World History

Chapter 7

Boxer Rebellion

A 1900 violent uprising and siege of Beijing carried out by the Boxers to protest foreign presence, foreign privilege, and the rule of the Dowager Empress.

Old Regime

The political and social system that existed in France before the French Revolution, under which the population was divided into three social classes called estates.

Estates

The three large social classes into which the people of France were divided under the Old Regime.

Louis XVI

The indecisive French king whose extravagant spending, weak leadership, and heavy debts contributed to the outbreak of the French Revolution.

Marie Antoinette

The Austrian-born queen of France whose extravagant spending on gowns, jewels, and gambling earned her the nickname 'Madame Deficit.'

Estates-General

An assembly of representatives from all three social classes in France, summoned in 1789 for the first time in 175 years.

National Assembly

A revolutionary French congress established by Third Estate delegates in June 1789 to enact laws and reforms in the name of the French people.

Tennis Court Oath

A pledge made by members of France's National Assembly in 1789, promising to remain assembled until they had drawn up a new constitution.

Great Fear

A wave of senseless panic that rolled through the French countryside in 1789, prompting peasants to attack manor houses and destroy feudal legal papers.

Legislative Assembly

A legislative body created by the French Constitution of 1791 that possessed the power to create laws and approve or reject declarations of war.

Émigré

A noble or other French citizen who fled France during the Revolution, hoping to undo revolutionary changes and restore the Old Regime.

Sans-culotte

A radical group of Parisian workers and small shopkeepers who wanted the Revolution to bring even greater changes to France.

Jacobin

A member of a radical political organization during the French Revolution that pushed for sweeping changes, including the trial and execution of the king.

Guillotine

A machine introduced in 1792 designed to execute individuals efficiently and humanely by beheading.

Maximilien Robespierre

A radical Jacobin leader who headed the Committee of Public Safety and governed France virtually as a dictator during the Reign of Terror.

Reign of Terror

The period from mid-1793 to mid-1794 when Maximilien Robespierre ruled France as a dictator, leading to the execution of tens of thousands of people.

Napoleon Bonaparte

A brilliant French military leader who seized political power in a 1799 coup d'état and eventually crowned himself emperor of France.

Coup d'état

A sudden, forcible seizure of political power in a nation.

Plebiscite

A direct vote of the people held to approve or reject a proposed national constitution or policy.

Lycée

A government-run public school established in France under Napoleon to train male students for public office based on merit.

Concordat

A formal agreement signed between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII in 1801, re-establishing a relationship between the Catholic Church and the state in France.

Napoleonic Code

A comprehensive and uniform system of laws established for France by Napoleon, which eliminated many injustices but restricted individual liberties.

Battle of Trafalgar

An 1805 naval conflict in which the British fleet under Horatio Nelson defeated Napoleon's navy, ensuring British naval supremacy.

Continental System

Napoleon's policy of establishing a naval blockade to prevent trade and communication between continental Europe and Great Britain.

Peninsular War

A costly conflict from 1808 to 1814 in which Spanish peasant fighters, supported by British forces, resisted French occupation on the Iberian Peninsula.

Guerrilla

A member of a loosely organized fighting force that uses surprise attacks and ambush tactics against enemy army troops.

Scorched-earth policy

The military strategy of burning crops and slaughtering livestock during a retreat so that an advancing enemy force has no supplies to sustain itself.

Waterloo

A Belgian village where British and Prussian forces decisively defeated Napoleon's army on June 18, 1815.

Hundred Days

The brief period during 1815 when Napoleon made his final bid for power after escaping exile on the island of Elba.