| Term | Definition |
|---|
| The Clergy | The First Estate prior to the French Revolution, .5% of population owned 10% of land |
| The Nobles | The Second Estate, nobility of French Society, did not pay taxes, 1.5% of population owned 20% of land |
| The Middle Class | Third Estate - 98% of the population in France, owned 70% of land, most were rural peasants |
| bourgeoisie | middle Class during French Revolution |
| deficit spending | when a government spends more money than it takes in |
| factions | small groups who compete to gain power |
| émigrés | nobles, clergy, and others who had fled France and its revolutionary forces |
| republic | government ruled by elected representatives |
| suffrage | right to vote |
| nationalism | a strong feeling of pride in and devotion to one's country |
| secular | nonreligious |
| Committe of Public Safety | formed to deal with threats to France, this 12-member group had almost absolute power during the revolution |
| Maximilien Robspierre | a lawyer and politician, this man quickly rose to lead the Committe of Public Safety, quoted as saying, "Liberty cannot be secured unless criminals lose their heads" |
| Olympe de Gouges | a female journalist who demanded equal rights for women |
| La Marseillaise | This song became the French National Anthem has lines such as "Liberty, beloved liberty, Fight with your Defenders." |
| Jaques Louis David | A leading artist of the age, he captured events such as the Tennis Court Oath and Napoleon's Coronation all in the grandeur of Rome |
| Reign of Terror | A period in which approx. 40,000 people may have died, mostly through the guillotine - Robespierre was the architect |
| acien regime | An old order, under which everyone in France was placed belonged to one of three classes |
| Jacques Necker | King Louis XVI famous economic advisor, often dismissed, he might have delayed the Revolution had his advice been heeded |
| cahiers | notebooks in which grievances are listed |
| Tennis Court Oath | A national assembly formed by those of the third estate who took an oath on a nearby court of the same name |
| National Assembly | Delegates of the Third Estate declared themselves this and began writing a constitution |
| Bastille | The famous prison whose storming is often marked as the beginning of the French Revolution |
| Consulate | a three-man governing board which Napoleon ultimately became the head of |
| Napoleonic Code | law which embodied Elightenment principles such as equality of citizens, religious toleration, and merit based advancement |
| plebiscite | ballot in which voters say yes or no |
| annex | adding or claiming land outright |
| blockade | involves shutting off ports to keep supplies from moving in or out |
| Clemens von Metternich | Austria's foreign minister, a prince, who helped orchestrate Austria's role in Europe via the Congress of Vienna |
| abdicate | to step down from power |
| legitimacy | restoring hereditary monarchies which had been unseated |
| Congress of Vienna | A group of European leaders who gathered after France's defeat to re-establish royal dominance and redraw Europe's boundaries |
| sans-culottes | a term used to describe working class, means without fancy knee breaches worn by upper-class men - regular men wore trousers |
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