French Revolution Jeopardy

Estates, the Terror, and Napoleon in one French Revolution review game. Free to copy for any class; students join and buzz in from their phones.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

For the classroom

Copies all 30 clues into an editor of your own. Free, no account needed.

Every clue on this board

This page is public, so anyone can read the answers — copy the board and swap a few clues before game day.

The Old Regime

$200
Under the Old Regime, French society was divided into three of these.
What are estates?
$400
The clergy made up this estate.
What is the First Estate?
$600
Peasants, workers and the middle class, about 97 percent of the people, made up this estate.
What is the Third Estate?
$800
This king was on the throne of France when the Revolution began.
Who was Louis XVI?
$1,000
This Austrian-born queen of France was mocked with the nickname Madame Deficit.
Who was Marie Antoinette?

1789

$200
In May 1789, the king called this assembly into session for the first time since 1614.
What is the Estates-General?
$400
In June 1789, the commoners' deputies declared themselves this new body.
What is the National Assembly?
$600
Locked out of their meeting hall, deputies vowed not to disband until France had a constitution in this pledge.
What is the Tennis Court Oath?
$800
In August 1789, the Assembly adopted this statement of rights.
What is the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen?
$1,000
In October 1789, thousands of women marched to this palace and forced the royal family back to Paris.
What is Versailles?

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

$200
This blue, white and red flag became the symbol of revolutionary France.
What is the tricolor?
$400
Made popular by volunteer soldiers from a southern port city marching to Paris, this song became France's national anthem.
What is La Marseillaise?
$600
Radical working-class Parisians who wore long trousers instead of knee breeches were called this.
Who were the sans-culottes?
$800
The revolutionaries introduced this decimal system of measurement, based on the meter.
What is the metric system?
$1,000
The revolutionary government replaced the old calendar with this one, counting 1792 as Year I.
What is the French Republican calendar?

The Reign of Terror

$200
This beheading machine became the symbol of the Terror.
What is the guillotine?
$400
This twelve-member committee ran France during the Terror.
What is the Committee of Public Safety?
$600
This radical political club, named for the monastery where it met, led the Terror.
Who were the Jacobins?
$800
This more moderate faction, many of whose leaders were executed in 1793, was named for a department in southwestern France.
Who were the Girondins?
$1,000
The Terror ended with a coup in 1794 named for this summer month of the revolutionary calendar.
What is Thermidor?

Revolutionary Figures

$200
Nicknamed the Incorruptible, this leader of the Terror was himself guillotined in 1794.
Who was Maximilien Robespierre?
$400
This radical journalist was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday in 1793.
Who was Jean-Paul Marat?
$600
This powerful orator, who became minister of justice in 1792, was guillotined in 1794 after urging an end to the Terror.
Who was Georges Danton?
$800
This French noble, a hero of the American Revolution, took command of the new Paris National Guard in 1789.
Who was the Marquis de Lafayette?
$1,000
This abbé's 1789 pamphlet arguing that the commoners were the whole nation helped spark the Revolution.
Who was Emmanuel Sieyès?

The Age of Napoleon

$200
Napoleon was born on this Mediterranean island.
What is Corsica?
$400
Napoleon suffered his final defeat at this 1815 battle in present-day Belgium.
What is Waterloo?
$600
Napoleon's disastrous 1812 invasion of this country cost him most of his army.
What is Russia?
$800
Issued in 1804, this civil code spread French law across much of Europe.
What is the Napoleonic Code?
$1,000
Napoleon escaped from exile on this small island in 1815.
What is Elba?

Final Jeopardy — Storming the Gates

On July 14, 1789, Parisian crowds stormed this royal fortress and prison, an event France now marks as its national holiday.

What is the Bastille?

How to run this board

This board covers the Old Regime and its three estates, the crisis of 1789, the radical turn of the Terror, the key figures on every side, and Napoleon's rise from general to emperor and his eventual fall at Waterloo.

The revolution's phases blur together for students, so play the columns roughly left to right and ask for the year after a correct answer. Keeping a simple timeline on the whiteboard, filled in as clues are answered, turns the game into a study sheet.

A house rule that keeps it fair: a team that answers incorrectly sits out the next clue's buzzer race, which cuts down on panic buzzing in the higher rows.

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