Pearson Edexcel International GCSE History · 4HI1 · Free · no account needed
The French Revolution, c1780–99 — exam questions
15 original Incandio exam-style questions on the French Revolution, c1780–99, 150 marks, about 225 minutes of writing. Each one carries the command word, the tariff and the specification statement it assesses, exactly as a paper presents them. This is an original Incandio practice question, written to reflect the structure and demands of the qualification. It is not an official Pearson Edexcel past-paper question.
This is the practice set for The French Revolution, c1780–99 — the option that teaches it. Read the option first if the idea is new; come here when you want to find out whether you can turn it into marks. Completely free, no account needed to read.
What these questions ask of you
3 command words run through this set, and on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE History each one means something precise. Answering the wrong command is the commonest way a candidate who understands the option still loses the mark.
- What (6 marks)
- analysis of what the author SELECTED and how they treated it, rather than what happened Misread as: evaluating whether the author is right, which earns nothing on this question
- Explain (6–8 marks)
- TWO of whatever is asked for — effects, causes or ways — each analysed and shown to lead somewhere Misread as: one of them explained superbly, which is capped at 4 with no access to Level 3
- How (8–16 marks)
- a judgement on the EXTENT, built from both sides — agreement and disagreement, or three aspects and a criterion Misread as: agreement only on the source question (capped at 4), or the two printed bullets and nothing else on the sixteen-marker (held at 10)
Assessed on Paper 1 (4HI1/01) and Paper 2 (4HI1/02), against AO1, AO2, AO4.
Where these sit in the specification
Pearson Edexcel International GCSE History (4HI1) — statements 4HI1 1.2 AO4 · 4HI1 1.5 AO4 · 4HI1 1.1 AO4 · 4HI1 1.4 AO4 · 4HI1 1.3 AO4 · 4HI1 1.1 AO1 · 4HI1 1.1 AO2 · 4HI1 1.3 AO1 · 4HI1 1.3 AO2 · 4HI1 1.4 AO1 · 4HI1 1.4 AO2 · 4HI1 1.5 AO1 · 4HI1 1.5 AO2 · 4HI1 1.2 AO1 · 4HI1 1.2 AO2. Incandio is aligned to this specification; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson, and it reproduces none of Pearson's wording.
The 15 questions
Answer them on paper, then open the option's exam practice to have them marked. The mark scheme, the accepted and rejected answers and the annotated model answer are in Incandio and are not printed here — an answer beside its question is not practice.
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(6)What
What impression does the author give about the storming of the Bastille? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.
Extract A: They came for powder, having spent the morning emptying the Invalides of muskets that would not fire without it. Seven prisoners were found, four of them forgers, and the crowd carried them out with an enthusiasm that surprised everybody including the prisoners. What decided the day was not the fighting, which was brief, but the twenty thousand soldiers camped within a march of the city who were never sent. From that afternoon the king possessed every power he had ever held and could no longer be certain that any of them would be obeyed. From a history of the French Revolution, written by an American historian in 1998. Incandio-authored for practice, not a real document.
(Total for Question 1 = 6 marks)
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(6)What
What impression does the author give about the government of the Directory between 1795 and 1799? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.
Extract A: It stabilised a currency, rebuilt a tax office and conquered northern Italy, and it is remembered for none of these. What it is remembered for is the habit it acquired in September 1797 of cancelling elections whose results it disliked, first against the royalists and then against the Jacobins, each time with soldiers borrowed from a general in the field. A government that does this has answered the only question that matters about it, and two years later, when the grenadiers came for the Directors themselves, not one citizen of the Republic could think of a reason to object. From a study of the French Republic in the 1790s, written by a British historian in 2015. Incandio-authored for practice, not a real document.
(Total for Question 2 = 6 marks)
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(6)What
What impression does the author give about the influence of the Enlightenment in France before 1789? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.
