AP European History Unit 5 Cheatsheet: Conflict, Crisis, and Reaction in the Late 18th Century

Long-term causes:

• Peasant and bourgeois grievances
• Enlightenment ideas challenging absolute monarchy
• Fiscal crisis from wars (esp. American Revolution)

Short-term triggers:

• Bread shortages and food crisis
• Economic collapse

Liberal Phase (1789–1792):

• Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
• Constitutional monarchy established
• Civil Constitution of the Clergy (nationalized Church)
• Abolished hereditary privileges
• Increased popular participation

Radical Phase (1792–1794):

• Execution of Louis XVI
• Jacobin republic under Robespierre
• Reign of Terror: mass executions, price/wage controls
• De-Christianization campaign
• Mass conscription (levée en masse)

Enthusiastic early participation, but gains were temporary:

• October March on Versailles (1789): Women forced royal family to Paris; demonstrated emotional power of mass politics
• Olympe de Gouges: Wrote Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen; executed 1793
• Society of Republican Revolutionary Women: Organized radical activism
• Outcome: Citizenship restricted to men; legal status improvements reversed

Key insight: Women's exclusion from the republic despite revolutionary equality rhetoric reveals limits of revolutionary change.

Domestic Reforms (enduring):

• Careers open to talent (meritocracy)
• Civil Code (standardized law)
• Centralized bureaucracy
• Educational system expansion
• Concordat of 1801 (reconciled Church and state)

Rights Curtailed:

• Secret police and censorship
• Limited women's rights
• Façade of representative institutions (manipulation)

Military & Expansion:

• New military tactics enabled continental control
• Spread revolutionary ideals across Europe
• Claimed to defend French Revolution's principles