Age of Absolutism
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50 free Age of Absolutism trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Between the 1500s and the 1700s, a handful of European rulers gathered more power into their own hands than any monarch before them. They tamed proud nobles, built standing armies and dazzling courts, taxed almost anything that moved, and claimed that nobody on earth could overrule them. Their choices redrew the map of Europe and provoked the rebellions that eventually limited royal power. This quiz covers the era the way a world history course does: France under Louis XIV, the rise of Russia and Prussia, the rulers of Spain and Austria, and the long struggle between crown and Parliament in England. Expect questions on monarchs and ministers, court ritual, wars and treaties, and the thinkers who defended or attacked one-man rule. It is written for students revising a unit on absolutism, teachers who want a ready-made review, and anyone who enjoys early modern history. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the set for a class.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did Peter the Great tax from 1698 in his drive to make Russian men look more western?
Beards
Beards could be kept only by paying up and carrying a token as proof. Police were empowered to shave refusers forcibly and in public.
Q 02By what nickname is Louis XIV known, echoing the Apollo role he danced in a ballet at fourteen?
The Sun King
The Sun King made his debut as Apollo in the Ballet Royal de la Nuit, a court spectacle that took 13 hours to perform.
Q 03Which palace, grown from a royal hunting lodge, housed Louis XIV's court and government from 1682?
Versailles
Versailles began as a modest brick-and-stone lodge built for Louis XIII in 1623, about 19 km west of Paris. Apart from the Regency years after 1715, it stayed the seat of royal government until October 1789.
Q 04Louis XIV is credited, probably wrongly, with telling the Parlement of Paris that he was what?
The state
The state is what he allegedly called himself in 1655, yet the line is missing from the Parlement's registers. On his deathbed he said it would outlast him.
Q 05Which English king was beheaded in 1649 on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall?
Charles I
Charles I asked for two shirts that morning so the winter cold would not make him shiver and look afraid. He had been convicted of high treason days earlier.
Q 06Which dynasty, marked by a jutting jaw from inbreeding, ruled both Spain and Austria in the 1600s?
Habsburg
Habsburg cousins married to keep lands in the family, and the price included epilepsy, insanity and early death. The clan split into Spanish and Austrian branches in 1556.
Q 07Which crop do visitors leave on the grave of the Prussian king who championed it in the 1700s?
Potatoes
Potatoes earned him the nickname Der Kartoffelkönig, the Potato King. He also promoted the turnip and dug canals to carry harvests to market.
Q 08What did Prussia's 'Soldier King' recruit from all over Europe for his prized Potsdam regiment?
Very tall men
Very tall men, at least about 6 ft 2 in, filled the regiment nicknamed the Potsdam Giants. Peter the Great sent some as a goodwill gift.
Q 09Which craft did Peter the Great practise while touring western Europe under a false name in 1697?
Shipbuilding
Shipbuilding was the trade he worked at under the alias Peter Mikhailov. Reportedly 6 ft 8 in tall, he towered over other people and fooled no one.
Q 10Which Russian city, founded on a Baltic swamp in 1703, replaced Moscow as capital for two centuries?
St Petersburg
St Petersburg takes its name from the apostle Peter rather than the tsar who founded it. It served as Russia's capital from 1712 to 1918.
Q 11Which chief minister of Louis XIII founded the Académie Française and reined in France's nobles?
Cardinal Richelieu
Cardinal Richelieu was nicknamed the Red Eminence after his scarlet robes. His hunger for central control made him the lead villain of The Three Musketeers.
Q 12Which grant of toleration to Huguenots did Louis XIV revoke in 1685, driving thousands abroad?
Edict of Nantes
Edict of Nantes protections had stood since 1598. Tearing them up closed Protestant schools, wrecked churches and cost France talent and resources.
Q 13Which relative succeeded Louis XIV in 1715, when the French king died after 72 years on the throne?
His great-grandson
Q 21Which English general marched 250 miles to the Danube in 1704 and beat Louis XIV's army at Blenheim?
Duke of Marlborough
Duke of Marlborough's victory saved Vienna from a Franco-Bavarian army and kept the alliance against France together. His best-known descendant is Winston Churchill.
