Enlightenment and French Revolution Vocabulary

An intellectual movement that took place in the 1700s in Western Europe in which people rejected traditional ideas and supported a belief in human reason.

• The French Revolution

• The Reformation

• The Enlightenment

• The Estates General

Enlightenment thinker who promoted the idea that people are born with natural rights (life, liberty, property) and that governments exist to protect those rights.

• Voltaire

• John Locke

• Rousseau

• Thomas Hobbes

Enlightenment thinker who that believed a government should have separation of powers (three branches).

• Montesquieu

• Voltaire

• Louis XVI

• Robespierre

Enlightenment thinker who promoted the idea of a social contract and that a government should exist to protect common good

• John Locke

• Henry VIII

• Napoleon Bonaparte

• Rousseau

An absolute ruler who used his or her power to bring about social and political change. Catherine the Great of Russia was an example.

• enlightened despot

• priest

• absolute ruler

• viceroy

Group formed mostly by the Third Estate in France with the goal of writing a new constitution.

• Old Regime

• Continental System

• National Assembly

• Berlin Conference

Document enacted by France's National Assembly that defined and recognized key human and civil rights

• Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen

• Two Treatises of Government

• The Encyclopedia

• A Vindication of the Rights of Women

Leader of the radical Jacobin group who wanted to wipe out all traces of the old regime and institute radical reforms

• Necker

• Maximilien Robespierre

• Marie Antoinette

• Prince Clemens von Metternich

Time period during the French Revolution in which people in France were arrested and executed for not supporting the revolution.

• The Directory

• The National Assembly

• The Reign of Terror

• The Bastille

French military general who overthrew the French revolutionary government (The Directory) and put himself in charge, taking the title "Emperor of the French"

• Tokugawa Ieyasu

• Suleiman the Magnificent

• Otto von Bismarck

• Napoleon Bonaparte