68 Fun Facts About French Revolution

When the Estates-General convened in May 1789, it was the body's first meeting since which year?

1614 was the last time the Estates-General had met; after a 175-year gap nobody alive had seen the three estates sit, so even the voting rules had to be settled afresh.

Whom did Louis XVI dismiss as chief minister on 11 July 1789, helping trigger the Bastille unrest?

Necker, the popular Swiss banker, was dismissed on 11 July 1789 under pressure from the court party around the queen and the Comte d'Artois; Paris read his sacking as the prelude to a crackdown.

Whose 1786 reforms, including a universal land tax, did the Assembly of Notables reject?

Calonne's 1786 plan, with a land tax payable by all orders, was rejected by the Assembly of Notables in 1787; the notables insisted only an Estates-General could approve new taxes.

Abbé Sieyès's influential 1789 pamphlet posed which question in its title?

'What Is the Third Estate?' was Sieyès's January 1789 pamphlet; his answer was 'everything', and he argued the commons alone could speak for the nation.

On 17 June 1789 the deputies of the commons declared themselves to be what body?

The National Assembly was the name the commons adopted on 17 June 1789; the deputies also declared existing taxes illegal, a direct challenge to royal authority.

Locked out of their hall on 20 June 1789, the deputies swore their famous oath in what kind of venue?

An indoor tennis court, the Jeu de Paume at Versailles, hosted the oath of 20 June 1789; the deputies vowed not to disperse until France had a constitution.

Rumoured to be full of prisoners, how many was the Bastille actually holding on 14 July 1789?

Just 7 prisoners were inside: four forgers, two men held as insane and one nobleman locked up at his family's request; the fortress mattered as a symbol and an arsenal, not a prison.

Who was the governor of the Bastille, killed and paraded on a pike after surrendering the fortress?

Bernard-René de Launay surrendered the Bastille on 14 July 1789, was dragged towards the Hôtel de Ville and killed by the crowd, who paraded his head on a pike.

Who was chosen to command the new Paris National Guard after the fall of the Bastille?

The Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the American war, was elected commander of the Paris National Guard by the city's electors on 15 July 1789.

What is the wave of rural panic and agrarian revolt across France in summer 1789 called?

The Great Fear swept the countryside in late July 1789: peasants armed against imagined brigands and burned châteaux and manorial records, pushing the Assembly into its sweeping night of 4 August.

The August Decrees of 1789 are best remembered for abolishing what?

Feudalism was abolished on the night of 4 August 1789: seigneurial dues, the church tithe and venal offices were swept away, though peasants were at first told to buy out many of the dues.

The women who marched on Versailles on 5 October 1789 were primarily protesting what?

High food prices, above all the cost and scarcity of bread, drove some 7,000 Parisian women to march on Versailles; they returned with the royal family in tow on 6 October.

What title did Louis XVI receive by decree in October 1789?

'King of the French' replaced 'King of France and Navarre' by a decree of 10 October 1789, signalling that Louis XVI reigned by the will of the people rather than over a territory by divine right.

What was the name of the paper currency backed by confiscated church property?

Assignats were issued from December 1789 against the value of confiscated church lands; printed in ever greater quantities to cover the deficit, they had fallen to a few percent of face value by 1795.

Which pope condemned the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1791?

Pius VI condemned the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in the brief Charitas of 13 April 1791, forbidding clergy to take the oath and deepening the split between juring and refractory priests.

The royal family's disguised flight from Paris in June 1791 ended in which town?

Varennes was where the royal party was recognised and stopped on the night of 21–22 June 1791; they had been heading for General Bouillé's loyal troops at Montmédy, and the arrest destroyed what trust in the monarchy remained.

The crowd fired upon at the Champ de Mars on 17 July 1791 had gathered to sign a petition demanding what?

The National Guard killed between 13 and 50 people, wrecking its commander's reputation and driving radicals like Marat into hiding.

The 1791 Declaration of Pillnitz was issued by Emperor Leopold II and which country's king?

