French History Trivia
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50 free French History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
French history is two thousand years of drama: a Gallic chieftain surrendering to Caesar, a teenage girl turning a war, a king who reigned for seventy-two years, a fortress stormed by a crowd, and a general broadcasting from London that the fight was not over. Every question here is a story worth retelling. The 50 questions run in rough order from the Gauls and the Franks through the Hundred Years' War, the Wars of Religion and the Bourbon court, the Revolution and Napoleon, the revolutions and republics of the nineteenth century, the great affair that split the country, both world wars and the Resistance, the end of empire and the presidents of the current republic. Each answer comes with a short explanation of why it matters. It suits a pub quiz, a classroom warm-up or anyone who has stood in front of a Paris monument and wanted the story behind it. Play it on your phone with instant answers, or print it for the table.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Paris fortress-prison, stormed by a crowd on 14 July 1789, held only seven inmates at the time?
Bastille
The Bastille's seven inmates included four forgers and a man who had tried to kill Louis XV, and the contractor who demolished it carved its bricks into souvenir models and sold them.
Q 02Which execution device, proposed to the National Assembly by a physician in 1789, was last used in France in 1977?
Guillotine
The guillotine first fell on a highwayman in April 1792 and stayed France's standard method of execution until the death penalty was abolished in 1981, four years after its final use.
Q 03On which remote South Atlantic island did Napoleon die in 1821 during his second exile?
Saint Helena
Saint Helena held one prisoner behind a garrison of about 2,000 British troops and a patrolling squadron of warships; he died there aged 51 of stomach cancer, the disease believed to have killed his father.
Q 04In which country did French soldiers rebuilding a coastal fort dig up the Rosetta Stone in 1799?
Egypt
In Egypt the French kept their find for only two years: the 1801 surrender of Alexandria handed the stone to Britain, and it has been on show at the British Museum almost continuously since 1802.
Q 05Which territory did Napoleon sell to the United States in 1803 for about fifteen million dollars?
Louisiana
The Louisiana sale covered 828,000 square miles at roughly eighteen dollars a square mile, nearly doubling the United States and later supplying all or part of fifteen states.
Q 06Which Caribbean nation, once France's most profitable colony, won independence in 1804 through a slave revolt?
Haiti
Haiti paid for its freedom twice: in 1825 French warships anchored offshore until it agreed to 150 million gold francs in reparations to former slaveholders as the price of recognition.
Q 07Which Jewish artillery captain was wrongly convicted of spying for Germany in 1894 and shipped to Devil's Island?
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus was eventually exonerated and reinstated in the army, though at a lower rank than his seniority warranted, after an affair that split the Third Republic for a dozen years.
Q 08Which September 1914 battle, where Paris taxis rushed troops to the front, halted the German advance on the capital?
Marne
The Marne taxis, some 600 cabs commandeered at Les Invalides, dutifully ran their meters, and the French treasury paid the total fare of 70,012 francs.
Q 09Which fortified valley in northwest Vietnam fell to the Viet Minh in 1954 after a two-month siege?
Dien Bien Phu
Dien Bien Phu surrendered on 7 May 1954, the day before the Geneva Conference turned to Indochina, and the accords signed ten weeks later ended French rule there.
Q 10Who became France's youngest president in 2017, aged 39, a year after founding his own centrist movement?
Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Macron took 66% of the run-off against Marine Le Pen without ever having won an election before, and his year-old En Marche then swept a majority in the National Assembly.
Q 11Which Arverni chieftain united the Gauls against Caesar but surrendered at Alesia in 52 BC after a relief army failed?
Vercingetorix
Vercingetorix was held six years in the Tullianum prison, paraded through Rome in Caesar's long-delayed triumph of 46 BC, then executed, possibly by strangulation.
Q 12Which king first united the Franks under a single ruler and was baptised a Catholic at his wife Clotilde's urging?
Clovis I
Clovis I chose Catholicism over the Arian Christianity of most other Germanic tribes, a decision that led to widespread conversions among the Franks and made his realm the seed of the Kingdom of France.
Q 13Which Frankish ruler defeated an Umayyad invasion force between Tours and Poitiers in October 732?
Charles Martel
Q 21Which cardinal, chief minister from 1624, personally commanded the siege of the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle?
Richelieu
Cardinal Richelieu obtained the letters patent that founded the Académie française in 1635, while centralising royal power and fighting the Habsburgs of Austria and Spain.
