Theme: France, Pre-Revolution

Lesson: 1 of 10
Grade: 10
Class: Global History & Geography II
Goals:
Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major
ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in world history and examine the broad
sweep of history from a variety of perspectives.

Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the
geography of the interdependent world in which we livelocal, national, and global
including the distribution of people, places, and environments over Earths surface.

Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the
necessity for establishing governments; the governmental system of the United States and
other nations; the United States Constitution; the basic civic values of American constitutional
democracy; and the roles, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship, including avenues of
participation.

Objectives:
Students will:
Review the Age of Absolutism in the Context of France in the 1780s
Recognize the Social, Political, and Economic Systems of Feudal France
Identify and Comprehend the following New / Unfamiliar Key Words (Vocabulary):
Ancien (Old) Regime (10-1)
Estate System (10-2)
First Estate
Second Estate
Third Estate
Recognize Social, Political, and Economic Causes of the French Revolution
Develop literacy skills in reading political cartoons, paintings and text sources

Materials Needed:
Primary Source Documents:
Unknown artist, political cartoon about The Three Estates, You Should Hope this Game Will
Be Over Soon, 1788.
The Third Estate of Carcassonne, list of grievances from the Third Estate, Cahiers de
Dolances (exerpts), 1789.
quoted in Jackson J. Spielvogel, Western Civilization: A Brief History (Belmont, CA: West/
Wadsworth, 1999), p. 416.
Source: Anonymous painter from France of Northern countries, Prise de la Bastille (Taking
of the Bastille), circa 1789 and 1791.
For Wrap Up Regents Exam Documents:
 From January 2007 Global History and Geography Regents Exam
Document 1
Document 2
Two Index Cards (For Key Words)
Ancien (Old) Regime (10-1)
Estate System (10-2)
Computer & Projector
PowerPoint Slides
Warm Up Handout
Wrap Up Handout

Content of Lesson:
Warm Up (5 min): Written on PowerPoint, on the board before class begins
Q: What powers did Absolute Monarchs possess that their subjects did not?
Students will answer the question on a handout given to them as they enter the
classroom. After a few minutes, we will go over the question as a discussion to
ensure that students have retained the information correctly. See Attached for
Handout and PowerPoint Slides.

Key Word Introduction (7 min): Using the Index Cards (10-1 and 10-2), students will
copy the vocabulary terms and explanations from the board. See attached for copies of
the index cards.

Document Analysis and Discussion (30 min): After copying the key words, students
will engage in a discussion of how the Estate System was present in all facets of life in
France by reading the Primary Sources List of Grievances from the Third Estate
and You Should Hope this Game Will Be Over Soon to build upon the readings
completed prior to this class period. The teacher will guide the students through reading
the primary sources by asking these questions and guiding students through the
discussion. Each of the primary sources will be on the board for students to use in
addition to their own copy of the sources. Questions to help students analyze the
documents will be posted along with the documents to be looked at on the PowerPoint.
During this time, the students will fill out the worksheet entitled: Causes of the French
Revolution: Political, Social, Economic.

You Should Hope this Game Will Be Over Soon (10 min)
Whos in the image? Who is represented? How do you know? Represents Three
Estates
Why is the old man carrying the other men on his back? What does it represent?
Representing the Unfair Taxations
What do you suspect the caption means? The Third Estate should hope that the feudal
system should end soon because its not sustainable.
List of Grievances from the Third Estate (15 min):
What type of grievances are addressed in the List of Grievances? Political/Social/
Economic
Who wrote this list of grievances? Members of the 3rd Estate Who is it addressed to?
Louis XVI & First & Second Estates
What caused Grievance #9 to be written? How effective was the Estate General at
doing its job? Political Causes
What injustice caused by the First and Second Estates led the Third Estate to write
this grievance? Economic Causes
How was the social, political, and economic systems in Pre-Revolutionary France
perpetuate the Ancien Regime? Social/Political/Economic Causes
What rights did the Third Estate want guaranteed that were caused by other
intellectual revolutions in this era? Social and Political Causes

While looking at Paris Newspaper Account of the Fall of the Bastille and Prise de
la Bastille students will have these documents in front of them, and Prise de la
Bastille will be on the PowerPoint for students to reference. By analyzing these
documents, students will look at the effect of the causes of the French Revolution. While
analyzing these documents, students will refine the skills demonstrated in the List of
Grievances from the Third Estate and You Should Hope this Game Will Be Over
Soon through revisiting the process with students initiating the guiding questions and
discussion of the sources.