Extract A: By the 1780s the vocabulary was everywhere and the programme was nowhere. A provincial lawyer could write of natural right and the general will in a petition about a bridge toll, and mean by it only that the toll was unjust. The books had been on the shelves for forty years; what was new was not that men had read them but that the government had at last asked a question — how shall we be taxed — to which the books offered an answer nobody in authority wanted to hear. From a study of the origins of the French Revolution, written by a British historian in 2004. Incandio-authored for practice, not a real document.
(Total for Question 3 = 6 marks)
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(6)What
What impression does the author give about the Terror? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.
Extract A: Read the returns rather than the speeches and a different Terror appears. Something like seven in ten of those sentenced were peasants and labourers, and a majority of the sentences were passed within a hundred miles of a front line or a rebellion. Where there was neither, whole departments recorded nothing at all. This is the shape of a government fighting for its life, and it is not the shape of a philosophy being applied. The Great Terror of the summer of 1794, which came after the frontiers were safe, is another matter, and no explanation from circumstance has ever accounted for it. From an account of revolutionary government in France, written by a British historian in 2007. Incandio-authored for practice, not a real document.
(Total for Question 4 = 6 marks)
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(6)What
What impression does the author give about the flight to Varennes? You must use Extract C to explain your answer.
Extract C: He was forty miles short of the frontier and rather less short of the truth. The Assembly announced that its king had been carried off by enemies of the constitution, and went on announcing it while the document he had left on his desk was read aloud in every club in Paris. There is no evidence that a single deputy believed the story. They told it because the alternative was to admit that the settlement they had spent two years building had been repudiated by the man whose signature it required, and because the constitution was ten weeks from completion. From a study of the French monarchy in revolution, written by a French historian in 2011. Incandio-authored for practice, not a real document.
(Total for Question 5 = 6 marks)
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(8)Explain
Explain two effects of French involvement in the American War of Independence on France.
(Total for Question 6 = 8 marks)
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(8)Explain
Explain two effects of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy on France.
(Total for Question 7 = 8 marks)
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(8)Explain
Explain two effects of the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793.
(Total for Question 8 = 8 marks)
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(8)Explain
Explain two effects of the coup of 18 Fructidor 1797 on France.
(Total for Question 9 = 8 marks)
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(8)Explain
Explain two effects of the refusal of the Assembly of Notables to accept Calonne's reforms in 1787.
(Total for Question 10 = 8 marks)
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(16)How
'The Tennis Court Oath was the most significant event of 1789.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. • The storming of the Bastille • The night of 4 August
(Total for Question 11 = 16 marks)
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(16)How
'The French Revolution had achieved very little by 1799.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. • The abolition of feudal privilege • The rule of Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul
(Total for Question 12 = 16 marks)
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(16)How
'France's financial problems were the main cause of the crisis of 1787–89.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. • The debt from the American war • The harvest of 1788
(Total for Question 13 = 16 marks)
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(16)How
'The war of 1792 was the main cause of the fall of the French monarchy.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. • The flight to Varennes • The Brunswick Manifesto
(Total for Question 14 = 16 marks)
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(16)How
'The Terror was caused by the emergency France faced in 1793.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. • The war and the revolt in the Vendée • The Law of 22 Prairial
(Total for Question 15 = 16 marks)
Have them marked, then defend the answer
Practice tells you the mark; teaching it back tells you whether you understand it. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it.
- Mark these questions — 15 questions, marked on Incandio against the authored scheme, with the mistake you actually made named.
- Teach it — explain the French Revolution, c1780–99 to Ember, an AI pupil who does not have it yet and asks the awkward question.
- Defend it — three rounds against the mind with the strongest claim on it, marked against descriptors you can read first.
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Back to the option
- The French Revolution, c1780–99 — Option 1: the origins of the Revolution, c1780–87; short-term causes of the Revolution: from Assembly of Notables to Estates General, 1787–89; Developments 1789–92; Convention and Terror, 1792–94; directory and First Consul – the fall of Robespierre to the rise of Napoleon, 1794–99.
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