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Y213: The French Revolution and the Rule of Napoleon 1774–1815

The causes of the French Revolution from 1774 and the events of 1789: the Enlightenment, social grievances and the revolution of 1789

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 2

Overview

Recall questions on Enlightenment critics, the American war, bourgeois and peasant grievances, the economic crisis, the Estates General and cahiers, the deadlock of June 1789, the Bastille, the Great Fear and the October Days.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Who and when

Why did Parisians storm the Bastille on 14 July 1789?

Key term

Describe what happened during the October Days of 1789.

Evaluation

Name three Enlightenment writers who shaped criticism of the Ancien Régime and give the central argument of each.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Name three Enlightenment writers who shaped criticism of the Ancien Régime and give the central argument of each.

    Model answer

    Montesquieu argued for the separation of powers and intermediate bodies, Rousseau for popular sovereignty and the general will, and Voltaire for religious toleration and against clerical privilege.

  2. 2

    How did the American War of Independence contribute to the crisis in France?

    Model answer

    It added roughly a billion livres of borrowing to an already strained treasury and gave returning officers such as Lafayette a working example of a written constitution and declared rights.

  3. 3

    What grievances did the bourgeoisie hold against the social order?

    Model answer

    They resented exclusion from the highest offices, the cost of buying ennobling posts, and a system that ranked birth above wealth, education and talent.

  4. 4

    What did peasants most resent in the countryside before 1789?

    Model answer

    Seigneurial dues, the church tithe, hunting and milling monopolies, and royal taxes such as the taille, from which the privileged were exempt, and the gabelle on salt.

  5. 5

    Describe the economic crisis of 1787–89.

    Model answer

    The 1786 Eden Treaty exposed French textiles to cheap British competition and caused urban unemployment, while the hail-ruined harvest of 1788 and a hard winter pushed bread to its highest price of the century by July 1789.

  6. 6

    What was decided in December 1788 about the composition of the Estates General, and what was left unresolved?

    Model answer

    The Third Estate was granted double representation, but the crown did not rule on whether voting would be by head or by order, which became the central quarrel of May 1789.

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