Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Tennis court Oath – The meeting of the 3 representatives that got together in defiance of the king.

Constitutional Monarchy – A monarchy that is constitutional. Essentially it is where there is a king’s whose power is limited by a constitution.

Old Regime – The old government prior to Napoleon and before 1789. It was the old monarchy.

Bourgeoisie – The middle class which made up the majority of the 3rd estate.

First Estate – Composed of high level members of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church

Second Estate – Made up of the hereditary nobility. Many of whom were somehow related to the Bourbon family

Third Estate – 97 percent of the population – bankers, lawyers, middle class, merchants, peasants

Jacques Necker – A member of the third estate who was appointed by the king to examine the financial crisis. He pointed out that “the only way of raising enough money was to create additional taxes and liminate some of the exemptions for nobles”.

Assignats – Assignats were paper money issued by the National Constituent Assembly in France during the French Revolution.

Emigres – People who left the country for political reasons.

Robespierre – emerged as a leader of Jacobins, extremist journalist.

Levee en masse – appeal for wartime mobilization of people.

Napolean Bonaparte – one of the new general of 800,000 men art the convention.

1.     France’s economic crisis was caused by the monarchy’s improvidence. It’s failure to provide for the future and to listen to it’s citizens was the major source of the disaster. Heavy spending from Kings, and the high classes exemption from taxes left the country in a problematic predicament where they were heavily in debt.

2.     The bourgeoisie were pushing for a constitutional monarchy, whilst the third estate, being the vast majority wanted to have more than one vote. In other words, the middle class wanted to overthrow and change the government, whilst the other members of the third estate did not.

3.     The influential and authoritative Catholic church was strongly opposed to the “Civil Constituion of the Clergy” and the “Constitution of 1791” because it limited their overall power. The constitution gave the Assembly the right to confiscate the lands and property of the Church in France. “The assembely voted to place these properties at the disposal of the government, which would then assume the responsibility of paying the clergy, meeting the expenses of running the churches, monasteries, etc.” The government withdrew power from the church held and took them over.

4.     The radicals split in the French revolution, as there were two different motives among the group. The Giriondin wanted to represent the “commercial interests of the urban bourgeoisie”. They wanted to continue the war, and believed that war would bring the people together and unite them as the citizens fought to defend their country. The Jacobins, on the other hand, desired a true democracy where voting was a right and “wealth was equalized”.

5.     The Committee of Public Safety began the “Reign of Terror”. It embarked on a mission arresting and executing thousands of citizens. Most of the victims were people who challenged Jacobin’s methods or simply did not agree with them. Under Robespierre, thousands of French were executed for being “anti-revolutionary”.