The French Revolution & Napoleon

First Estate: clergy Second Estate: nobility Third Estate: everyone else (about 97% of people), who paid most of the taxes

Huge royal debt (including from helping the American Revolution) Unfair taxes on the Third Estate High bread prices after bad harvests Enlightenment ideas about rights and government

To raise taxes to solve the financial crisis. It had not met since 1614.

Members of the Third Estate, now calling themselves the National Assembly, swore not to separate until France had a constitution.

A royal fortress and prison seen as a symbol of tyranny. July 14 is now France's national day.

The Great Fear

That men are born free and equal in rights, with liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression as natural rights, and that sovereignty belongs to the nation.

Thousands of Parisian women, angry about bread prices, marched to Versailles and forced the royal family to move to Paris.

Put the Catholic Church under state control: clergy were elected and paid by the state. It split the country and turned many Catholics against the Revolution.

The royal family's failed attempt to escape France, which destroyed trust in the king.

Sans-culottes

The republic was declared in September 1792; Louis XVI was guillotined in January 1793.

The Jacobins (the Mountain) were radicals based in Paris; the Girondins were more moderate and drew support from the provinces. The Jacobins purged the Girondins in 1793.

A period when the Committee of Public Safety, led by Maximilien Robespierre, executed tens of thousands of suspected enemies of the Revolution.

The levée en masse

The overthrow and execution of Robespierre, which ended the Terror.

The Directory, a five-man executive known for corruption and weakness.

Olympe de Gouges

In the coup of 18 Brumaire (November 1799), creating the Consulate with himself as First Consul.

A unified civil law code that guaranteed equality before the law and property rights but limited women's rights. It spread across Europe.

He was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.

To restore Europe's balance of power and its old monarchies after Napoleon. It was led by Austria's Metternich.