Social class consisting of the clergy.

An assembly of representatives from all three estates that met for the first time in 175 years when Louis XVI called them together.

French Congress established by representatives of the Third Estate on June 17, 1789, to enact reforms and laws in the name of the French people

A pledge made by members of France's National Assembly in 1789 in which they vowed to continue meeting until they had drafted a new Constitution.

July 14, 1789, a French mob stormed a prison. The mob successfully captured the gunpowder they were after.

Statement of revolutionary ideals adopted by France's National Assembly.

Assembly under the new Constitution that had the power to create laws and to approve or prevent any war the king declared on other nations.

Native nobles of France who left their country for political reasons during the peasant uprisings (Great Fear)

A radical group of Parisian wage-earners and small shopkeepers who wanted a greater voice in government, lower prices and an end of food shortages.

Radical political club during the French Revolution that wanted to remove the king and establish a republic. Both middle class men and women joined.

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

Leader of the Committee of Public Safety, he and his followers tried to wipe out all traces of France's past monarchies.

A committee established during the French Revolution to identify "enemies of the republic."

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