french revolution
Terms
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- Estates-General
- was the first meeting since 1614 of the French Estates-General, a general assembly consisting of representatives from all but the poorest segment of the French citizenry. The independence from the Crown which it displayed paved the way for the French Revolution.
- Declaration of the Rights of Man & Citizen
- is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, the rights of Man are universal: valid at all times and in every place, pertaining to human nature itself. Although it establishes fundamental rights for French citizens and all men without exception, it addresses neither the status of women nor slavery; despite that, it is a precursor document to international human rights instruments.
- Storming of the Bastille
- rebellion tearing down a jail
- Committee of Public Safety
- set up by the National Convention on April 6, 1793, formed the de facto executive government (no pun intended) of France during the Reign of Terror (1793-4) of the French Revolution. Under war conditions and with national survival seemingly at stake, the Jacobins under Robespierre centralized denunciations, trials, and executions under the supervision of this committee of twelve members. The committee was responsible for thousands of executions, most by the guillotine, in what was known as the "Reign of Terror." Frenchmen were executed under the pretext of being a supporter of monarchy or against the revolution. The Committee ceased meeting in 1795.
- Robespierre
- is one of the best-known figures of the French Revolution. He studied at College of Louis-le-Grand in Paris and became a lawyer. His supporters called him "The Incorruptible." He was an influential member of the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror that ended with his arrest and execution in 1794.
- Civil Code of 1804 (Napoleonic Code)
- is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I. It was drafted rapidly by a commission of four eminent jurists and entered into force on March 21, 1804. Even though the Napoleonic code was not the first legal code to be established in a European country with a civil legal system — it was preceded by the Codex Maximilianeus bavaricus civilis (Bavaria, 1756), the Allgemeines Landrecht (Prussia, 1794) and the West Galician Code, (Galicia, then part of Austria, 1797) — it is considered the first successful codification[citation needed] and strongly influenced the law of many other countries. The Code, with its stress on clearly written and accessible law, was a major step in establishing the rule of law. Historians have called it "one of the few documents which have influenced the whole world."[1]
- Bourgeoisie
- is a classification used in analyzing human societies to describe a social class of people who are in the upper or merchant class, whose status or power comes from employment, education, and wealth as opposed to aristocratic origin.
- Directory
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- National Assembly
- and the first legislature to be known by this title, was that established during the French Revolution in 1789, known as the Assemblée nationale. Consequently, the name is particularly common in Francophone countries, but is also found in some Commonwealth countries.
- Sans-Culottes
- The term came to refer to the ill-clad and ill-equipped volunteers of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, but, above all, to the working class radicals of the Revolution. From this comes the now slightly archaic term sansculottism or sans-culottism, meaning extreme egalitarian republican principles.
- Old Regime
- was a period of time often considered by many to be representative of a crashed society. Under the Old Regime in France, the king was the absolute monarch. King Louis XIV had centralized power in the royal bureaucracy, the government departments that took care of his policies.
- Women's March on Versailles
- also known as The Bread March of Women, and The Women's March on Versailles, was an event in the French Revolution. Although the National Assembly had taken the Tennis Court Oath and the Bastille had fallen at the hands of the crowd, the poor women of Paris still found that there was a considerable bread shortage and the prices were very high. A crowd had once killed a baker for overpricing his bread. On October 5, 1789, rumors spread in Paris that the royals were hoarding all the grain. A hungry mob of 7,000 largely working-class women decided to march on the Palace of Versailles, taking with them pieces of cannon and other weaponry.
- Congress of Vienna
- Its purpose was to settle issues and redraw the continent's political map after the defeat of Napoleonic France the previous spring, which would also reflect the change in status by the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire eight years before. The discussions continued despite the ex-Emperor Napoleon I's return from exile and resumption of power in France in March 1815, and the Congress's Final Act was signed nine days before his final defeat at Waterloo on June 18, 1815.
