Glossary of The French Revolution - Other Terms

Other Terms

• Assignats – notes, bills, and bonds issued as currency 1790–1796, based on the and noble lands appropriated by the state.
• Cahier – petition, especially Cahiers de doléances, petition of grievances (literally "of sorrow").
• Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen – 1789; in summary, defined these rights as "liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression."
• Flight to Varennes – The Royal Family's attempt to flee France June 20–21, 1791.
• The "Great Fear" – Refers to the period of July and August 1789, when peasants sacked the castles of the nobles and burned the documents that recorded their feudal obligations.
• Lettre de cachet – Under the ancien régime, a private, sealed royal document that could imprison or exile an individual without recourse to courts of law.
• "Left" and right" – These political terms originated in this era and derived from the seating arrangements in the legislative bodies. The use of the terms is loose and inconsistent, but in this period "right" tends to mean support for monarchical and aristocratic interests and the Christian order and religion, or (at the height of revolutionary fervor) for the interests of the bourgeousie against the masses, while "left" tends to imply opposition to the same, proto-laissez faire free marketeers and proto-communists.
• Terror – in this period, "terror" usually (but not always) refers to State violence, especially the so–called Reign of Terror.
• Reactionary – coined during the revolutionary era to refer to those who opposed the revolution and its principles and sought a Restoration of the monarchy.
• September Massacres – the September 1792 massacres of prisoners perceived to be counter–revolutionary, a disorderly precursor of the Reign of Terror.