Q 22Which king inherited the throne at four in 1643 and reigned for 72 years, the longest of any sovereign in history?
Louis XIV
Louis XIV styled himself the Sun King, the centre of the universe without equal, and died of gangrene four days before his 77th birthday, leaving the crown to a five-year-old great-grandson.
Q 23Which palace, grown from a 1623 hunting lodge west of Paris, housed the French court and government from 1682?
Versailles
Charles Martel's Franks apparently fought without heavy cavalry, and Edward Gibbon later credited the victory with curtailing the spread of Islam into Western Europe.
Q 14Which Frankish king was crowned emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day 800?
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was the first reigning emperor in the West since Romulus Augustulus was deposed in 476, and the title set him at odds with the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople.
Q 15Which military order did Philip IV have arrested across France at dawn on Friday 13 October 1307?
Knights Templar
The last grand master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake in Paris in 1314, and Philip, deeply in debt to the order from his war with England, was rid of what he owed.
Q 16Which 1415 battle, fought on Saint Crispin's Day, saw Henry V's outnumbered archers rout a French army?
Agincourt
Agincourt was won by English and Welsh archers making up nearly 80 percent of Henry's army, men who had marched 260 miles in two and a half weeks and were sick with dysentery.
Q 17Which Loire city's English siege collapsed in 1429, nine days after Joan of Arc arrived with a relief force?
Orléans
Orléans had looked lost for half a year, yet within three months of its relief Joan stood beside Charles VII at his coronation in Reims, the goal she had insisted on all along.
Q 18In which Norman city, the English headquarters in France, was Joan of Arc tried for heresy and burned in 1431?
Rouen
In Rouen Joan was burned aged about nineteen; an inquisitorial court overturned the verdict in 1456 as tainted by deceit, and she was canonised in 1920.
Q 19Which Protestant king converted to Catholicism in 1593, reportedly saying that Paris was well worth a Mass?
Henry IV
Henry IV, the first Bourbon king, ended the Wars of Religion with a 1598 edict of toleration, survived at least a dozen assassination attempts, and was stabbed to death by a Catholic zealot in 1610.
Q 20Which 1572 wave of Catholic mob violence erupted days after a royal wedding drew Huguenot nobles to Paris?
St Bartholomew's Day
St Bartholomew's Day killings began on the eve of the apostle's feast, two days after a failed attempt on the Huguenot leader Admiral Coligny, and were long blamed on Catherine de' Medici.
Versailles remained the seat of king, court and government until 6 October 1789, when a crowd that had marched from Paris forced the royal family back to the capital.
Q 24Which civil war of 1648 to 1653, named after the French word for a slingshot, forced the royal court to flee Paris?
Fronde
The Fronde ran in two acts, first of the parlements and then of the princes, and its name began as a derogatory term for the rebels during a financial crisis left by the Thirty Years' War.
Q 25Which three-order assembly, not summoned since 1614, opened on 5 May 1789 and set the Revolution in motion?
Estates-General
The Estates-General broke down within six weeks when the Third Estate, denied voting by head, declared itself the National Assembly on 17 June 1789.
Q 26Which vow did the commoners' deputies swear on 20 June 1789, pledging not to separate until France had a constitution?
Tennis Court Oath
The Tennis Court Oath was sworn in an indoor real tennis hall after the deputies found their usual chamber locked and guarded by soldiers, and only one of them refused to sign.
Q 27Which marquis, a major general in Washington's army at 19, later helped draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man?
Lafayette
Lafayette drafted the Declaration with Thomas Jefferson's assistance, and it invoked natural law in the spirit of the American Declaration of Independence that Jefferson had written.
Q 28Which queen, the fifteenth child of Empress Maria Theresa, was executed for high treason in October 1793?
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal two days into her trial, nine months after her husband Louis XVI, and died at the Place de la Révolution.
Q 29Which Jacobin lawyer, the face of the Terror on the Committee of Public Safety, was executed without trial in July 1794?
Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre was arrested with around 90 others when the Convention turned on him on 9 Thermidor, a date that gave the whole backlash its name, and he was executed without trial the next day.
Q 30Which 1792 war song, written in Strasbourg for the Army of the Rhine, became the national anthem of France?
La Marseillaise
La Marseillaise took its name from volunteers from Marseille who sang it marching into Paris, and the National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795.