Study
Questions & Essay Topics
Always use specific historical examples to support
your arguments.
Study Questions
1. Although many
accounts of the French Revolution focus on the actions of the Girondins
and Jacobins, nearly every major step of the Revolution was incited
by the sans-culottes. Support or refute this statement.
2. Although
the financial crisis of the
ancien régime was the
immediate spark that set off the French Revolution, which broader
factors within France contributed to the Revolution?
3. Assess the
validity of this statement: by attempting to escape from France
in June
1791,
Louis XVI effectively destroyed the prospect of a moderate Revolution resulting
in the installation of a limited or constitutional monarchy.
Suggested Essay Topics
1. To what extent was the French
nobility responsible for the crisis that destroyed the ancien régime?
2. What role did women play in
the Revolution? Were they simply a reactionary force—as when bread
shortages prompted a march on Versailles—or an active part of the revolutionary
public?
3. To what extent did the Thermidorian
Reaction owe its success to the excesses of Maximilien Robespierre?
4. Make an argument as to which
governmental arrangement—monarchial rule, the National Assembly’s
constitutional monarchy, the National Convention’s republic, or
the Directory—was best suited to revolutionary France.
5. What problems in France and
beyond contributed to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte?
