The French Revolution Flashcards
Grade 10 · Social Studies · Flashcards
12 key terms for understanding the French Revolution and its global impact.
Flashcards
- Estates-General
- France's representative body divided into three estates; convened in May 1789 to solve the financial crisis.
- Third Estate
- 98% of France (peasants, workers, bourgeoisie); bore the tax burden and sparked the revolution.
- National Assembly
- Body formed by the Third Estate in June 1789, claiming sovereign power to write France's constitution.
- Storming of the Bastille
- July 14, 1789: Parisians seized the royal prison; symbolic start of the revolution, still celebrated as Bastille Day.
- Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789)
- Revolutionary charter of individual rights: liberty, property, security, equality before law.
- Reign of Terror (1793–94)
- Radical revolutionary phase; ~17,000 executed as enemies of the republic under Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety.
- Guillotine
- Device used for executions during the French Revolution; became the symbol of the Reign of Terror.
- Robespierre
- Jacobin leader of the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror; eventually executed by his own colleagues in Thermidor 1794.
- Napoleonic Code (1804)
- Civil law code Napoleon enacted across his empire: legal equality, property rights, religious freedom.
- Tennis Court Oath
- June 1789 vow by the Third Estate to remain assembled until France had a constitution, defying the king.
- Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
- Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood — the French Revolution's motto and France's enduring national slogan.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
- General who seized power (1799), became Emperor (1804), spread Napoleonic law across Europe, defeated at Waterloo (1815).
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