Paris Newspaper Account of the Fall of the Bastille and Anonymous painter
from France of Northern countries, Prise de la Bastille (Taking of the Bastille), circa
1789 and 1791 (5 min)
While looking at this source, students and teacher will discuss and explore the
implications of the Fall of the Bastille through the following:
What is the Bastille? Political Prison in Pre-Revolutionary France
Who was imprisoned there?
How did the people take over the Bastille?
What messages did the claiming of the Bastille send to the government?
What has changed in France on July 14, 1789?

While answering these questions and discussing the sources in class, students will fill
out a chart of the Social, Political, and Economic Causes in Pre-Revolutionary France.
See attached for copies of the primary sources and chart for students to fill out.

Wrap Up (3 min): Students will answer Regents Questions (Scaffolding Questions) as

their wrap up to assess their literacy skills in reading charts, text from this era, and
political cartoons and assess their ability to understand France on the eve of the
Revolution. See attached for Wrap Up handout.
 Name: ________________________
Global History & Geography II
Lesson Warmup

What powers did Absolute Monarchs possess that their subjects did not?
Front

Back
Front

Back
Source A: Unknown artist, political cartoon about The Three Estates, You Should
Hope this Game Will Be Over Soon, 1788.
Source B: The Third Estate of Carcassonne, list of grievances from the Third Estate,
Cahiers de Dolances (excerpts), 1789.

The third estate of the electoral district of Carcassonne very humbly petitions his
Majesty to take into consideration these several matters, weigh them in his wisdom,
and permit his people to enjoy, as soon as may be, fresh proofs of that benevolence
which he has never ceased to exhibit toward them and which is dictated by his
affection for them.
In view of the obligation imposed by his Majestys command that the third estate of
this district should confide to his paternal ear the causes of the ills which afflict them
and the means by which they may be remedied or moderated, they believe that they
are fulfilling the duties of faithful subjects and zealous citizens in submitting to the
consideration of the nation, and to the sentiments of justice and affection which his
Majesty entertains for his subjects, the following:
Public worship should be confined to the Roman Catholic apostolic religion, to the
exclusion of all other forms of worship; its extension should be promoted and the
most efficient measures taken to reestablish the discipline of the Church and increase
its prestige.
2. Nevertheless the civil rights of those of the kings subjects who are not Catholics
should be confirmed, and they should be admitted to positions and offices in the
public administration, without however extending this privilege - which reason and
humanity alike demand for them - to judicial or police functions or to those of public
instruction.
3. The nation should consider some means of abolishing the annates and all other
dues paid to the holy see, to the prejudice and against the protests of the whole
French people.
[Pluralities should be prohibited, monasteries reduced in numbers, and holidays
suppressed or decreased.]
7. The rights which have just been restored to the nation should be consecrated as
fundamental principles of the monarchy, and their perpetual and unalterable
enjoyment should be assured by a solemn law, which should so define the rights both
of the monarch and of the people that their violation shall hereafter be impossible.
8. Among these rights the following should be especially noted: the nation should
hereafter be subject only to such laws and taxes as it shall itself freely ratify.
9. The meetings of the Estates General of the kingdom should be fixed for definite
periods, and the subsidies judged necessary for the support of the state and the public
service should be voted for no longer a period than to the close of the year in which
the next meeting of the Estates General is to occur.
10. In order to assure to the third estate the influence to which it is entitled in view of
the number of its members, the amount of its contributions to the public treasury, and
the manifold interests which it has to defend or promote in the national assemblies,
its votes in the assembly should be taken and counted by head.
11. No order, corporation, or individual citizen may lay claim to any pecuniary
exemptions. All taxes should be assessed on the same system throughout the
nation.
12. The due exacted from commoners holding fiefs should be abolished, and also the
general or particular regulations which exclude members of the third estate from
certain positions, offices, and ranks which have hitherto been bestowed on nobles
either for life or hereditarily. A law should be passed declaring members of the third
estate qualified to fill all such offices for which they are judged to be personally
fitted.
13. Since individual liberty is intimately associated with national liberty, his Majesty
is hereby petitioned not to permit that it be hereafter interfered with by arbitrary
orders for imprisonment.
14. Freedom should be granted also to the press, which should however be subjected,
by means of strict regulations to the principles of religion, morality, and public
decency.
----------
60. The third estate of the district of Carcassonne places its trust, for the rest, in the
zeal, patriotism, honor, and probity of its deputies in the National Assembly in all
matters which may accord with the beneficent views of his Majesty, the welfare of
the kingdom, the union of the three estates, and the public peace.
Source C: Quoted in Jackson J. Spielvogel, Western Civilization: A Brief History
(Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth, 1999), p. 416.

