Sans-culottes
In the French Revolution, the
sans-culottes were the radical left-wing partisans of the lower classes; typically urban labourers, which dominated France. Though ill-clad and ill-equipped, they made up the bulk of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars. The appellation refers to the fashionable
culottes of the moderate bourgeois revolutionaries, as distinguished from the working class
sans-culottes, who traditionally wore
pantalons. Among the political ideals held by the
sans-culottes were popular democracy, social and economic equality, affordable food, rejection of the free-market economy, and vigilance against counter-revolutionaries. During the peak of their influence, roughly 1792 to 1795, the
sans-culottes provided the principal support behind the two far-left factions of the Paris Commune, the Enragés and the Hébertists. Led by populist revolutionaries such as Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert, the
sans-culottes were rallied to provide critical support for the radical and far-left factions of the successive revolutionary governments.