Quiz: The Old Regime and the Revolution

All 36 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. How, according to Tocqueville, did the sale of public offices limit the power of the old monarchy?

   Sold offices could not be taken back, leaving the crown agents it could not break Buyers of offices were required to swear an oath to resist any unlawful orders The money raised went to the provincial Estates and towns rather than to the king Officers who bought their posts could veto royal edicts in the Council of State
2. 2. Why did Louis XIV abolish the elective municipal offices of the towns from 1692?

   To punish the towns for supporting the Fronde To raise money by selling the offices Because he feared their democratic character To give the posts to the old nobility
3. 3. Why did the French Revolution spread abroad like a religious revolution?

   It was financed by Protestant princes who sent their agents to spread it abroad It was led by the clergy of the Gallican Church, who preached it from every pulpit in France It addressed the citizen in the abstract, proclaiming universal rights, not French ones It aimed to unite Europe under a single Christian empire governed from Paris
4. 4. What does Tocqueville say happened to the men of letters in the mid-eighteenth century?

   They emigrated to England to write freely Though holding no office, they became the chief political men of France They withdrew from politics into pure philosophy and letters, like the Germans They were appointed intendants and ministers of the crown in large numbers
5. 5. According to Tocqueville, how were the high roads of France built and repaired from the later years of Louis XIV?

   By forced peasant labour, extended across France by Orry’s circular By the provincial Estates, out of road taxes voted every year in each province By tolls paid by the merchants and carriers who used the roads most heavily By soldiers of the royal army, put to work on the roads in time of peace
6. 6. Where did the three Orders of Dauphiny meet together in 1788?

   At the town hall of Besançon In the Palace of Justice, Paris In the cathedral at Troyes At Vizille, near Grenoble
7. 7. What happened when the government ordered sub-delegates to send news for the Gazette de France?

   They refused the task and were dismissed by the Minister They founded provincial newspapers of their own to rival the Gazette They sent detailed political reports, which the King’s ministers then suppressed They sent only trivia, like a hanged salt smuggler
8. 8. What did the crown decide about the form of the States-General?

   Let each Parliament decide it Keep the forms of 1614 in every detail Grant doubling and voting by head Double the commons, leave the vote open
9. 9. What does Tocqueville say distinguished the English Revolution from the French?

   It was carried out entirely by men of letters It abolished all local institutions at once It overthrew the political constitution but left administration nearly intact It began with an administrative reform of local government, like that of 1787
10. 10. Which book does Tocqueville cite to show that socialist theories were as old as the first economists?

    Morelly’s Code de la Nature Quesnay’s Tableau économique Turgot’s memoir on municipalities Rousseau’s Social Contract
11. 11. Why does Tocqueville find the intendant’s complaint about the gentry of Anjou significant?

    They had led the peasants’ riots against the corvée and the salt tax during the 1780s They were the first nobles to join the Third Estate when the Estates-General met in 1789 Those who stayed with their peasants alone later fought for the Crown They were the only nobles in France who paid the taille alongside their own peasants
12. 12. How does Tocqueville contrast taxation in eighteenth-century England and France?

    In England the poor were exempt; in France the rich Both countries exempted the nobility and the clergy alike France had no direct taxes at all England taxed only land and France only trade and salt
13. 13. How does Tocqueville describe the two phases of the French Revolution?

    First abolishing the whole past, then recovering part of what was given up First a religious war against the Church, then a long war of conquest abroad First a noble revolt against the crown, then a peasant rising First a constitutional monarchy on the English model, then a federal republic
14. 14. How does Tocqueville contrast the region around Paris with western France before 1789?

    Paris’s region, most reformed, led the Revolution; the least-changed west resisted it Paris was the most oppressed region of France and the west by far the most prosperous Both regions were equally oppressed and equally revolutionary in 1789 The west was the most reformed and the most revolutionary
15. 15. Which source does Tocqueville call “the testament of the old society of France”?

    The registers of the Parlement of Paris under Louis XV The instructions drawn up by the three orders in 1789 The memoirs of the Marquis d’Argenson The code of Frederick the Great
16. 16. What “strange spectacle” did the Assembly of Notables of 1787 present?

    A body that demanded the end of the monarchy A body that voted every tax the King asked for A body that resisted popular reforms yet was cheered A body that the people burned in effigy in Paris
17. 17. What two causes does Tocqueville give for French hatred of feudal rights?

    The peasant owned his land, and the lords no longer governed him The dues were heavier than anywhere else, and the clergy encouraged revolt The nobles lived on their estates, and enforced labour services strictly The King had doubled the dues, and the harvests had failed
18. 18. What does Tocqueville say the people called the needy small squires who lived on their estates?

