French Revolution
This Parisian prison and armory was famously stormed on July 14, 1789, marking a key turning point.
What is the Bastille?
This was the name of the French colony before it gained independence in 1804.
What is Saint-Domingue?
This Mediterranean island, where Napoleon was born in 1769, was a French territory with strong Italian cultural ties.
What is Corsica?
This brother of the executed Louis XVI was installed as king after 1815 and attempted to govern with a constitutional charter.
Who is Louis XVIII?
This nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte was elected President of the Second Republic in 1848.
Who is Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte?
The three social classes of pre-revolutionary France, consisting of the clergy, the nobility, and everyone else, were known collectively by this name.
What are the Three Estates?
This cash crop, cultivated on vast and brutal plantations, was the source of enormous wealth for France and the reason for the huge enslaved population.
What is sugar (or sugarcane)?
This was the final, highest title Napoleon bestowed upon himself in 1804.
What is Emperor?
This was the term used to describe the wave of liberal and nationalist revolutions that erupted across Europe, including in France, beginning in 1848.
What is the People's Spring (or Revolutions of 1848)?
This short-lived, revolutionary socialist government was violently established by Parisian workers and citizens in 1871 following the defeat to Prussia, lasting only two months before its brutal suppression.
What is the Paris Commune (or Commune de Paris)?
This document, adopted in August 1789, proclaimed that "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights."
What is the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen?
The self-educated former enslaved man and general who became the most famous leader of the revolution.
Who is Toussaint Louverture?
This new, unified legal system, introduced in 1804, remains the foundation of civil law for many countries today.
What is the Napoleonic Code (or Code Civil)?
This 1830 revolt overthrew the reactionary King Charles X after he attempted to restrict voting and dissolve the legislature.
What is the July Revolution?
This was the term for the tremendous expansion of factories, railways, and coal production that France experienced under Napoleon III.
What is Industrialization?
This radical group, led by Maximilien Robespierre, controlled the government during the most extreme phase of the Revolution, the Reign of Terror.
Who are the Jacobins?
Toussaint Louverture’s lieutenant who defeated the French forces and declared the new nation's independence on January 1, 1804.
Who is Jean-Jacques Dessalines?
After his initial forced abdication in 1814, Napoleon was exiled to this small island off the coast of Italy, only to escape less than a year later.
What is Elba?
Louis XVIII's hardline younger brother, who lost his throne in 1830 due to his extreme Ultra-royalist policies.
Who is Charles X?
This crucial 1870-1871 conflict resulted in the capture of Napoleon III and the immediate end of the Second Empire.
What is the Franco-Prussian War?
This device, designed as a more humane method of execution, became the symbol of the Reign of Terror.
What is the guillotine?
In 1825, France formally recognized Haiti only after the nation agreed to pay this enormous indemnity, a crushing debt that hampered its economic development for over a century.
What is 150 million francs?
This economic policy was designed to prevent the continent of Europe from trading with Great Britain, which ultimately helped lead to the disastrous invasion of Russia.
What is the Continental Blockade?
This short but bloody republican uprising in 1832, featuring the Battle of the Rue Saint-Denis, is famously depicted in the novel Les Misérables.
What is the June Rebellion? (or June Days of 1832)
The Prefect of the Seine appointed by Napoleon III who oversaw the destruction of medieval streets and the creation of wide avenues, parks, and new infrastructure in Paris.
Who is Baron Haussmann?