The French Revolution
Essential Questions
• What changes in political and economic conditions in the
1700s led to the crisis of the late 1700s and the outbreak
of the French Revolution?
• How important in causing the French Revolution were
the new Enlightenment ideas about natural rights,
democracy, limited government, religious tolerance, and
the use of reason in solving social and
political problems?
• What, if anything, could king Louis XVI have done
differently to keep the rising anger and frustration in
France from triggering a full-scale revolution?
Essential Questions (continued)
• What role did the poor people of Paris and peasants in the
countryside play in shaping the Revolution and the way
it unfolded?
• Why did the Revolution go through the violent
phase known as the Reign of Terror? Was that
phase inevitable?
• In what ways did the Revolution fail, in what ways was it
thwarted or reversed, and in what ways were its basic
ideas and ideals realized?
Absolutism
• Absolute monarchs
didn’t share power with
a counsel or parliament
• “Divine Right of Kings”
King James I of England
The Seigneurial System
• Feudal method of
land ownership
and organization
• Peasant labor
Receiving a seigneurial grant
Louis XIV
• Ruled from 1643–1715
• Reduced the power of
the nobility
• Fought four wars
• Greatly increased
France’s national debt
The Seven Years’ War
Louis XV
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•
Louis XV
War fought in Europe, India, North America
France ends up losing some of its colonial possessions
Increases French national debt
French and
English
troops fight
at the battle
of Fort St.
Philip on
the island
of Minorca
The Three Estates
• First Estate: clergy
• Second Estate: nobility
• Third Estate: the rest
of society
• The Estates General
Cartoon depicting the three Estates
The Third Estate
• Taxation
• Crop failures