1. EH Review for Ch 9
1. Public Debt – precipitated the revolution; debt owed to the bourgeoisie of the Old Regime and the
expenses of the gov’t
2. Cahiers – a list of grievances allowed to brought to the assembly by each estate
3. Voting by Estates – voting took place with all 3 estates voting at the same time; 1:1:2 ratio was set up
in favor of the Third Estate which represented the largest group; deadlock in the Estates General
4. Great Fear – paranoia of the peasants that “the brigands were coming”; armed to defend their houses
and crops they worked each other up and attacked the manor houses, burning some down but mostly
destroying records of fees and dues
5. Tennis Court oath
a. the Third Estate claimed itself to be the “National Assembly”
b. Louis XVI under pressure from nobles, closed the meeting hall
c. The members found an indoor tennis court and took their oath, affirming that wherever they
gathered from then on they would remain the National Assembly and that they would not
disband until there was a constitution
6. August 4th, Night – a night meeting of the Assembly at Versailles where those nobles who showed up
(knowing that few would) surrendered their hunting rights, banalités, rights in manorial courts, and
feudal seigneurial privileges in general
7. Rights of man and citizen – a declaration issued on August 26, 1789
a. To affirm the principles if the new state
i. Rule of law
ii. Equal individual citizenship
iii. Collective sovereignty of the people
b. Man’s natural right held to be liberty, property, security, resistance of oppression
c. Freedom of thought and religion; no one might be arrested or punished except by law; all
persons eligible for the public office for which they met the requirements
d. Liberty – freedom to do anything not injurious to another man, determined only by law
e. Law as an expression of general will
f. Property might only be confiscated under law and with fair compensation
8. Bastille – a stronghold (prison, fortress) for political prisoners
a. Parisians in fear of gathering troops stormed the fortress to arm themselves
b. Many political officials were killed in the act
c. Had the effect of showing the power of the Third Estate; the king assented to a citizen’s
committee, and sent away the troops he had summoned
9. Playing the mob card – using the power of the masses to scare the powers in control in to listening or
taking a certain action
10. Jacobin Club – Society of Friends of the Constitution
a. Middle class group who used the club as a caucus to discuss plans and policies
b. Revolutionaries centered in Paris
11. Kings, vetoes and constitutions – king was given only a suspensive veto to postpone legislation desired
by the Assembly; was forced to accept status as a constitutional monarch
12. Burke’s reaction – appalled at the thoroughness with which the French seemed determined to eradicate
their national institutions; he did not see why they needed to destroy these functioning bodies
13. Adam Smith and the Revolution – his economic philosophy of free trade was representative of the
freedom from control that the leaders of the revolution wanted; the Assembly abolished the guilds
14. Active and Passive citizens
a. Both had the same civil rights but only active had the right to vote
i. Had the right to choose one elector for every 100 active citizens
b. Males over the age of 25 who could pay a small tax were “active”
15. assignats – bonds purchased to be traded in for parcels of confiscated church lands; money to repay
debt owed to the Old Regime
16. Quarrel with the church

2. a.Church viewed as a public authority and as such subordinate to sovereign power
b.French bishops jealous of papal power wish to produce a Civil Constitution on their own
authority
c. Assembly refuses, going to the Vatican to try to coerce the bishops into acquiescing
17. Mary Wollstonecraft – English writer; Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
a. like Olympe de Gouges, asserted women’s rights to:
i. divorce under certain conditions
ii. to the control of property in marriage
iii. to have equal access to education, careers, and public employment