What follows is a Paris newspaper account of the fall of the Bastille.

* * * * *

First, the people tried to enter this fortress by the Rue St.---Antoine, this fortress,
which no one has ever penetrated against the wishes of this frightful despotism and
where the monster still resided. The treacherous governor had put out a flag of
peace. So a confident advance was made; a detachment of French Guards, with
perhaps five to six thousand armed bourgeois, penetrated the Bastille's outer
courtyard, but as soon as some six hundred persons had passed over the first
drawbridge, the bridge was raised and artillery fire mowed down several French
Guards and some soldiers; the cannon fired on the town, and the people took fright; a
large number of individuals were killed or wounded; but then they rallied and took
shelter from the fire . . . meanwhile, they tried to locate some cannon; they attacked
from the water's edge through the gardens of the arsenal, and from there made an
orderly siege; they advanced from various directions, beneath a ceaseless round of
fire. It was a terrible scene. . . . The fighting grew steadily more intense; the citizens
had become hardened to the fire; from all directions they clambered onto the roofs
or broke into the rooms; as soon as an enemy appeared among the turrets on the
tower, he was fixed in the sights of a hundred guns and mown down in an instant;
meanwhile cannon fire was hurriedly directed against the second drawbridge, which
it pierced, breaking the chains; in vain did the cannon on the tower reply, for most
people were sheltered from it; the fury was at its height; people bravely faced death
and every danger; women, in their eagerness, helped us to the utmost; even the
children, after the discharge of fire from the fortress, ran her and there picking up the
bullets and shot; [and so the Bastille fell and the governor, De Launey, was
captured]. . . . Serene and blessed liberty, for the first time, has at last been
introduced into this abode of horrors, this frightful refuge of monstrous despotism
and its crimes.

Meanwhile, they get ready to march; they leave amidst an enormous crowd; the
applause, the outbursts of joy, the insults, the oaths hurled at the treacherous
prisoners of war; everything is confused; cries of vengeance and of pleasure issue
from every heart; the conquerors, glorious and covered in honor, carry their arms and
the spoils of the conquered, the flags of victory, the militia mingling with the soldiers
of the fatherland, the victory laurels offered them from every side, all this created a
frightening an splendid spectacle. On arriving at the square, the people, anxious to
avenge themselves, allowed neither De Launey nor the other officers to reach the
place of trial; they seized them from the hands of their conquerors, and trampled
them underfoot one after the other. De Launey was struck by a thousand blows, his
head was cut off and hoisted on the end of a pike with blood streaming down all
sides. . . . This glorious day must amaze our enemies, and finally usher in for us the
triumph of justice and liberty. In the evening, there were celebrations.

Source D: Source: Anonymous painter from France of Northern countries, Prise

de la Bastille (Taking of the Bastille), circa 1789 and 1791.
 Name: ______________________________
Global History & Geography II

Directions: Using the documents labelled France, Pre-Revolution, fill out the chart below and cite your
claims for social, political, and economic causes of the French Revolution.

Causes of the French Revolution

Social Causes of the French Political Causes of the French Economic Causes of the French
Revolution Revolution Revolution
 Name: ______________________________
Global History & Geography II
Lesson Wrap Up

Directions: Answer the following questions and hand in before leaving today!

1. Based on the above document, what is one (1) cause of the French Revolution?

2. Based on the above document, what are two (2) causes of the French Revolution?