Prussia's Frederick William II signed the Declaration of Pillnitz with Leopold II on 27 August 1791; meant to placate the émigrés, its conditional threat instead rallied France behind the Revolution.

In the Legislative Assembly of 1791, the Feuillants were best described as what?

The Feuillants were constitutional monarchists who thought the Revolution had gone far enough; they held about 264 seats against 136 Jacobins, with some 345 unaffiliated deputies swinging between them.

The Le Chapelier Law of June 1791 suppressed what?

The Le Chapelier Law of 14 June 1791, named for the Breton deputy who proposed it, banned guilds and workers' organisations, outlawing trade associations and strikes in the name of individual liberty.

On which country did France declare war in April 1792, beginning the French Revolutionary Wars?

Austria was the enemy: on 20 April 1792 France declared war on Francis II as King of Hungary and Bohemia; the opening campaign in the Austrian Netherlands went badly, feeding the panic that toppled the monarchy in August.

Which royal residence did National Guardsmen and fédérés storm on 10 August 1792, effectively ending the monarchy?

The Tuileries Palace was stormed on 10 August 1792; most of the Swiss Guards defending it were killed, and the Legislative Assembly suspended the king the same day.

Which battle of 20 September 1792 was the first major victory for the army of revolutionary France?

Valmy, a cannonade on 20 September 1792 that turned back the Duke of Brunswick's invading army, was the revolutionary army's first success; the monarchy was abolished the next day and the invaders retreated.

Robespierre, Danton and Marat headed which radical faction in the National Convention?

About 200 of the 749 deputies were Montagnards and 160 Girondins; the centrist Plaine held the balance.

At his trial before the Convention, the deposed Louis XVI was referred to as Citizen Louis what?

The surname reached back to Hugh Capet, founder of the dynasty in 987, and stripped him of royal style.

How many deputies voted unconditionally for the death of Louis XVI on 17 January 1793?

361 deputies voted for death without conditions, a majority of one; 288 voted for detention or banishment and another 72 for death subject to delaying conditions.

Louis XVI was guillotined in the Paris square later renamed Place de la what?

Place de la Concorde, then Place de la Révolution, held the guillotine on 21 January 1793; it later saw Marie Antoinette, Danton and Robespierre die under the blade.

Refusing to be bound with rope on the scaffold, Louis XVI let his hands be tied with what instead?

His own handkerchief served as the binding after his confessor Edgeworth talked him into accepting the restraint; the executioner was Charles-Henri Sanson, who had served him as royal executioner.

In February 1793 the Convention declared war on Britain and which other state?

The Dutch Republic and Britain were both declared war on by the Convention on 1 February 1793; Spain, Portugal, Naples and Tuscany soon joined to form the First Coalition.

Which traditionally royalist and Catholic region of western France rose in revolt in March 1793?

The Vendée rose in March 1793 when conscription came on top of the church reforms; the insurgency dragged on until 1796 and cost well over 100,000 lives.

Which French general, defeated at Neerwinden in March 1793, promptly defected to the Austrians?

Charles-François Dumouriez, the general who had commanded at the triumphs of the previous autumn, went over to the Austrians on 5 April 1793; the shock helped persuade the Convention to create the Committee of Public Safety.

Who assassinated the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat on 13 July 1793?

Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathiser from Caen, stabbed Marat in his bath on 13 July 1793 and was guillotined four days later.

What was the title of Marat's newspaper?

L'Ami du peuple ('The Friend of the People') was Marat's paper from September 1789, one of over 130 papers that sprang up that year; the royalists' L'Ami du Roi answered it until suppressed.

Which ally of Robespierre read the Convention report that sent Danton before the Revolutionary Tribunal?

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just delivered the report on 31 March (11 Germinal Year II) that sent Danton and his allies before the Revolutionary Tribunal; they were guillotined within the week.

Napoleon Bonaparte first made his name commanding the artillery at the 1793 siege of which port?

Toulon, handed to the British by royalists, fell in December 1793 after Bonaparte's batteries seized the heights commanding the harbour; he was promoted to brigadier general for it.

