Quiz of the Day
Bastille Day & The French Revolution
Tuesday, 14 July 2026
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité — the revolution that reshaped France and shook the world
1. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 was symbolically important, but how many prisoners were actually held there at the time?
- 47
- 7
- None
- 200
The Bastille held just seven prisoners when the crowd stormed it — four forgers, two aristocratic lunatics, and one rogue nobleman. Despite the anti-climactic reality, the fortress represented royal tyranny so powerfully that its fall became the defining symbol of the revolution. The building was demolished within months.
2. The French Revolution's slogan 'Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité' translates to Liberty, Equality, and what?
- Sovereignty
- Fraternity
- Solidarity
- Justice
The phrase became the official motto of France, but it took decades to be formally adopted. During the Revolution, various competing slogans circulated. 'Fraternité' — brotherhood — was the most radical element, implying not just legal equality but a social bond between all citizens regardless of class.
3. The Reign of Terror (1793-94), during which thousands were guillotined, was led by which revolutionary figure?
- Napoleon Bonaparte
- Georges Danton
- Jean-Paul Marat
- Maximilien Robespierre
Robespierre justified mass executions as necessary to protect the revolution from its enemies. The irony is that he himself was guillotined on July 28, 1794 — just 10 months after the Terror began. The day of his execution, Thermidor 9, gave its name to the period of moderation that followed.
4. The guillotine, used extensively during the Revolution, was named after a doctor who proposed it as a more humane method of execution. What was his first name?
- Pierre
- Joseph
- Michel
- François
Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed the device in 1789, arguing that a mechanical decapitation machine would be more humane and equal — the same death for all classes, not just aristocrats. He was so horrified by its association with mass killing that he petitioned to have his name removed from the device. His family later changed their surname.
5. Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, was originally a princess of which country?
- Spain
- Hungary
- Prussia
- Austria
Marie Antoinette was born Maria Antonia, archduchess of Austria, and was married to the French dauphin at age 14 in a political alliance. Her Austrian origins made her deeply unpopular with the French public and revolutionaries, who called her 'Madame Deficit' for her extravagant spending at Versailles.
6. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, adopted in 1789, was heavily influenced by which document?
- The Dutch Act of Abjuration
- The US Declaration of Independence
- The English Bill of Rights
- The Magna Carta
The Marquis de Lafayette, who had fought in the American Revolution, was instrumental in drafting the Declaration. Jefferson, then US ambassador to France, helped revise it. The French document went further in some ways — it applied to all men universally, not just colonists — but notoriously excluded women.
7. Which palace was the principal royal residence before the Revolution, famously associated with Louis XIV?
- Tuileries
- Fontainebleau
- The Louvre
- Versailles
Louis XIV built Versailles as both a home and a political statement — a way to centralise French aristocracy under his control. The Hall of Mirrors alone stretches 73 metres and contains 357 mirrors. During the Revolution the royal family was forced to return to Paris from Versailles, marking a transfer of power from monarchy to the people.
8. The famous 'Tennis Court Oath' of June 1789 was taken by the Third Estate after being locked out of where?
- Notre-Dame Cathedral
- The Palace of Versailles
- The Bastille
- Their meeting chamber
Finding their meeting hall locked (officially due to 'repairs'), the Third Estate — representatives of commoners — marched to a nearby royal tennis court and swore not to disperse until France had a constitution. This act of defiance is considered one of the Revolution's founding moments.
9. The modern military parade on the Champs-Élysées for Bastille Day is considered the oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe. It began in which year?
- 1945
- 1880
- 1833
- 1789
The parade began in 1880 when July 14 was officially made a national holiday — nearly 90 years after the Revolution itself. The parade tradition has been interrupted only twice: during World War I and II German occupations of Paris. It now draws hundreds of thousands of spectators and global TV audiences.
10. Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power after the French Revolution. In which year did he crown himself Emperor?
- 1804
- 1799
- 1808
- 1802
At the coronation in Notre-Dame Cathedral, Napoleon famously took the crown from Pope Pius VII's hands and placed it on his own head — a deliberate statement that his power derived from himself, not the Church. He then crowned his wife Joséphine, the first woman to be crowned Empress of the French.
11. What was the 'levée en masse' introduced during the French Revolution?
- Mass conscription of all male citizens for military service
- A collective farm system
- A system of tax collection from the elite
- A popular vote on legislation
Introduced in 1793, the levée en masse was the first modern mobilisation of an entire nation for war. It produced armies of unprecedented size — eventually over a million men — and fundamentally changed European warfare. Its success inspired the concept of the citizen-soldier that has defined military service ever since.
12. The Marseillaise, now France's national anthem, was written in one night in 1792 by which military officer?
- Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle
- Lazare Carnot
- Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte
- Antoine Vérité
Rouget de Lisle composed the song in Strasbourg in April 1792, the night after France declared war on Austria. It was adopted as a marching song by volunteers from Marseille, whose passionate singing gave it the name 'La Marseillaise.' The composer himself was ironically later imprisoned as a moderate — the revolution he helped inspire turned on him.
13. Which region of France began demanding independence around the time of the Revolution, inspired by its own distinct identity?
- Alsace
- Normandy
- Brittany
- Corsica
Brittany had its own language (Breton), culture, and legal traditions, and a strong federalist movement resisted Paris's centralising demands during the Revolution. The Vendée region, just south of Brittany, launched an outright counter-revolutionary uprising in 1793 that the Republic suppressed with extraordinary violence.
14. The metric system was invented and adopted during which period of the Revolution?
- 1796-1798
- 1800-1802
- 1789-1790
- 1793-1795
Revolutionary France adopted the metric system as a rational, universal system to replace the chaotic and varied local measurement systems. The metre was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a meridian through Paris. It's since become the global standard for all but a handful of countries.
15. The storming of the Bastille was partly triggered by the dismissal of which finance minister, whose firing provoked public outrage?
- Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
- Joseph Fouché
- Charles Alexandre de Calonne
- Jacques Necker
Necker was popular with the public for his relatively transparent financial reporting and moderate reforms. When Louis XVI dismissed him on July 11, 1789, Parisians saw it as evidence the king intended to crush the emerging National Assembly by force. Three days later, the Bastille fell.