Summer 1789: From Royal Power to the Declaration of Rights

Identify the primary military resource Parisian crowds sought when they assaulted the Bastille on July 14, 1789.

The crowd attacked the Bastille to seize its store of approximately 13,600 kilograms of gunpowder after seizing muskets from the Hôtel des Invalides.

Define the term 'terrier' and explain why French peasants targeted them during the Great Fear.

A terrier was a manorial parchment register detailing feudal obligations, tithes, and seigneurial dues owed to a local lord. Burning terriers eliminated the legal proof of these noble claims.

Explain one immediate political concession King Louis XVI made after the fall of the Bastille.

Louis XVI pulled royal troops away from Paris, reinstated his popular finance minister Jacques Necker, and recognized the revolutionary Paris Commune and National Guard.

Contrast the concepts of 'active citizens' and 'passive citizens' established by the National Assembly in 1789.

Active citizens were French men aged 25 or older who paid direct taxes equal to at least three days of unskilled labor, granting them the right to vote. Passive citizens were French residents, including women and propertyless men, who received civil protections but could not vote or run for office.

Compare the core purpose of the French Declaration of 1789 with the 1776 American Declaration of Independence.

The American Declaration served primarily as a diplomatic justification for 13 colonies severing political ties with the British Empire, leaving local colonial laws largely intact. The French Declaration functioned as an internal constitutional foundation intended to tear down domestic feudal estates, privileges, and monarchical absolutism.

Read the following statement from Article 17 of the Declaration: 'Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of it.' Explain how colonial plantation owners used this article to resist the abolition of slavery.

Colonial planters through the Club Massiac argued that enslaved Africans were legal personal property under French colonial law, such as the Code Noir. They claimed that emancipating enslaved workers would violate Article 17's guarantee of inviolable property rights.