-
The Estates General was an assembly representing the French estates of the realm. The first estate was the clergy, the second estate was the nobility, and the third estate was the commoners. Louis XVI ended up convening the Estates General of 1789.
-
The members of the French Third estate took the Tennis Court Oath. The oath was, in short, : “not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require until the constitution of the Kingdom is established."
-
A state prison in Paris, known as The Bastille, was attacked by a mob. The attack was seen as a symbol of the monarchy's abuse of power. its fall was the starting point of the French Revolution.
-
The Great Fear was a panic that happened at the beginning of the French Revolution. There was a worsening grain shortage of the spring, and there were rumors that aristocrats' had a "famine plot" to starve or burn out the population. Peasants and townspeople mobilized in many regions. After hearing of the rumors, peasants armed themselves in self-defense and even attacked some manor houses.
-
Declaration of Rights of Man & Citizen is a human civil rights document from the French Revolution. The Declaration was made by the Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès and the Marquis de Lafayette. They also consulted with Thomas Jefferson. The document wa influenced by the idea of "natural rights" ; the rights of man are held to be universal: valid at all times and in every place.
-
The Women’s March on Versailles was a march started by women in the marketplaces of Paris. They were near rioting over the high price and scarcity of bread. This became like the actions of revolutionaries. The mob grew into thousands of women and allies. They ransacked the city armory for weapons and marched to the Palace of Versailles. They told their demands to King Louis XVI. The next day, the crowd made the king, his family, and most of the French Assembly to return with them to Paris.
-
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was a law passed during the French Revolution which caused the subordination of the Catholic Church in France to the French government. This new law completely got rid of monastic orders ; "all regular and secular chapters for either sex, abbacies and priorships, both regular and in commendam, for either sex".
-
The Flight to Varennes was when King Louis XVI of France, his queen Marie Antoinette, and only their immediate family unsuccessfully tried to escape from Paris in order to initiate a counter-revolution at the head of loyal troops under royalist officers concentrated at Montmédy near the frontier. They only made it to a small town called Varennes-en-Argonne. They were arrested there after having been recognized at their previous stop in Sainte-Menehould.
-
The Reign of Terror was a period of the French Revolution when a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionaries and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety.
-
The National Convention was a parliament of the French Revolution. It was the first French government organized as a republic, they abandoned the monarchy completely.
-
King Louis XVI was executed by the guillotine at Revolution Square. At a trial on 17 January 1793, the National Convention convicted the king of high treason in a near-unanimous vote. No one voted "not guilty", but several deputies abstained. In the end, they condemned him to death by a simple majority. Four days later he was executed.
-
Marie Antoinette's trial began on 14 October 1793. Two days later she was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason and got executed by the guillotine, at revolution square, just as her husband Louis XVI had been.
-
On July 26th, 1794, Robespierre spoke of internal enemies, conspirators, and calumniators, within the Convention and the governing Committees. He refused to name them, which scared the deputies because they were worried he would name them at his next out speak. The next day, this tension in the Convention allowed Jean-Lambert Tallien encourage the Convention against Robespierre. Robespierre was arrested. By the end of the next day, Robespierre was executed by the guillotine in revolution square.
-
Napoléon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader. He became Emperor of the French in 1804, all the way to 1814, and again in 1815. He won most wars and the majority of his battles. He built a large empire that ruled over continental Europe before its final collapse in 1815.
-
A French army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition, a British-led coalition consisting of units from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau, under the command of the Duke of Wellington, and a Prussian army under the command of Field Marshal von Blücher. The battle marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The British exiled Napoleon to a remote island. He died in 1821.
