Learn the French Revolution in 81 Flashcards: From the Estates General to Brumaire
Study the French Revolution with 81 real flashcards: 1789, the Terror, factions, key dates and the deck's errors to fix, from the Estates General to Brumaire.
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The French Revolution is a decade of dates, factions and assemblies that keep renaming themselves. The Flip It deck French Revolution & Napoleon (deck code IK7119, 81 cards) covers that decade from the Estates General of 5 May 1789 to the Coup of 18 Brumaire on 9 November 1799. One warning before you start: despite the title, Napoleon appears on only two cards — the siege of Toulon (1793) and Brumaire. This is a Revolution deck.
Study this deck: French Revolution & Napoleon
1 / 10When did the French Revolution begin and end?
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
Eight cards worth testing first
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| When was the last time the Estates General had met before 1789? | 1614 (175 years earlier) |
| What was the Tennis Court Oath? | An oath of 20 June 1789 by the Third Estate not to disperse until a constitution was agreed |
| How many prisoners were held in the Bastille when it was stormed? | Only seven |
| What were assignats? | Paper currency backed by church property seized on 2 November 1789 |
| What were refractory clergy? | Priests who refused the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy |
| What was the Declaration of Pillnitz? | Leopold II and Frederick William II backing Louis XVI, 27 August 1791 |
| What was the vote on Louis XVI's execution? | 361 for, 288 against, 72 for execution with delaying conditions |
| What was the Battle of Valmy? | First major French victory of the Revolutionary Wars, 20 September 1792 |
What the deck covers
Ancien Régime, Cahiers de doléances, regional Parlements, Necker, the Diamond Necklace affair, Abbé Sieyès, the National Constituent Assembly, the Great Fear, the August Decrees, the Declaration of the Rights of Man (26 August 1789), active vs passive citizens, the Women's March on Versailles, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the Fête de la Fédération, the Le Chapelier Law, the Flight to Varennes, the Champ de Mars massacre, the Constitution of 1791, Feuillants, Brissotins, La Plaine, sans-culottes, the Brunswick Manifesto, 10 August 1792, the September Massacres, the Republican calendar, Girondins vs Montagnards, the levée en masse, the Vendée, Dumouriez, Marat and Charlotte Corday, the Committee of Public Safety, Saint-Just, the Constitution of 1793, Robespierre, the Terror (about 16,000 executions), Thermidor and the Directory.
How to study it
Rebuild the timeline before memorizing. Cards 1–17 are a quick overview; cards 18–81 replay the same decade in more detail, out of order. Sort the deck into four eras — 1789 (Estates General to Versailles), constitutional monarchy 1790–92, the Convention and Terror 1792–94, Thermidor to Brumaire 1794–99 — and tag each card. The overlap then becomes useful: several cards are duplicates (12 and 60 on the Revolutionary Tribunal, 13 and 71 on Thermidor, 49 and 50 on the calendar). Keep one of each.
Learn factions as a family tree. The Legislative Assembly splits into Feuillants (264), Brissotins (136) and La Plaine (345); the Brissotins later split into Girondins and Montagnards. One diagram replaces five cards.
Cards to fix as you go
- Card 78 gives "a crowd of 13–50 people" at the Champ de Mars. That range is the estimated death toll; the crowd ran into the thousands. Rewrite it.
- Card 16 says the Directory replaced the Committee of Public Safety; it replaced the National Convention (November 1795).
- Card 36 says only 24% of clergy swore the oath. Historians such as Timothy Tackett put juring parish priests at roughly half, with sharp regional contrasts — add that nuance.
- Card 71 never dates Thermidor: 27 July 1794 (9 Thermidor Year II), Robespierre executed the next day.
- Card 79 has no real answer — delete it.
To earn the "Napoleon" in the title, write five more cards: Consulate (1799), Civil Code (1804), coronation (2 December 1804), Austerlitz (1805), Waterloo (1815).
Keep going
Place 1789 in context with the Major Revolutions deck or go back to its ideas with the Renaissance and Enlightenment guide.
Find French Revolution & Napoleon (IK7119) in the library on Flip It.
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