Which law of 17 September 1793, authorising arrests of 'enemies of freedom', began the Terror?

The Law of Suspects of 17 September 1793 ordered the arrest of anyone whose conduct, contacts or writings marked them as enemies of freedom; around 300,000 people were detained under it.

Roughly how many people were executed for counter-revolutionary activity between September 1793 and July 1794?

Roughly 16,600 people (16,594 by Donald Greer's count) were executed after trial by revolutionary courts; thousands more died in prison or in summary killings, and the western civil war is counted separately.

In which river were thousands of prisoners drowned at Nantes during the winter of 1793–94?

The Loire at Nantes was the site of the mass drownings ('noyades') supervised by the Convention's representative Jean-Baptiste Carrier, who was recalled in February and later guillotined for the atrocities.

Which future Minister of Police directed the mass killings in Lyon during the Terror?

Joseph Fouché, with Collot d'Herbois, oversaw the mass shootings and guillotinings that killed nearly 2,000 people after Lyon's recapture, yet he went on to serve the Directory, the Consulate and Napoleon's Empire as Minister of Police.

Who was executed alongside Georges Danton on 5 April 1794?

Camille Desmoulins, Danton's journalist friend and author of the 'Vieux Cordelier', went to the guillotine with him; the show trial of the popular Danton arguably did Robespierre more damage than anything else he did.

Which deist civic religion did Robespierre promote with a lavish festival on 8 June 1794?

The Cult of the Supreme Being was Robespierre's deist alternative to both Catholicism and the atheist Cult of Reason; he presided over its festival in person, and many deputies mocked the ceremony.

The overthrow of Robespierre in July 1794 takes its name from which month of the republican calendar?

Thermidor, the month of heat, names the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July); the Thermidorian Reaction that followed repealed the Law of 22 Prairial and closed the Jacobin Club.

Under the Constitution of the Year III, executive power was held by how many directors?

Five directors formed the executive; they were chosen by the Council of Ancients from a list supplied by the Council of Five Hundred, with one of the five replaced each year.

With Napoleon and Sieyès, who was the third consul installed by the coup of 18 Brumaire?

Roger Ducos, a director who sided with the plotters, became provisional consul with Bonaparte and Sieyès on 10 November 1799; most historians treat the coup as the end point of the Revolution.

'La Marseillaise' was originally a 'chant de guerre' for the French troops on which front?

The Rhine front: Rouget de Lisle wrote the 'Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin' at Strasbourg in April 1792, and it got its nickname when Marseille volunteers sang it marching into Paris.

What was the profession of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who in 1789 proposed a humane beheading machine?

Guillotin was a physician and deputy for Paris who proposed the machine on 10 October 1789 but never built it; the design, by surgeon Antoine Louis and harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt, drew on the Halifax Gibbet and the Scottish Maiden.

In what year did France carry out its last execution by guillotine?

1977 saw the last guillotining, of the convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi at Marseille on 10 September; France abolished the death penalty in 1981.

Which poet and playwright invented the names of the months in the French republican calendar?

Fabre d'Églantine, author of the song 'Il pleut, il pleut, bergère', named the months after weather and harvests; the calendar's ten-day 'décade' replaced the seven-day week.

The revolutionaries' red liberty cap is also named for which ancient Anatolian region?

The Phrygian cap, named for Phrygia in central Anatolia, was conflated with the Roman pileus that a freed slave received as a symbol of liberty, which is why revolutionaries wore it.

The tricolour cockade added which two colours of Paris to the white of the Ancien Régime?

The Paris militia adopted the blue and red on 13 July 1789, and revolutionaries pinned it over the old white cockade.

What nickname did critics give Marie Antoinette, blaming her spending for the state's financial crisis?

'Madame Déficit' was the pamphleteers' name for the queen after the 1785 Diamond Necklace affair, when her spending on the Petit Trianon and the court became a byword for the state's bankruptcy.

Marie Antoinette was born in 1755 in which city?

