1. Absolutism, Enlightenment, & Revolution
Vocab

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Estate: social classes of France. 1st Estate: Church leaders
Estate: social classes of France. 1st Estate: Church leaders. 2nd estate: rich nobles. 3rd 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.

6. Great Fear: a wave of senseless panic that spread through the French countryside after the storming of the Bastille in 1789.
Bastille: French prison torn down in the early days of the French Revolution.
Jacobins: radical political party during the French Revolution
Guillotine: a machine for beheading people, used as a means of execution during the French Revolution.

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

8. 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.
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.

9. 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
Scorched-earth policy: the practice of burning crops and killing livestock during wartime so that the enemy cannot live off the land.