The French Revolution – Key Vocabulary

A set of vocabulary flashcards summarising the key terms, people and concepts discussed in the lecture notes on the French Revolution.

French Revolution (1789–1799)

A decade-long upheaval that ended absolute monarchy in France, destroyed feudal privileges and promoted the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Old Regime

The socio-political system in France before 1789, marked by absolute monarchy and a society of three legally unequal estates.

First Estate

The clergy in pre-revolutionary France, exempt from most taxes and enjoying special privileges.

Second Estate

The French nobility before 1789, free from direct taxation and entitled to feudal dues.

Third Estate

Everyone else in France—peasants, artisans, bourgeoisie—who paid taxes and had no inherited privileges.

Estates General

Representative body of the three estates; convened by Louis XVI in May 1789 to approve new taxes, sparking revolutionary events.

Livre

The French currency unit before 1794; massive public debt was measured in billions of livres.

Tithe

One-tenth of agricultural produce paid to the Church by French peasants under the Old Regime.

Taille

The principal direct tax levied on members of the Third Estate in Old Regime France.

Feudal Dues

Obligatory payments and services peasants owed to nobles under the feudal system.

Subsistence Crisis

Acute shortage of food and rising prices that threatened survival of the poor; frequent in pre-revolutionary France.

Bourgeoisie (Middle Class)

Educated, prosperous members of the Third Estate—merchants, lawyers, officials—who championed Enlightenment ideals.

Enlightenment

18th-century intellectual movement stressing reason, natural rights and opposition to absolutism; inspired revolutionaries.

John Locke

English philosopher who denied divine right of kings in ‘Two Treatises of Government’ and argued for natural rights.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

French thinker whose ‘Social Contract’ proposed government based on popular sovereignty.

Montesquieu

Author of ‘The Spirit of the Laws’, advocating separation of powers into legislative, executive and judiciary.

National Assembly

Body formed by the Third Estate on 20 June 1789 after walking out of the Estates General; drafted France’s first constitution.

Tennis Court Oath

Pledge by National Assembly deputies not to disperse until France had a constitution limiting royal power.

Storming of the Bastille

14 July 1789 attack on a royal fortress-prison symbolising tyranny; considered the revolution’s flash-point.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789)

Revolutionary charter proclaiming natural, inalienable rights—liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

Constitutional Monarchy (1791)

System created by the 1791 Constitution that limited Louis XVI’s powers and separated government into three branches.

Active Citizens

French males over 25 who paid enough tax to vote under the 1791 Constitution.

Passive Citizens

Women and poorer men excluded from voting rights in 1791 but still entitled to civil liberties.

Jacobins

Radical republican club dominated by artisans and shopkeepers, led by Robespierre; spearheaded the revolution’s most extreme phase.

Sans-culottes

Literally ‘those without knee-breeches’; working-class Parisians who wore long trousers and pushed the revolution leftward.

Maximilien Robespierre

Jacobin leader who headed the Committee of Public Safety and enforced the Reign of Terror (1793-94).

Reign of Terror

Period (1793-1794) when revolutionary courts executed perceived enemies of the republic, often by guillotine.

Guillotine

Device for execution by beheading, emblematic of revolutionary justice; named after Dr. Guillotin.

Convention

Elected assembly (1792-1795) that abolished monarchy, proclaimed the French Republic and sentenced Louis XVI to death.

The Marseillaise

Patriotic war song sung by volunteers from Marseilles in 1792; adopted as the French national anthem.

Directory

Five-man executive established by the 1795 Constitution; plagued by corruption and overthrown by Napoleon.

Napoleon Bonaparte

French general who seized power in 1799, crowned himself emperor in 1804 and spread revolutionary reforms across Europe.

Mirabeau

Noble-born orator who supported the Third Estate and became a leading voice in the early National Assembly.

Abbé Sieyès

Clergyman whose pamphlet ‘What is the Third Estate?’ championed commoners; later helped bring Napoleon to power.

Louis XVI

Bourbon king of France (1774-1793) executed for treason during the revolution.

Marie Antoinette

Austrian-born queen of France, unpopular for extravagance; guillotined in October 1793.

Society of Revolutionary and Republican Women

Leading Paris women’s club that demanded equal political rights during 1792-93.

Olympe de Gouges

Author of ‘Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen’; executed in 1793 for opposing Jacobins.

Suffrage

The right to vote; revolutionary women campaigned for universal suffrage but achieved it in France only in 1946.

Abolition of Slavery (1794)

Decree by the Convention freeing enslaved people in French colonies; reversed by Napoleon, reinstated permanently in 1848.

Triangular Slave Trade

Commerce linking Europe, Africa and the Americas in which French ships carried enslaved Africans to Caribbean plantations.

Emancipation

The act of freeing someone from bondage; applied to slaves freed during the revolution.

Censorship

Pre-revolution royal control of publications; abolished in 1789, unleashing a flood of pamphlets and newspapers.

Pain d’égalité (‘Equality Bread’)

Whole-wheat loaf mandated during the Reign of Terror to enforce economic equality.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

Three-word slogan summarising the French Revolution’s guiding principles.