Q 22Which cavalry commander of the New Model Army went on to rule England as Lord Protector from 1653?
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell's body was taken from Westminster Abbey once the monarchy returned and hanged at Tyburn in 1661, a posthumous execution.
Q 23Which 1688 overthrow of James II handed England's crown to his daughter Mary and William of Orange?
Glorious Revolution
His great-grandson took the throne as Louis XV at the age of five. A regent, the Duke of Orléans, governed France until the boy came of age in 1723.
Q 14Which doctrine, defended by the French bishop Bossuet, put monarchs beyond any earthly authority?
Divine right of kings
Divine right of kings meant a ruler's power came straight from God, so no parliament or pope could call him to account. Bossuet also tutored Louis XIV's heir.
Q 15Which philosopher's Leviathan, written during England's civil war, argued for an absolute sovereign?
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes took the title from a monster in the Book of Job. He saw strong, undivided government as the only way to avoid a war of all against all.
Q 16Which export-first economic doctrine did Louis XIV's minister Colbert pursue with high tariffs?
Mercantilism
Mercantilism in its French form is known as Colbertism. Its champion also founded the royal Gobelins tapestry works and promoted the French East India Company.
Q 17Which French civil war, named after a slingshot, shook the regency of the boy king Louis XIV?
The Fronde
The Fronde left the young Louis XIV with a hatred of Paris and a resolve to move out of the old capital. Its name began as an insult for the rebels.
Q 18Which gallery in Louis XIV's main palace later hosted the 1871 proclamation of the German Empire?
Hall of Mirrors
Hall of Mirrors glass was the first big order for a royal factory set up to break Venice's monopoly on mirror-making. The 1919 peace treaty with Germany was signed there too.
Q 19Which morning ritual at Louis XIV's court let chosen nobles attend the king as he rose and dressed?
The levée
The levée came in stages: a select few served the king inside his bedchamber, while the full court waited in the gallery outside for the grand version.
Q 20Which first Bourbon king of France reportedly judged Paris well worth a Mass on turning Catholic?
Henry IV
Henry IV fought the Wars of Religion as a Huguenot and barely escaped the St Bartholomew's Day massacre. A Catholic zealot assassinated him in Paris in 1610.
Glorious Revolution leader William landed in Devon with an army on 5 November 1688. He had been invited by opponents who feared a Catholic dynasty after the birth of the king's son.
Q 24Which 1689 act stopped English monarchs suspending laws or taxing without Parliament's consent?
Bill of Rights
Bill of Rights wording against cruel and unusual punishment was later copied almost word for word into the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution.
Q 25What nickname mocked the cropped hair of some of Parliament's supporters in the English Civil War?
Roundheads
Roundheads was such an insult that calling a fellow soldier one was a punishable offence in the New Model Army. Royalists, by contrast, came to embrace the label Cavalier.
Q 26Which French assembly of three orders sat in 1614 and then never again until 1789?
Estates General
Estates General meetings began in 1302, when a king wanted backing in a quarrel with the pope. Clergy, nobles and commoners each sat as a separate assembly.
Q 27Which wartime coastal levy did England's king extend to inland counties in peacetime in the 1630s?
Ship money
Ship money could be raised by royal prerogative with no vote in Parliament, which suited a king ruling alone. The outcry became a major grievance before the Civil War.
Q 28Which 1713 decree was meant to let an Austrian emperor's daughter inherit all his lands?
Pragmatic Sanction
Pragmatic Sanction promises did not hold. When the daughter succeeded in 1740, a Bavarian rival backed by France contested her inheritance and war broke out.
Q 29Which king of Spain, once married to England's Mary I, sent the Armada against her sister in 1588?
Philip II
Philip II also gave his name to the Philippines. Despite the wealth arriving from the New World, his exchequer faced bankruptcy several times.
Q 30Which metal from the mountain at Potosí paid for Spain's wars and pushed up prices across Europe?
Silver
Silver poured from a peak nicknamed the rich mountain, and the flood of New World bullion helped prices rise roughly sixfold over 150 years.