    A collector, the tax gatherer A hobereau, the smallest bird of prey A seigneur, a lord of the manor A syndic, the village officer
19. 19. What did John Law tell the Marquis d’Argenson about how France was governed?

    It was governed by thirty intendants It was governed by the King’s mistresses It was governed by the Parlement of Paris It was governed by the farmers-general
20. 20. According to Tocqueville, what had happened to the French peasant long before 1789?

    He had become a mere tenant of large capitalist farmers, as in England He had become a serf bound to the soil He had become a landowner He had been driven off the land into the towns
21. 21. Who, according to Tocqueville, filled the secret societies on the eve of the Revolution?

    Ignorant peasants of remote provinces Princes, nobles, merchants and men of letters Soldiers and junior army officers Poor workmen and obscure artisans
22. 22. Why did an intendant urge the Council to call up a suit from the ordinary courts?

    Because the defendant was a nobleman Because the Parlement of the province had refused to register the new tax edict Because ordinary judges follow fixed rules, which the Council can set aside Because the ordinary judges were corrupt and bribed by the plaintiffs
23. 23. Why did the Agricultural Society of Maine abandon its plan to give cattle as prizes?

    The intendant forbade gatherings of peasants Winners would be taxed more heavily next year through the arbitrary taille The bishop and clergy objected to such prizes as a form of gambling on Sundays There was a cattle plague in the province
24. 24. What did the Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy discover when it took over from the intendant?

    The province had paid twice for the same roads The roads had been built by soldiers from the garrisons, not by peasants Land taken for roads over twenty years had never been paid for The intendant had embezzled the taille
25. 25. What was the physiocrats’ attitude to checks on the central power, according to Tocqueville?

    They demanded a separation of powers on the English model, as Montesquieu did They proposed a federal system of provincial Estates They rejected them; Quesnay called the system of checks a fatal idea They wanted the parlements to have a veto over taxation
26. 26. What did Tocqueville find when comparing medieval institutions in France, England and Germany?

    That each country’s laws were wholly original That England alone had never had feudal institutions That Roman law was the common source of all three A prodigious similarity in their feudal institutions
27. 27. What change within Paris before the Revolution does Tocqueville stress?

    It had lost its printing trade to the provinces It had turned industrial, its artisans more than doubling in sixty years It had been granted self-government by Louis XVI Its population had fallen steadily as the nobles followed the court to Versailles
28. 28. What kind of assembly did Turgot’s memoir of 1775 propose?

    A permanent parliament with the power to vote taxes and to impeach the ministers An assembly of nobles and bishops to advise the king on war and on diplomacy A yearly elected assembly to discuss laws and administration, but powerless A revival of the Estates-General with voting by order, as in 1614
29. 29. Why does Tocqueville compare the authors of the provincial assemblies’ reports to people living in Galicia?

    They were foreign officials appointed by the Crown who did not speak French well They wrote only in Latin, so that their reports could not be read by the common people They encouraged the peasants to rise and massacre the nobles, as happened in Galicia in 1846 They wrote harshly of the peasants in public papers, as if the peasants could not understand
30. 30. What does Tocqueville conclude was the Revolution’s real effect?

    To methodise anarchy and permanently weaken the power and rights of the state To restore the ancient constitution of the Franks and the rights of the Estates To abolish feudal institutions for a uniform society based on equality of condition To destroy religious belief throughout Europe and set up the cult of reason in its place
31. 31. How was d’Eprémesnil received when he reached Paris after his release?

    He was arrested again at the city gates No one cared, except to make jokes He was carried in triumph to the court He was elected First President at once
32. 32. What did the leading advocates of the Parlement of Paris do when it was broken up?

    They accepted well-paid posts in the new courts set up by Chancellor Maupeou They petitioned the king and the princes to restore the old court They refused to plead before the new judges, losing their livelihood They led an armed rising in Paris
33. 33. Which passion was, in 1789, “but a subordinate and feeble predilection”?

    Attachment to the Church The love of well-being The love of military glory Hatred of the privileged
34. 34. On what question does Tocqueville side with Hume against Diderot?

    Whether the Church should own land Whether a free press or partial censorship did more to spread irreligion Whether the English constitution, with its balance of powers, should be copied in France Whether religion was useful to the state
35. 35. What did Arthur Young think the coming Revolution might do?

    Abolish the Church Destroy the French monarchy within a year, as in England in 1649 Spread at once to England Increase the existing privileges of the nobility and clergy
36. 36. Why, according to Tocqueville, did Christianity inspire such fierce hatred in the Revolution?

    Because the clergy sided with foreign invaders and the émigrés from the very start of 1789 Because the Church was a privileged political power and landowner, not for its doctrine Because Protestant ideas had spread among the peasants and turned them against Rome Because the philosophers had proved its dogmas false to the satisfaction of the whole people