Comprehensive Study Guide: The French Revolution from Ancien Régime to the Directory

First Estate

In pre-revolutionary France, the social class comprising Catholic clergy who owned roughly 10% of the land, collected tithes, and enjoyed tax exemptions.

Second Estate

The French nobility, who owned about a quarter of the land, held top positions in government, the military, and the courts, and paid virtually no taxes.

Third Estate

The vast majority (97–98%) of the French population—including the bourgeoisie, urban workers, and peasants—who paid nearly all taxes while holding no political privilege.

Bourgeoisie

The educated, prosperous middle-class segment of the Third Estate, consisting of merchants, bankers, lawyers, and doctors.

Estates-General

A representative assembly of all three French social orders summoned by Louis XVI in May 1789 for the first time in 175 years to resolve the national debt crisis.

Tennis Court Oath

A June 1789 pledge by Third Estate delegates vowing not to disband until they had drafted a written constitution for France.

Storming of the Bastille

The July 14, 1789 armed assault on a royal medieval fortress-prison and armory in Paris, symbolizing the collapse of royal tyranny.

Great Fear

A wave of rural panic in the summer of 1789 driven by rumors of brigands, leading peasants to attack noble châteaux and burn feudal records.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

The August 1789 founding manifesto adopted by the National Assembly stating all men are born free and equal, establishing rights to liberty, property, and freedom of speech.

Olympe de Gouges

French author and activist who penned the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in 1791 asserting legal and political equality between sexes.

Women's March on Versailles

An October 1789 protest over acute bread shortages that forced the French royal family and the National Assembly to relocate to Paris.

Constitution of 1791

The foundational law that established a limited constitutional monarchy with a newly created Legislative Assembly elected by taxpaying male citizens.

Flight to Varennes

The failed June 1791 attempt by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to escape to the Austrian Netherlands, which destroyed remaining public trust in the monarchy.

Émigrés

French aristocrats and clergy who fled abroad during the revolution to encourage foreign monarchs to intervene and restore the Old Regime.

Sans-culottes

Radical working-class Parisian wage earners and artisans whose moniker referred to wearing full trousers rather than aristocratic knee breeches.

Jacobins

A radical political faction that gained