enlightenment radicals and wanted a republic with a representative government rather than a constitutional monarchy.
Paris Commune
The radical small government in France that asked the Legislative Assembly to call for the election by universal male suffrage of a new assembly to write a democratic constitution.
Charles Alexandre de Calonne
minister of France who proposed to encourage internal trade, lower taxes, nd transform peasants' services to money payments; urged introduction of new land tax that would require payments from all landowners regardless of social status; intended to make local assemblies to approve land taxes with voting power based on amount of land owned not social status
General Lafayette
organized National Guard (army for the people) to fight against French government