Vienna's Hofburg Palace was her birthplace on 2 November 1755; she was the fifteenth child of Empress Maria Theresa and, as a small girl, met the child prodigy Mozart at court.

After Louis XVI's execution, Marie Antoinette was moved from the Temple to which prison?

The Conciergerie, the medieval prison on the Île de la Cité, held her from 2 August 1793 until her trial and execution in October; the building later became a museum.

In what year did the National Convention abolish slavery in the French colonies?

The decree of 4 February 1794 gave every colonial resident full citizenship regardless of colour; Napoleon reinstated slavery in 1802.

Olympe de Gouges, executed in November 1793, is best remembered for writing what?

Her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen demanded equality under the law, especially in divorce and inheritance.

Which British statesman attacked the Revolution in 'Reflections on the Revolution in France' (1790)?

Edmund Burke, the Whig MP, published 'Reflections' in November 1790; the pamphlet war it sparked drew replies from Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine's 'Rights of Man'.

After the republican coup of September 1797, dozens of leading royalists were deported to which colony?

French Guiana received the deportees: the elections were annulled and prominent royalists, including General Pichegru and the director Barthélemy, were shipped to the colony, whose fevers earned it the name 'dry guillotine'.

France invaded Switzerland in 1798 and reorganised it as which short-lived puppet state?

The Helvetic Republic, proclaimed in April 1798, lasted until Napoleon's Act of Mediation in 1803; it was deeply resented for trampling on cantonal traditions, though some of its reforms survived.

Which currency, created by law in 1803, gave France stable money until the First World War?

The franc germinal, named for the republican month in which the law of April 1803 was passed, was defined as 5 grams of silver at 900 fineness with gold at a fixed ratio; its value held until 1914.

How many attackers died storming the Bastille on 14 July 1789?

83 attackers were killed in the fighting and another 15 died later of wounds, against a single defender killed before the surrender; the garrison's losses came in the lynchings afterwards.

Who headed the new Paris administration known as the Commune after the fall of the Bastille?

Jean-Sylvain Bailly, the astronomer who had presided over the deputies in June, was acclaimed mayor of Paris on 15 July 1789; two days later he greeted Louis XVI at the Hôtel de Ville, where the king accepted the cockade.

Which former finance minister was lynched by a Paris mob on 22 July 1789?

Joseph Foullon, who had briefly replaced the dismissed minister in July 1789, was hanged from a lamppost and beheaded, his son-in-law Bertier de Sauvigny dying the same day; the mayor and the National Guard commander could not stop it.

The September Massacres of 1792 were a response to Prussia's capture of Longwy and which fortress?

Verdun's surrender on 2 September 1792 opened the road to Paris; over the next days between 1,100 and 1,400 prisoners in the city's jails were killed, most of them common criminals rather than political suspects.

On what date in 1793 was the Committee of Public Safety created?

6 April 1793 was the date the Convention created the Committee of Public Safety, with Danton among its first nine members; it was recognised as the supreme organ of Revolutionary Government that October.

Which act did the 1793 Declaration of Rights call 'the most sacred of rights'?

Insurrection was proclaimed 'the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties' by Article 35 of the Declaration prefixed to the Constitution of 1793, which was adopted on 24 June but never applied.

After the Law of 22 Prairial, Paris executions averaged roughly how many per day?

Roughly 26 a day on average: the law of 22 Prairial (10 June) denied 'enemies of the people' any defence, and in the seven weeks before Robespierre's fall more people were guillotined in Paris than in the previous fourteen months.

The 1791 slave uprising that grew into the Haitian Revolution began in which French colony?

Saint-Domingue's slaves rose in the northern plain in August 1791; the revolt, later led by Toussaint Louverture, ended with the independent state of Haiti on 1 January 1804.

What were the knitting women who became hardcore regulars at the guillotine called?

Tricoteuses ('knitters') were the working-class women who knitted beside the scaffold and in the public galleries of the Convention and the Tribunal; the name became a byword for bloodthirsty spectators.