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France: Ancien Régime to Napoleon c.1715-1815

The Enlightenment and the challenge to authority

  • 3 things to know
  • A2 Unit 3

Overview

Voltaire's principal target, two ways Enlightenment ideas circulated in France and enlightened despotism.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Why did the Church's position make it a target?

Key term

What was the Enlightenment?

Key term

Who were the philosophes?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What was the Enlightenment?

    Model answer

    The eighteenth-century intellectual movement that applied reason and observation to society, government and religion in place of tradition and authority.

  2. 2

    Who were the philosophes?

    Model answer

    The French writers of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Diderot.

  3. 3

    What did Montesquieu argue in The Spirit of the Laws?

    Model answer

    That liberty is protected by the separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, and that laws should suit the character of a country.

  4. 4

    What was Voltaire's principal target?

    Model answer

    Religious intolerance and clerical privilege, together with arbitrary justice, summed up in his cry to crush the infamous thing.

  5. 5

    What did Rousseau argue in The Social Contract?

    Model answer

    That legitimate authority rests on the general will of the people, and that sovereignty belongs to them rather than to a king.

  6. 6

    What was the Encyclopédie, and who edited it?

    Model answer

    The great compendium of knowledge edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, which spread critical and secular ideas across educated Europe.

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1642, at .
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AUniversal male suffrage was kept.
BCandidates were officially sponsored.
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Wilhelm II succeeded in 1888 and dismissed Bismarck in 1890.
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