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The Feuillants were a result of a schism among the Jacobins in the aftermath of the flight of LouisXVI. The overwhelming majority, still supportive of the constitutional monarchy in spite of what happened, abandoned Robespierre and a handful of now republican members one month after Varennes (July 1791). Like the Cordeliers and the Jacobins, the Feuillants took their name from the convent where they settled. They were influent from summer 1791 to spring 1792, with several ministers in government. They tried to convince the King to play by the constitutional rules but the royal Court (especially Marie Antoinette) despised them and wouldn't listen to their advice. In March 1792, Girondins campaigned for war and managed to replace at government the divided Feuillants, who were lukewarm to downright hostile to war. The Feuillants quickly faded into irrelevance, and ceased to exist after the fall of the Monarchy, 10th August 1792. Their two most prominent leaders were Antoine Barnave and [[MarquisDeLafayette La Fayette]]. They were arrested after the fall of Monarchy and some of its leaders were executed in the wake of the Queen's trial.

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The Feuillants were a result of a schism among the Jacobins in the aftermath of the flight of LouisXVI. The overwhelming majority, still supportive of the constitutional monarchy in spite of what happened, abandoned Robespierre and a handful of now republican members one month after Varennes (July 1791). Like the Cordeliers and the Jacobins, the Feuillants took their name from the convent where they settled. They were influent from summer 1791 to spring 1792, with several ministers in government. They tried to convince the King to play by the constitutional rules but the royal Court (especially Marie Antoinette) despised them and wouldn't listen to their advice. In March 1792, Girondins campaigned for war and managed to replace at government the divided Feuillants, who were lukewarm to downright hostile to war. The Feuillants quickly faded into irrelevance, and ceased to exist after the fall of the Monarchy, 10th August 1792. Their two most prominent leaders were Antoine Barnave and [[MarquisDeLafayette [[UsefulNotes/MarquisDeLaFayette La Fayette]]. They were arrested after the fall of Monarchy and some of its leaders were executed in the wake of the Queen's trial.
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Initially, it was a political club where people gathered to discuss ideas. It was largely comprised of members of the middle-class - businessmen, bankers, lawyers, and other notables. It also had high membership fees and restricted itself to men only, though under Robespierre's leadership, women often attended their meetings in the galleries for public debates. These facts are usually glossed over in later interpretations of Jacobins as radical leftist/proto-Bolshevik party. The Jacobins had a network of subsidiary clubs across France, which at its height counted 500,000 members. They often gathered at clubs and publicly discussed ideas and issues in regions. They also distributed pamphlets and government missives they had printed themselves. This wide network proved useful during the ReignOfTerror where the Jacobins organizational competence proved effective in centralizing authority and defending France.

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Initially, it was a political club where people gathered to discuss ideas. It was largely comprised of members of the middle-class - businessmen, bankers, lawyers, and other notables. It also had high membership fees and restricted itself to men only, though under Robespierre's leadership, women often attended their meetings in the galleries for public debates. These facts are usually glossed over in later interpretations of Jacobins as radical leftist/proto-Bolshevik a proto-Bolshevik party. The Jacobins had a network of subsidiary clubs across France, which at its height counted 500,000 members. They often gathered at clubs and publicly discussed ideas and issues in regions. They also distributed pamphlets and government missives they had printed themselves. This wide network proved useful during the ReignOfTerror where the Jacobins organizational competence proved effective in centralizing authority and defending France.
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[[caption-width-right:350:''[[BringIt ... for we shall yield to nothing but bayonets.'']] - Tennis Court Oath by Jacques-Louis David]]

Even if political parties as we understand them didn't exist at the time, the French revolutionaries tended to organize themselves on common interests, shared ideals and vision of governments, as well as means on how to bring it about. This meeting ground resulted in factions, sub-factions and splinter groups. Some of the factions though, were even less homogeneous and more akin to social categories, like the Sans-culottes. The very concepts of political "left" and "right" which still organize the nowadays political life originate in the [[TropeMaker French Revolution]].

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[[caption-width-right:350:''[[BringIt ... for we shall yield to nothing but bayonets.'']] - Tennis Court Oath by Jacques-Louis David]]

Creator/JacquesLouisDavid]]

Even if [[UsefulNotes/FrenchPoliticalSystem political parties parties]] as we understand them didn't exist at the time, the French revolutionaries tended to organize themselves on common interests, shared ideals and vision of governments, as well as means on how to bring it about. This meeting ground resulted in factions, sub-factions and splinter groups. Some of the factions though, were even less homogeneous and more akin to social categories, like the Sans-culottes. The very concepts of political "left" and "right" which still organize the nowadays political life originate in the [[TropeMaker French Revolution]].
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The Girondins was never a single club or party, but a loose group of politicians led by Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a journalist and pamphleteer. Other members of note were François Buzot, Charles Barabaroux, Marquis de Condorcet, Jérôme Pétion, Monsieur Jean-Marie and Madame Manon Roland, Charlotte Corday and Pierre Vergniaud. The Girondins were all Jacobins themselves at the height of their influence until Robespierre and others kicked them out. In their day they were described as Brissotins or Rolandins (after their leaders). The term Girondin comes from the Gironde, the provincial region with Bordeaux at its capital, that formed (along with Lyon) the main support base for the Girondins. The term was used by later historians rather than people of that era.

