Period 5: The American and French Revolutions

Question 1

What was the French and Indian War?

Answer 1

• Britain began colonizing the east coast of North America during the 1600s
• France and Britain had been rivals since the Hundred Years’ War and carried this rivalry to America
• British colonists in America felt threatened by France’s colonial settlements in the 1750s
• the French enlisted the Algonquin and Iroquois tribes to fight with them against the English colonists
• in 1763 England beat the French in the French and Indian War
• known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War

Question 2

What were the impacts of the French and Indian War?

Answer 2

• pushed French territory to the north
• English territories expanded westward into the Ohio River Valley
• colonists were happy but the British were upset about the costs and felt that the American colonists did not share the burden which the colonists resented

Question 3

Who was George Grenville and Charles Townshend?

Answer 3

• passed the Revenue Act in 1764
• passed the Stamp Act in 1765
• passed the Tea Act in 1773
• intended to raise funds for the British government
• generated unrest because American colonists thought they were unfair and that the colonists weren’t represented in England’s Parliament when these laws were passed (no taxation without representation)

Question 4

How did the American Revolutionary War begin?

Answer 4

• British troops battled with rebellious colonists in Lexington and Concord in 1775 leading to the deaths of 400 Britains and Americans

Question 5

Who was Thomas Paine?

Answer 5

• student of the Enlightenment
• urged colonists to support the American independence movement
• wrote the pamphlet Common Sense where he said the monarchy was an encroachment on Americans’ natural rights and he appealed to the colonists to form a better government

Question 6

How did France impact the American Revolution?

Answer 6

• the Americans kept enduring defeats by 1776 as the war moved to the middle colonies and the South
• the French committed ships, soldiers, weapons, and money to the cause in 1777

Question 7

How did the American Revolutionary War end?

Answer 7

• French and American troops and ships cornered the core of the British army in 1781, which was under the command of General George Cornwallis
• General George Cornwallis surrendered, ending the war

Question 8

What were the estates (social classes) of French society?

Answer 8

• the First Estate comprised the clergy
• the Second Estate was made up of the noble families
• the Third Estate comprised everyone else (peasant farmers, bourgeoisie aka middle class)

Question 9

What did Louis XVI do in attempt to rectify the financial situation in France?

Answer 9

• called a meeting of the Estates-General in 1789
• the Second Estate nobles wanted to gain favors from the king in the form of political power and greater freedoms in the form of a new constitution
• the Third Estate representatives wanted more freedom like that of the former British colonists in America and suggested that the Estates-General meet as a unified body but the nobility wanted the estates to meet separately so the estates met separately

Question 10

What was the National Assembly?

Answer 10

• the Third Estate was frustrated at the possibility of being shut out of the new constitution by the other two estates and thus declared themselves the National Assembly in 1789
• the king got nervous and forced the other two estates to join them in an effort to write a new constitution but it was too late and the peasants were restless

Question 11

What did the peasants do because they were concerned the king wasn’t going to follow through on the major reforms they wanted?

Answer 11

The peasants stormed the Bastille, a huge prison in Paris, in 1789.

Question 12

What was the Declaration of the Rights of Man?

Answer 12

• adopted by the National Assembly
• a document recognizing natural rights and based on the ideas of the Enlightenment, the American Declaration of Independence, and the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• copied and distributed across Europe, furthering the ideas of freedom, equality, and rule of law

Question 13

What did the National Assembly do during the French Revolution?

Answer 13

• abolished the feudal system
• altered the monopoly of the Catholic Church by declaring freedom of worship
• the king and his family were taken to Paris so they wouldn’t interfere with the work of the National Assembly
• established the nation-state as the source of all sovereignty or political authority
• ratified a new constitution in 1791

Question 14

What were the effects of the National Assembly’s constitution?

Answer 14

• the king held on to the executive power (constitutional monarchy rather than constitutional democracy) causing those who wanted to abolish the monarchy to feel cheated and those who wanted to retain the feudal structure to feel betrayed

Question 15

Who was Marie Antoinette?

Answer 15

• the wife of Louis XVI

- also the sister of the Emperor of Austria

Question 16

How did the Austrians and Prussians help out Marie Antoinette?

