Quiz: The Old Regime and the Revolution

11 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. 1. Why, according to Tocqueville, did Christianity inspire such fierce hatred in the Revolution?

   Because the philosophers had proved its dogmas false to the satisfaction of the whole people Because the Church was a privileged political power and landowner, not for its doctrine Because the clergy sided with foreign invaders and the émigrés from the very start of 1789 Because Protestant ideas had spread among the peasants and turned them against Rome
2. 2. How does Tocqueville contrast the region around Paris with western France before 1789?

   The west was the most reformed and the most revolutionary Paris’s region, most reformed, led the Revolution; the least-changed west resisted it Both regions were equally oppressed and equally revolutionary in 1789 Paris was the most oppressed region of France and the west by far the most prosperous
3. 3. What did Arthur Young think the coming Revolution might do?

   Abolish the Church Increase the existing privileges of the nobility and clergy Destroy the French monarchy within a year, as in England in 1649 Spread at once to England
4. 4. What change within Paris before the Revolution does Tocqueville stress?

   It had lost its printing trade to the provinces It had been granted self-government by Louis XVI It had turned industrial, its artisans more than doubling in sixty years Its population had fallen steadily as the nobles followed the court to Versailles
5. 5. What did Tocqueville find when comparing medieval institutions in France, England and Germany?

   That each country’s laws were wholly original A prodigious similarity in their feudal institutions That England alone had never had feudal institutions That Roman law was the common source of all three
6. 6. Which source does Tocqueville call “the testament of the old society of France”?

   The registers of the Parlement of Paris under Louis XV The memoirs of the Marquis d’Argenson The instructions drawn up by the three orders in 1789 The code of Frederick the Great
7. 7. 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 King had doubled the dues, and the harvests had failed The nobles lived on their estates, and enforced labour services strictly The dues were heavier than anywhere else, and the clergy encouraged revolt
8. 8. What happened when the government ordered sub-delegates to send news for the Gazette de France?

   They founded provincial newspapers of their own to rival the Gazette They sent detailed political reports, which the King’s ministers then suppressed They refused the task and were dismissed by the Minister They sent only trivia, like a hanged salt smuggler
9. 9. On what question does Tocqueville side with Hume against Diderot?

   Whether a free press or partial censorship did more to spread irreligion Whether religion was useful to the state Whether the English constitution, with its balance of powers, should be copied in France Whether the Church should own land
10. 10. According to Tocqueville, what had happened to the French peasant long before 1789?

    He had been driven off the land into the towns He had become a landowner He had become a mere tenant of large capitalist farmers, as in England He had become a serf bound to the soil
11. 11. How does Tocqueville contrast taxation in eighteenth-century England and France?

    France had no direct taxes at all In England the poor were exempt; in France the rich England taxed only land and France only trade and salt Both countries exempted the nobility and the clergy alike