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The Girondins was never a single club or party, but a loose group of politicians led by Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a journalist and pamphleteer. Other members of note were François Buzot, Charles Barabaroux, Marquis de Condorcet, Jérôme Pétion, Monsieur Jean-Marie and Madame Manon Roland, Charlotte Corday UsefulNotes/CharlotteCorday and Pierre Vergniaud. The Girondins were all Jacobins themselves at the height of their influence until Robespierre and others kicked them out. In their day they were described as Brissotins or Rolandins (after their leaders). The term Girondin comes from the Gironde, the provincial region with Bordeaux at its capital, that formed (along with Lyon) the main support base for the Girondins. The term was used by later historians rather than people of that era.
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The Feuillants were a result of a schism among the Jacobins in the aftermath of the flight of LouisXVI. The overwhelming majority, still supportive of the constitutional monarchy in spite of what happened, abandoned Robespierre and a handful of now republican members one month after Varennes (July 1791). Like the Cordeliers and the Jacobins, the Feuillants took their name from the convent where they settled. They were influent from summer 1791 to spring 1792, with several ministers in government. They tried to convince the King to play by the constitutional rules but the royal Court (especially [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter Marie Antoinette]]) despised them and wouldn't listen to their advice. In March 1792, Girondins campaigned for war and managed to replace at government the divided Feuillants, who were lukewarm to downright hostile to war. The Feuillants quickly faded into irrelevance, and ceased to exist after the fall of the Monarchy, 10th August 1792. Their two most prominent leaders were Antoine Barnave and [[MarquisDeLafayette La Fayette]]. They were arrested after the fall of Monarchy and some of its leaders were executed in the wake of the Queen's trial.

to:

The Feuillants were a result of a schism among the Jacobins in the aftermath of the flight of LouisXVI. The overwhelming majority, still supportive of the constitutional monarchy in spite of what happened, abandoned Robespierre and a handful of now republican members one month after Varennes (July 1791). Like the Cordeliers and the Jacobins, the Feuillants took their name from the convent where they settled. They were influent from summer 1791 to spring 1792, with several ministers in government. They tried to convince the King to play by the constitutional rules but the royal Court (especially [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter Marie Antoinette]]) Antoinette) despised them and wouldn't listen to their advice. In March 1792, Girondins campaigned for war and managed to replace at government the divided Feuillants, who were lukewarm to downright hostile to war. The Feuillants quickly faded into irrelevance, and ceased to exist after the fall of the Monarchy, 10th August 1792. Their two most prominent leaders were Antoine Barnave and [[MarquisDeLafayette La Fayette]]. They were arrested after the fall of Monarchy and some of its leaders were executed in the wake of the Queen's trial.
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[[Characters/TheFrenchRevolution Back to characters main index]]
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The ''Enragés'' were a small group of members of the Convention led by the priest Jacques Roux. Closely associated with the Sans-culottes, they were more leftist than Marat but not demagogues, unlike Hébert. Marat wrote several scathing papers against them. Roux advocated direct democracy, end of private property, progressive taxation and absolutely hated any kind of speculation, be it financial or on food prices. His ideas later inspired Babeuf and he can be seen as an ancient precursor of anarchism, socialism and every priest in line with the Liberation theology.

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The ''Enragés'' were a small group of members of the Convention led by the priest Jacques Roux. Closely associated with the Sans-culottes, they were more leftist than Marat but not demagogues, unlike Hébert. Marat wrote several scathing papers against them. Roux advocated direct democracy, end the abolition of private property, and progressive taxation and absolutely hated taxation, while abhoring any kind of speculation, be it financial or on food prices. His ideas later inspired Babeuf and he can be seen as an ancient precursor of anarchism, socialism socialism, and every priest in line with the Liberation theology.
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Among revolutionaries, Marat was highly popular with the sans-culottes, while others such as Jacques Roux (with the Enragés) and journalist Jacques Hebert (simply Hébertists) formed factions of extremists among them. Marat played a key part in the Jacobin-Sans-culottes alliance that toppled the Girondins but after his assassination, they lacked another figure to bridge that role. When the Committee of Public Safety purged the Hebertists and arrested Roux, they also banned several other organizations from assembling. This largely ended the popular movement and several sans-culottes either joined the army, took advantage of new opportunities or returned to their former lives of poverty and anonymity.

