Vocab

 Absolute monarch: kings or queens who held all of the power within their states’ boundaries.  Divine right: idea that God created the monarchy and that the monarch acted as God’s representative on earth.

 Huguenots: French protestants.  Intendents: Government agents used by Louis XIV who collected taxes and administered justice.  Edict of Nantes: Declaration made by Henry of Navarre of France allowing Huguenots freedom to worship in France.

 Enlightenment: intellectual movement that stressed reason and thought and the power of individuals to solve problems.  Philosophe: social critics or philosophers from France.  Social contract: Idea from Thomas Hobbes that suggested all humans are naturally selfish and wicked and must hand over their rights to a strong ruler to create/run their government.

 Estate: social classes of France. 1 st Estate: Church leaders. 2 nd estate: rich nobles. 3 rd estate: 97% of the people.  Tennis Court Oath: a pledge made by the members of France’s National Assembly in 1789, in which they vowed to continue meeting until they had drawn up a new constitution.  National Assembly: a French congress established by representatives of the Third Estate to enact laws and reforms in the name of the French people.  Estates-General: Gathering of all three estates of France called by the king.

 Jacobins: radical political party during the French Revolution  Guillotine: a machine for beheading people, used as a means of execution during the French Revolution.  Great Fear: a wave of senseless panic that spread through the French countryside after the storming of the Bastille in  Bastille: French prison torn down in the early days of the French Revolution.

 Reign of Terror: period from when Maximilien Robespierre ruled France nearly as a dictator and thousands of political figures and ordinary citizens were executed.

 Continental System: Napoleon’s policy of preventing trade between Great Britain and continental Europe intended to destroy Great Britain’s economy.  Reign of Terror: period from when Maximilien Robespierre ruled France nearly as a dictator and thousands of political figures and ordinary citizens were executed.  Napoleonic Code: a comprehensive and uniform system of laws established for France by Napoleon.  Battle of Trafalgar: an 1805 naval battle in which Napoleon’s forces were defeated by a British fleet under command of Horatio Nelson.

 Scorched-earth policy: the practice of burning crops and killing livestock during wartime so that the enemy cannot live off the land.  Peninsular War: a conflict in which Spanish rebels, with the aid of British forces, fought to drive Napoleon’s French troops out of Spain.  Legitimacy: the hereditary right of a monarch to rule