French Revolution Trivia
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115 free French Revolution trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
French Revolution trivia for history buffs, students cramming for an exam, and anyone who has ever wondered what actually happened between the storming of the Bastille and Napoleon's coup. The quiz opens in 1789 with the Estates-General, the Tennis Court Oath and the seven prisoners the Bastille was really holding, then follows the National Assembly through the August Decrees, the women's march on Versailles and the confiscation of church land. From there it tracks the fall of the monarchy: the flight to Varennes, the Champ de Mars massacre, the attack on the Tuileries and the trial and execution of Louis Capet. The middle rounds cover the Reign of Terror in detail: the Law of Suspects, the drownings at Nantes, the Cult of the Supreme Being, and the day Robespierre's voice failed him. Later questions take in the Directory, the Conspiracy of the Equals, the coup of 18 Brumaire, plus the symbols the Revolution left behind: the tricolour cockade, the Phrygian cap, La Marseillaise, the republican calendar and the guillotine, whose last use in France came as late as 1977. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Napoleon Bonaparte and France quizzes.
30 of 115 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01When the Estates-General met in 1789, the commoners' deputies demanded that votes be counted how?
By head
By head: with their numbers doubled to match the clergy and nobles combined, the commoners could win only if deputies voted one by one; voting by estate, as at the last meeting in 1614, left them outvoted two to one.
Q 02Whom did Louis XVI dismiss as chief minister on 11 July 1789, helping trigger the Bastille unrest?
Necker
Necker, the minister Parisians trusted, was sacked on 11 July 1789 and told to leave France at once; the next day crowds paraded his bust through the streets, and two days after that the Bastille fell.
Q 03Whose 1786 plan for a land tax on every landowner did the Assembly of Notables reject?
Calonne
Calonne put his plan to Louis XVI in August 1786: one land tax with no exemptions for nobles or clergy. The Assembly of Notables refused it in 1787, insisting only an Estates-General could approve such a change.
Q 04Abbé Sieyès's influential 1789 pamphlet posed which question in its title?
What Is the Third Estate?
'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.
Q 05On 17 June 1789 the deputies of the commons declared themselves to be what body?
the National Assembly
The National Assembly was the name the commons took on 17 June 1789; six days later the king declared its decisions void, the deputies refused to leave their hall, and within the week he told the other two orders to join them.
Q 06Locked out of their hall on 20 June 1789, the deputies swore their famous oath in what kind of venue?
an indoor tennis court
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.
Q 07Rumoured to be full of prisoners, how many was the Bastille actually holding on 14 July 1789?
7
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.
Q 08Who was the governor of the Bastille, killed and paraded on a pike after surrendering the fortress?
Bernard-René de Launay
Bernard-René de Launay threatened to blow up the fortress's gunpowder unless his garrison could leave unharmed, then backed down and opened the gates; the crowd killed him outside the Hôtel de Ville.
Q 09Who was chosen to command the new Paris National Guard after the fall of the Bastille?
Marquis de Lafayette
The Marquis de Lafayette, already a hero of the American war, took command the day after the fortress fell; three years later he was branded a traitor, fled France and spent years in foreign prisons.
Q 10What is the wave of rural panic and agrarian revolt across France in summer 1789 called?
the Great Fear
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.
Q 11The August Decrees of 1789 are best remembered for abolishing what?
feudalism
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.
Q 12The women who marched on Versailles on 5 October 1789 were primarily protesting what?
high food prices
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.
Q 13What new title did the deputies vote to give Louis XVI in autumn 1789?
King of the French
Q 21On which country did France declare war in April 1792, beginning the French Revolutionary Wars?
Austria
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.
Q 22Which royal residence did National Guardsmen and fédérés storm on 10 August 1792, effectively ending the monarchy?
the Tuileries
The Tuileries Palace was stormed on 10 August 1792; hundreds of the Swiss Guards defending it were killed, and the Legislative Assembly suspended the king the same day.
Q 23Which battle of 20 September 1792 was the first major victory for the army of revolutionary France?
Valmy
'King of the French' replaced 'King of France and Navarre' in autumn 1789: Louis XVI was now to reign by the constitutional law of the state as well as by the grace of God, king of a people rather than of a territory.
Q 14What was the name of the paper currency backed by confiscated church property?
assignats
Assignats were issued from December 1789 against the value of confiscated church lands; printed in ever greater quantities to pay the state's bills, they were worth under a tenth of their face value by 1795.
Q 15Which pope condemned the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1791?
Pius VI
Pius VI broke months of silence in spring 1791 to condemn the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and the French church split into priests who had sworn the state's oath and 'refractory' ones who refused.
Q 16The royal family's disguised flight from Paris in June 1791 ended in which town?
Varennes
Varennes is where the royal coach was stopped late on 21 June 1791: a postmaster who had spotted the king at an earlier halt rode ahead to raise the alarm, short of the loyal troops waiting at Montmédy.
Q 17The crowd fired upon at the Champ de Mars on 17 July 1791 had gathered to sign a petition demanding what?
the king's deposition
The king's deposition was the demand, weeks after his failed escape; the National Guard fired on the crowd, killing between a dozen and 50 people, wrecking its commander's standing and driving Marat into hiding.
Q 18The 1791 Declaration of Pillnitz was issued by Emperor Leopold II and which country's king?
Prussia
Prussia's Frederick William II signed the declaration with Leopold II on 27 August 1791; worded so that neither ruler would have to act alone, it was still read in France as a threat and handed the war party its pretext.
Q 19In the Legislative Assembly of 1791, the Feuillants were best described as what?
constitutional monarchists
The Feuillants were constitutional monarchists who walked out of the Jacobin Club in July 1791 and took their name from the former Feuillant convent where they met; they wanted the Revolution to stop at the new constitution.
Q 20The Le Chapelier Law of June 1791 suppressed what?
guilds and workers' organisations
The Le Chapelier Law of 14 June 1791 banned guilds and workers' organisations and made strikes illegal; the ban outlived the Revolution by generations, and French workers did not regain the right to strike until 1864.
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.
Q 24Robespierre, Danton and Marat headed which radical faction in the National Convention?
the Montagnards
The Montagnards, 'the Mountain', were named for the high benches where they sat together in the Convention hall; the uncommitted deputies on the lower seats became known as the Plain.
Q 25At his trial before the Convention, the deposed Louis XVI was referred to as Citizen Louis what?
Capet
Capet reached back to Hugh Capet, the medieval founder of the royal line: giving the dethroned king a plain surname put him on trial as an ordinary citizen, with no title and no royal style.
Q 26How many deputies voted unconditionally for the death of Louis XVI on 17 January 1793?
361
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.
Q 27Louis XVI was guillotined in the Paris square later renamed Place de la what?
Concorde
Place de la Concorde was the Place de la Révolution when Louis XVI died there on 21 January 1793; it was given its present name in 1795, a gesture of reconciliation meant to draw a line under the bloodshed.
Q 28Refusing to be bound with rope on the scaffold, Louis XVI agreed to be tied with what instead?
his own handkerchief
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.
Q 29In February 1793 the Convention declared war on Britain and which other state?
the Dutch Republic
The Dutch Republic and Britain were both named when the Convention declared war on 1 February 1793, eleven days after Louis XVI's execution had turned Europe's courts against France; war with Spain followed within weeks.
Q 30Which rural, devoutly Catholic region of France rose in revolt in March 1793?
the Vendée
The Vendée, on the Atlantic coast, rose in March 1793 when conscription came on top of the church reforms; the war dragged on until 1796 and cost well over 100,000 lives.