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Among revolutionaries, Marat was highly popular with the sans-culottes, while others such as Jacques Roux (with the Enragés) and journalist Jacques Hebert (simply Hébertists) formed factions of extremists among them. Marat played a key part in the Jacobin-Sans-culottes Jacobin/Sans-culottes alliance that toppled the Girondins but after his assassination, they lacked another figure to bridge that role. When the Committee of Public Safety purged the Hebertists and arrested Roux, they also banned several other organizations from assembling. This largely ended the popular movement and several sans-culottes either joined the army, took advantage of new opportunities or returned to their former lives of poverty and anonymity.

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A loose, leaderless faction composed of everyone from militant women, ex-actors, shopkeepers, rabble-rousers, demagogues, ex-aristocrats, dissident priests and real trouble-makers. They were predominantly Parisian. The Sans-Culottes remain so called because of their distinct fashion style. Mostly poor people wearing clothes with no breeches, they became IconOfRebellion at the time, the image and representative of the popular movement. They were initially seen as highly romantic figures by the middle-class revolutionaries and politicians, and the Phrygian Cap became the legendary symbol thanks to their efforts. It was this group of people, largely leaderless, anonymous and unknown that led the Storming of the Bastille, the Champs de Mars protest, the Insurrections against the King (August 10) and the Girondins (May-June 1793). They were also responsible for the events of the September Massacres and other scenes of street violence.

Politically, the sans-culottes were all over the map. While later generations would see them as the prototype of the urban working-class/proletariat, they were actually a RagtagBunchOfMisfits, that included small-businessmen, out of work artisans, unemployed youth, low-rent actors and actresses, and even, strangely enough, aristocrats who started SlummingIt hippie-style. One of these aristocrats was none other than Creator/MarquisDeSade, an ImpoverishedPatrician who went into the Bastille a sex-offender and came out (two weeks before quatorze juillet) a quasi-anarchist. The nearest thing to organization was the newly formed Paris Commune, the civic body of the defiantly revolutionary city, whose different sections were administered with direct democracy. The unruliness of the Paris Commune, their incredible energy and canny instinct for political chicanery meant that several factions tried in vain, to neutralize them or in the case of Girondins, try and move the capital out of Paris.

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A loose, leaderless faction composed of everyone from militant women, ex-actors, shopkeepers, rabble-rousers, demagogues, ex-aristocrats, dissident priests and real trouble-makers. They were predominantly Parisian. The Sans-Culottes remain so called because of their distinct fashion style. Mostly poor people wearing clothes with no breeches, they became IconOfRebellion at the time, the image and representative of the popular movement. They were initially seen as highly romantic figures by the middle-class revolutionaries and politicians, and the Phrygian Cap became the legendary symbol thanks to their efforts. It was this group of people, largely leaderless, anonymous and unknown that led the Storming of the Bastille, the Champs de Mars protest, the Insurrections against the King (August 10) and the Girondins (May-June 1793). They were also responsible for the events of the September Massacres and other scenes of street violence.

Politically, the sans-culottes were all over the map. While later generations would see them as the prototype of the urban working-class/proletariat, they were actually a RagtagBunchOfMisfits, that included small-businessmen, out of work artisans, unemployed youth, low-rent actors and actresses, and even, strangely enough, aristocrats who started SlummingIt hippie-style. One of these aristocrats was none other than Creator/MarquisDeSade, an ImpoverishedPatrician who went into the Bastille a sex-offender and came out (two weeks before quatorze juillet) a quasi-anarchist. The