Answer 16

The Austrians and the Prussians invaded France to restore the monarchy but the French revolutionaries were able to hold them back.

Question 17

What was the second new constitution of the National Assembly?

Answer 17

• the Convention became the new ruling body
• the monarchy was abolished
• France was proclaimed a republic

Question 18

Who were the Jacobins?

Answer 18

• radicals who led the imprisonment of the royal family by the Convention
• the Convention beheaded the king for treason in 1793

Question 19

What was the Committee of Public Safety?

Answer 19

• the Convention worried that foreign threats and internal chaos would lead to its demise so it threw out the constitution and created the Committee of Public Safety
• the Committee of Public Safety was an all-powerful enforcer of the revolution and murderer of anyone suspected of anti-revolutionary tendencies

Question 20

Who was Maximilien Robespierre?

Answer 20

• led the Committee of Public Safety along with the Jacobins

Question 21

What were effects of the Committee of Public Safety?

Answer 21

• responsible for the beheading of a lot of French citizens
• successful at controlling the anarchy and at building a strong national military to defend France against invading countries
• however after two years the French had enough of Robespierre and put his head on the guillotine

Question 22

What was the Directory?

Answer 22

France reorganized itself after killing Robespierre, wrote a new constitution in 1795, and established a new five-man government called the Directory.

Question 23

Who was Napoleon Bonaparte?

Answer 23

• a star military leader who was a general by age 24
• used his reputation and popularity to overthrow the Directory in 1799
• declared himself the First Consul under the new constitution (the fourth one lol)

Question 24

What did Napoleon do internally as the First Consul?

Answer 24

• initiated many reforms in agriculture, infrastructure, and public education
• normalized relations with the church and restored a degree of tolerance and stability
• established the Napoleonic Codes in 1804

Question 25

What were the Napoleonic Codes?

Answer 25

• recognized the equality of French citizens (men)
• institutionalized some of the Enlightenment ideas that had served as the original inspiration for many of the revolutionaries
• paternalistic (based in part on ancient Roman law) and limited the rights of women and children
• step forward in the recognition of some basic rights and in the establishment of rules of law
• modified but still in effect today

Question 26

What did Napoleon do externally as the First Consul?

Answer 26

• conquered Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, and the kingdoms within Italy
• dissolved the Holy Roman Empire and reorganized it into a confederacy of German states
• crowned himself emperor of this new empire (Charlemagne 2.0) but France lacked the resources to control a large empire
• nationalistic uprisings (unrest in Italy and fierce guerilla warfare in Spain and Portugal) undermined Napoleon’s power

Question 27

How did Napoleon’s power decline?

Answer 27

• Napoleon attacked Russia in 1812 but was baited into going all the way to Moscow which the Russians set aflame, preventing Napoleon from adequately housing his troops there
• the troops had to trudge back to France and were attacked along the way
• the army was decimated and Napoleon was forced into exile

Question 28

What happened after Napoleon was overthrown?

Answer 28

• the leaders of the countries that had overthrown Napoleon met in Vienna to decide how to restore order in Europe
• Prince von Metternich of Austria, Alexander I of Russia, and the Duke of Wellington of Britain
• there were disagreements so Napoleon returned and tried to gain power again but the others defeated him at Waterloo in 1813 and he was sent to permanent exile on the island of St. Helena and died

Question 29

What was the Congress of Vienna?

Answer 29

• the allies that overthrew Napoleon came to an agreement in the Congress of Vienna over what to do with France and its inflated territories
• decreed that a balance of power should be maintained in 1815 in order to avoid the rise of another Napoleon
• France’s borders were cut back to their pre-Napoleonic dimensions but it wasn’t punished militarily or economically
• rearranged some of the European boundaries and created new kingdoms in Poland and the Netherlands
• reaffirmed absolute rule, reseating the monarchs of France, Spain, Holland, and the Italian states

Question 30

What were flaws of the Congress of Vienna?

Answer 30

• ignored many of the ideals put forth by French revolutionaries and the rights established under France’s short-lived republic
• basically tried to erase the whole French Revolution and Napoleon from the European consciousness and restore the royal order