Government agents used by Louis XIV who collected taxes and administered justice.

intellectual movement that stressed reason and thought and the power of individuals to solve problems.

social critics or philosophers from France.

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.

French Protestant

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.

social classes of France.  1st Estate: Church leaders.  2nd estate: rich nobles.  3rd estate: 97% of the people.

a French congress established by representatives of the Third Estate to enact laws and reforms in the name of the French people.

Gathering of all three estates of France called by the king.

a wave of senseless panic that spread through the French countryside after the storming of the Bastille in 1789.

French prison torn down in the early days of the French Revolution.

radical political party during the French Revolution

a machine for beheading people, used as a means of execution during the French Revolution.

period from 1793-1794 when Maximilien Robespierre ruled France nearly as a dictator and thousands of political figures and ordinary citizens were executed.

a comprehensive and uniform system of laws established for France by Napoleon.

Napoleon’s policy of preventing trade between Great Britain and continental Europe intended to destroy Great Britain’s economy.

an 1805 naval battle in which Napoleon’s forces were defeated by a British fleet under command of Horatio Nelson.