Name ______________________________ Hour ____

Absolutism, Enlightenment, & Revolution Vocab

Directions: As you come into class each day, copy down the definition to each of the following words. Also,
you will need to provide a visual for each term.
Term & Definition Visual

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.

Edict of Nantes: Declaration made by Henry of Navarre of France allowing Huguenots

freedom to worship in France.

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

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

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.
Philosophe: social critics or philosophers from France.

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

Estates-General: Gathering of all three estates of France called by the king.

National Assembly: a French congress established by representatives of the Third

Estate to enact laws and reforms in the name of the French
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.
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 wave of senseless panic that spread through the French countryside after
the storming of the Bastille in 1789.

Reign of Terror: the period from 1793-1794 when Maximilien Robespierre ruled
France nearly as a dictator and thousands of political figures and
ordinary citizens were executed.
Declaration of the Rights of Man: document securing equal rights for the people of
France.

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.
Peninsular War: a conflict in which Spanish rebels, with the aid of British forces,
fought to drive Napoleon’s French troops out of Spain.

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

Legitimacy: the hereditary right of a monarch to rule

• meetings between European leaders to restore legitimacy, restore balance

of power, & create a lasting peace after ousting of Napoleon