Sans-culottes

• Report rights infringement
• published: 08 Dec 2015
• views: 30

The sans-culottes were the common people of the lower classes in late 18th century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the Ancien Régime. The appellation sans-culottes refers to their lower class status; culottes were the fashionable silk knee-breeches of the nobility and bourgeoisie, as distinguished from the working class sans-culottes, who traditionally wore pantalons, or trousers, instead. The sans-culottes, most of them peasants and urban labourers, served as the driving popular force behind the revolution. Though ill-clad and ill-equipped, they also made up the bulk of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars. The most fundamental political ideals of the sans-culottes were social equality, economic equality, and popular democracy. They supported the abolition of all the authority and privileges of the monarchy, nobility, and Roman Catholic clergy, the establishment of fixed wages, the implementation of price controls to ensure affordable food and other essentials, and vigilance against counter-revolutionaries. The height of their influence spanned from the original overthrow of the monarchy in roughly 1789 to the Thermidorian Reaction in 1794. Throughout the revolution, the sans-culottes provided the principal support behind the more radical and anti-bourgeoisie factions of the Paris Commune, such as the Enragés and the Hébertists, and were led by populist revolutionaries such as Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert. The sans-culottes also populated the ranks of paramilitary forces charged with physically enforcing the policies and legislation of the revolutionary government, a task that not uncommonly included violence and the carrying out of executions against perceived enemies of the revolution. This video is targeted to blind users. Attribution: Article text available under CC-BY-SA Creative Commons image source in video