Video:
Audio:
Recommended Reading:
- Powerpoint presentation
- Text of documents discussed in the lecture:
- “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen”
- Civil Constitution of the Clergy
- Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
- Otto Scott’s Robespierre: The Voice of Virtue, now sadly out of print, is one of the best explorations of how a party hack can ruin a country when he acquires power.
- Thomas Carlyle produced the classic English narrative of the French Revolution. For a modern Establishment view, see Robert Doyle’s treatment.
French Revolution – Quiz
- Identify at least one way in which Enlightenment ideas spread through France in the years leading up to the French Revolution.
- Explain why Louis XVI felt compelled to summon the Estates-General in 1789.
- The Paris mob stormed a royal fortress called the ______________ on July 14, 1789.
- Explain at least two important steps taken by the revolutionaries in the “moderate” phase of the French Revolution.
- The radical revolutionaries shocked Europe by executing _______________ in January 1793.
- __________________ was the leader of the Jacobin faction during the Reign of Terror.
- Identify two anti-Christian measures implemented by Jacobins during the Reign of Terror.
- The event that ended the Terror in 1794 is called the ______________________.
- The French government from 1794 to 1799 was called the ______________.
- salons, journalism, secret societies
- French government was unable to service its debts
- Bastille
- abolition of aristocratic privilege; nationalization of the Roman Catholic church; imposition of a constitution on the king
- Louis XVI
- Maximilien Robespierre
- (a) replacing Christianity with the “Cult of the Supreme Being” as the official religion, and (b) changing the calendar to remove all references to Christian tradition
- Thermidorean Reaction
- Directory