Answers: Very Short Answer Type Questions

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French Society During the Late 18th Century

1. King Louis XVI.
2. Louis XVI came to power in France in 1774. He belonged to the Bourbon dynasty.
3. Bastille Prison was broken by revolutionaries on the morning of 14th July, 1789. The revolutionaries stormed the Bastille prison with a hope to find hoarded ammunition for the revolution.
4. The clergy and the nobility were the members of the first and second estate respectively. They enjoyed certain privileges by birth and were also exempted from paying taxes to the state from the first and second estates respectively.
5. The French army helped thirteen colonies of America in their war of independence against Great Britain. It added more than one billion livres that had risen to more than two billion livres with interest.
6. To meet its expenses like the cost of maintaining an army, the court, running government offices or universities, the French government was forced to increase taxes.
7. It refers to an extreme situation where the basic needs of livelihood were endangered.
8. The social groups who earned money through an expanding overseas trade and from the manufacture of goods such as woollen and silk textiles that were either exported or bought by the wealthy members of society.

The Outbreak of the Revolution

1. The First and the Second Estates sent 300 representatives each, who were seated in rows facing each other on two sides, while the 600 members of the Third Estate had to stand at the back.
2. On July, 1789 Louis XVI finally accepted the National Assembly and on 4th Aug 1789, the assembly passed a decree abolishing the feudal system of obligations and taxes.
3. The Third Estate demanded that voting should be conducted by the assembly as whole, in which each member would have one vote. But the king rejected this proposal. Hence, members of the Third Estate boycotted the assembly in protest.
4. Only men above 25 years of age who paid taxes equal to at least 3 days of a labourers’ wage were given the status of active citizen and the right to vote.
   The representative of the Third Estate viewed themselves as spokesmen for the entire French Nation. They declared themselves as National Assembly.
5. Mirabeau was a representative of Third Estate. He delivered speeches to the crowds assembled at Versailles. He was born in noble family but was convinced of the need to do away with a society of feudal privilege.
6. The draft of the Constitution was completed in 1791 in order to limit the powers of the ruler.
7. First and Second Estate.

France Abolishes Monarchy and Becomes a Republic

1. Those who did not agree with his polices. These included ex-nobles, clergy, other political parties members and also some members from his political party.
2. In July, 1794, Robespierre was convicted by a court, arrested and on the next day sent to the guillotine and in the same manner he beheaded guilty people.
3. Treason means betrayal of one’s country or government. On Jan. 1793, Louis XVI was beheaded to death on the charge of treason.
4. Those Jacobins were called Sans-Culottes who were without knee breeches and who wore red caps to symbolise liberty.
5. The new constitution of rich middle-class government denied vote to non-propertied section of society.
6. The newly elected assembly was called convention. This assembly abolished the monarchy and declared France a republic.
7. The period of 1793 to 1794 was referred to the Reign of Terror because Robespierre followed policy of severe control and punishment.
8. Napoleon, a military dictator, came to power due to the political instability of the Directory.

Did Women have a revolution?

1. Most of the women did not have access to education or job-training. Only daughters of rich members of the Third Estate could study.
2. For this, women began their political clubs and newspapers.
3. The Society of Revolutionary and Republican Women of France.
4. In 1946, women in France got the right to vote.
5. Olympe de Gouges wrote it in 1791.

The abolition of slavery

1. The triangular slave trade was held between Europe, Africa, and America.
2. The slave trade was done from the ports of Bordeaux and Nantes.
3. For plantation owners, freedom included the right to enslave African Negroes in pursuit of their economic interest.
4. Because they feared the opposition of businessmen whose income depended on slave trade.
5. Slavery was finally abolished in 1848 in France.

Revolution in everyday life?

1. Napoleon Bonaparte
2. Napoleon was seen by the people as a liberator who might have bought freedom for them but later the Napoleon army was seen as invading forces.
3. They made the sovereign nation state by redefining the idea of freedom from bondage into a movement.
4. The ideas of liberty and democratic rights.
5. Raja Rammohan Roy and Tipu Sultan.