French Revolution Verification Quiz: test yourself and test your knowledge about this event that changed the course of world history. Take the Test!
This is the perfect quiz to test your knowledge of the events of the French Revolution. Thanks to the test questions you will have the chance to test yourself and perhaps learn something new about this pivotal event in history.
Before 1789, France was going through a period of great financial crisis. There was great disparity between the lifestyle of the rich and bourgeoisie and that of the poor, who made up 96 percent of the population and were reduced to starvation. Great indignation, then, was aroused by the lifestyle of the King, Louis XVI, whose court was not only a symbol of prestige but also a center of entertainment.
In May 1789 the States General were convened in which the three classes into which French society was divided: nobility, clergy, and third state (bourgeoisie). Although the third state had the largest number of members, it was impossible for it to assert its views against the other two orders, which shared the same privileges.
On June 17, the Third Estate met independently and founded the National Assembly. Some members of the Clergy and Nobility joined their cause, and on June 27, Louis XVI was forced to absorb all three orders into a new Constituent Assembly.
But it was the riots that broke out in the streets that made the difference in France: while the States General were meeting in Versailles, the first episodes of violence broke out on the streets of Paris. It was these episodes that sparked the French Revolution. At the height of this tension, on July 14, 1789, rioters stormed the Bastille, a fortress used as a prison. The goal, however, was not to free the prisoners, but to equip themselves with weapons and ammunition. For many scholars, this is the event that marks the beginning of the Revolution.
As the climate of tension reaches the countryside, peasants also rise up against exploitation by landowners. Many nobles are forced to flee the countryside, and the Constituent Assembly reacts by abolishing feudalism.
With the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789 and the adoption of a Constitution in 1791, France ceases to be an absolute monarchy and becomes a Constitutional Monarchy. But the ideals of liberty and equality push the change further: the monarchy is not compatible with the new values of freedom, and revolutionary uprisings will not stop until 1792 when the monarchy is abolished and the French Republic is finally proclaimed.