- Continental System
- The United Kingdom was an important force in encouraging and financing resistance to Napoleonic France. Napoleon lacked the resources to attempt an invasion of the United Kingdom or to defeat the Royal Navy at sea. His one attempt to do so ended with defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Napoleon resorted instead to economic warfare. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, Great Britain was emerging as Europe's manufacturing centre, and Napoleon believed it would be vulnerable to embargo on trade with the European nations under his control, causing inflation, unemployment, and great debt.
- Night session of August 4th
- in the countryside, the National Assembly was motivated to move quickly. On the night of August 4, the delegates rose one by one to propose new reforms and to surrender class privileges. The manorial system in which peasants were tied to their landlords through obligations and fees were gone, as was the corvee and all tithing to the church. The nobility and the clergy gave up their exemptions from taxation. By the end of August, feudalism was dead in France. These were called the "August days."
- Jacobins
- was the largest and most powerful political club of the French Revolution. It originated as the Club Benthorn, formed at Versailles as a group of Breton deputies to the Estates General of 1789. At the height of its influence, there were thousands of chapters throughout France, with a membership estimated at 420,000. After the fall of Robespierre the club was closed. Initially moderate, after the death of Mirabeau the club became notorious for its implementation of the Reign of Terror and for tacitly condoning the September Massacres. To this day, the terms Jacobin and Jacobinism are used as pejoratives for left-wing revolutionary politics.
- Olympe de Gouges
- she demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality. She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror for attacking the regime of Maximilien Robespierre and for her close relation with the Girondists.
- Balance of Power
- a balance of power exists when there is parity or stability between competing forces. As a term in international law for a 'just equilibrium' between the members of the family of nations, it expresses the doctrine intended to prevent any one nation from becoming sufficiently strong so as to enable it to enforce its will upon the rest. "BoP" is a central concept in neorealist theory. Within a balance of power system, a state may choose to engage in either balancing or bandwagoning behavior. In a time of war, the decision to balance or to bandwagon may well determine the survival of the state.
- Napoleon
- was a French military and political leader who had a significant impact on the history of Europe. He was a general during the French Revolution, the ruler of France as First Consul of the French Republic and Emperor of the French and King of Italy, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine.
- Guerilla Warfare
- warfare and combat with which a small group of combatants use mobile tactics (ambushes, raids, etc.) to combat a larger and less mobile formal army. The guerrilla army uses ambush (draw enemy forces to terrain unsuited to them) and mobility (advantage and surprise) in attacking vulnerable targets in enemy territory. This term means "little war" in Spanish and was created during the Peninsular War. The concept acknowledges a conflict between armed civilians against a powerful nation state army. This tactic was used by the Viet Cong and North Vietnam Army in the Vietnam War. Most factions of the Iraqi Insurgency and groups such as FARC are said to be engaged in some form of Guerrilla warfare.
- Reign of Terror
- was a period of violence that occurred fifteen months after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution." Estimates vary widely as to how many were killed, with numbers ranging from 16,000 to 40,000; in many cases, records were not kept, or if they were, they are considered likely to be inaccurate. The guillotine became the symbol of a string of executions: Marie-Antoinette, the Girondins Philippe Égalité and Madame Roland, as well as many others, lost their lives under its blade.
- Tennis Court Oath
- was a pivotal event during the French Revolution. The Oath was a pledge signed by 576 members out of 577 of France's Third Estate and a few members of the First Estate during a meeting of the Estates-General of 20 June 1789 in a tennis court near the Palace of Versailles.They were led by Mirabeau and Abbe Sieyes.
- Civil Constitution of the Clergy
- It is often incorrectly stated that this law confiscated the Church's French land holdings or banned monastic vows: that had already been accomplished by earlier legislation. It did, occasionally, complete the destruction of the monastic orders, legislating out of existence "all regular and secular chapters for either sex, abbacies and priorships, both regular and in commendam, for either sex", etc.[1] Perhaps surprisingly, some of the support from this came from figures within the Church, such as the priest and parliamentarian Pierre Claude François Daunou, and, above all, the revolutionary priest Henri Grégoire. The measure was opposed, but ultimately acquiesced to, by King Louis XVI.
- Louis XVI
- ruled as King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792. Suspended and arrested during the 10th of August 1792 Insurrection, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of treason, and executed on 21 January 1793.