The French Revolution Vocabulary & Key Concepts

Vocabulary terms, key political concepts, defined words, and historical figures from the French Revolution lecture notes.

Livre

Unit of currency in France, discontinued in 1794.

Clergy

Group of persons invested with special functions in the church.

Tithe

A tax levied by the church, comprising one-tenth of the agricultural produce.

Taille

Tax to be paid directly to the state.

Old Regime

The society and institutions of France before 1789.

First Estate

Social class in 18th-century France comprising the clergy, who enjoyed birth privileges and tax exemption.

Second Estate

Social class in 18th-century France comprising the nobility, who enjoyed birth privileges and tax exemption.

Third Estate

Social class in 18th-century France comprising big businessmen, merchants, lawyers, peasants, artisans, and landless labourers, who paid all taxes.

Subsistence crisis

An extreme situation where the basic means of livelihood are endangered.

Anonymous

One whose name remains unknown.

Chateau

Castle or stately residence belonging to a king or a nobleman.

Manor

An estate consisting of the lord’s lands and his mansion.

Active citizens

Men above 25 years of age who paid taxes equal to at least 3 days of a labourer’s wage and were entitled to vote under the Constitution of 1791.

Passive citizens

The remaining men and all women under the Constitution of 1791, who were given no voting rights.

Convent

Building belonging to a community devoted to a religious life.

Sans-culottes

Literally meaning 'those without knee breeches', Jacobin members who wore long striped trousers to set themselves apart from fashionable nobles.

Treason

Betrayal of one’s country or government.

Guillotine

A device consisting of two poles and a blade with which a person is beheaded, named after Dr Guillotin who invented it.

Pain d’égalité

Equality bread, a loaf made of wholewheat that all French citizens were required to eat during the Reign of Terror.

Directory

An executive made up of five members appointed by two elected legislative councils to govern France after the fall of the Jacobin government.

Emancipation

The act of freeing.

Negroes

A term used for the indigenous people of Africa south of the Sahara.

Estates General

A political body in France to which the three estates sent their representatives to pass proposals for new taxes.

National Assembly

A body declared on 20 June 1789 by representatives of the Third Estate who swore not to disperse until they had drafted a constitution for France.

The Convention

The newly elected assembly in France that on 21 September 1792 abolished the monarchy and declared France a republic.

Reign of Terror

The period from 1793 to 1794 in France during which Robespierre followed a policy of severe control and punishment.

Marseillaise

A patriotic song composed by the poet Roget de L’Isle, originally sung by volunteers from Marseilles, which became the national anthem of France.

Louis XVI

King of the Bourbon family who ascended the throne of France in 1774 at age 20, married Marie Antoinette, and was executed in 1793 for treason.

John Locke

Philosopher who wrote Two Treatises of Government, seeking to refute the doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the monarch.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Philosopher who proposed a form of government based on a social contract between people and their representatives in his book The Social Contract.

Montesquieu

Philosopher who wrote The Spirit of the Laws, proposing a division of power within government between the legislative, executive, and judiciary.

Abbé Sieyès

A priest who wrote an influential pamphlet titled 'What is the Third Estate?'.

Maximilian Robespierre

Leader of the Jacobin club who instituted the Reign of Terror before being convicted and guillotined in July 1794.

Olympe de Gouges

A politically active woman in revolutionary France who wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen in 1791 and was executed in 1793.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Military leader who crowned himself Emperor of France in 1804 and was ultimately defeated at Waterloo in 1815.