One thing the sans-culottes did have in common, however, was that they were basically all Parisians. Their
nearest thing to organization was the newly formed Paris Commune, the civic body of the defiantly revolutionary city, whose different city. The various sections of Paris were administered with direct democracy. democracy, which furthered the Commune's link to the popular movement. And on the substantive issues of the day, if there was one thing the sans-culottes could agree on, it was this: Feed Paris. To many sans-culottes, most any policy could be justified if it would make bread cheap in the capital. This naturally led to mass political action--i.e. protests and rioting--every time events conspired to increase the cost of food in Paris, to which the national government inevitably responded, because, y'know, they were in Paris, and wouldn't you know it, they had no interest in getting lynched by a mob of angry Parisians. Since the 1770s, various French governments had tried several times to fix the underlying problems that caused the price of bread to be so high, but (frustratingly) every time a long-term fix was enacted, there would be a bad harvest for reasons totally out of the government's control, forcing the government to undo the long-term fix and often make the problem worse by enacting some popular-in-Paris but otherwise ruinous economic policy (most notoriously, the General Maximum). The unruliness of the Paris Commune, their incredible energy and canny instinct for political chicanery meant that several factions tried in vain, vain to neutralize them or them--or in the case of Girondins, try and move the capital out of Paris.
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Several very important revolutionaries were Cordeliers: Danton, Marat, Desmoulins and Hébert. Unlike the Jacobins who allied with the Popular Movement very late in the revolution (with considerable reluctance as well), the Cordeliers had a more collegiate atmosphere. Its influence declined when the Terror officially went into effect. Marat was dead, Danton had briefly retired from politics and the Cordeliers were run by Hebertists much to the dislike of Desmoulins. The latter started a campaign to reclaim the club and its vision away from the Hebert, even titling his newspaper ("Le Vieux Cordelier") to attack them for their extremism. Desmoulins even had the early support of Robespierre but it all fell apart when his articles attacked both the Committee of Public Safety and the Hebertists, compromising both the extreme and moderate elements of the Club in their eyes. In the end, both sides got purged and this spelled the doom of the popular movement in toto.

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Several very important revolutionaries were Cordeliers: Danton, Marat, Desmoulins and Hébert. Unlike the Jacobins who allied with the Popular Movement very late in the revolution (with considerable reluctance as well), the Cordeliers had a more collegiate collegial atmosphere. Its influence declined when the Terror officially went into effect. Marat was dead, Danton had briefly retired from politics and the Cordeliers were run by Hebertists much to the dislike of Desmoulins. The latter started a campaign to reclaim the club and its vision away from the Hebert, even titling his newspaper ("Le Vieux Cordelier") to attack them for their extremism. Desmoulins even had the early support of Robespierre but it all fell apart when his articles attacked both the Committee of Public Safety and the Hebertists, compromising both the extreme and moderate elements of the Club in their eyes. In the end, both sides got purged and this spelled the doom of the popular movement in toto.
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The Girondins was never a single club or party, but a loose group of politicians led by Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a journalist and pamphleteer. Other members of note were François Buzot, Charles Barabaroux, Marquis de Condorcet, Jérôme Pétion, Monsieur Jean-Marie and Madame Manon Roland and Pierre Vergniaud. The Girondins were all Jacobins themselves at the height of their influence until Robespierre and others kicked them out. In their day they were described as Brissotins or Rolandins (after their leaders). The term Girondin comes from the Gironde, the provincial region with Bordeaux at its capital, that formed (along with Lyon) the main support base for the Girondins. The term was used by later historians rather than people of that era.

to:

The Girondins was never a single club or party, but a loose group of politicians led by Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a journalist and pamphleteer. Other members of note were François Buzot, Charles Barabaroux, Marquis de Condorcet, Jérôme Pétion, Monsieur Jean-Marie and Madame Manon Roland Roland, Charlotte Corday and Pierre Vergniaud. The Girondins were all Jacobins themselves at the height of their influence until Robespierre and others kicked them out. In their day they were described as Brissotins or Rolandins (after their leaders). The term Girondin comes from the Gironde, the provincial region with Bordeaux at its capital, that formed (along with Lyon) the main support base for the Girondins. The term was used by later historians rather than people of that era.
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[[caption-width-right:350:''[[BringIt ...for we shall yield to nothing but bayonets.'']] - Tennis Court Oath by Jacques-Louis David]]

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[[caption-width-right:350:''[[BringIt ... for we shall yield to nothing but bayonets.'']] - Tennis Court Oath by Jacques-Louis David]]

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Removed tropes referring to Real Life. See this thread.


!! Tropes
* UsefulNotes/{{Anarchism}}: Jacques Roux advocated for a direct democracy in a classless society devoid of private property. This makes him a precursor of anarchism, albeit a largely forgotten one nowadays.
* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Everyone seemed to dislike them. Marat, Robespierre, even their fellow Cordeliers.
* TurbulentPriest: Jacques Roux is the ur-Example. Agitating food riots, abolishing private property, calling for insurrections in the middle of war against the Revolutionary Government.

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!! Tropes
* UsefulNotes/{{Anarchism}}: Jacques Roux advocated for a direct democracy
%%!!Tropes as portrayed in a classless society devoid of private property. This makes him a precursor of anarchism, albeit a largely forgotten one nowadays.
* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Everyone seemed to dislike them. Marat, Robespierre, even their fellow Cordeliers.
* TurbulentPriest: Jacques Roux is the ur-Example. Agitating food riots, abolishing private property, calling for insurrections in the middle of war against the Revolutionary Government.
fiction:



!!Tropes

* BourgeoisBohemian: The Jacobins were a largely middle-class party who advocated nationalism, a strong Union and a centralized state - positions that give them much in common with say, Abraham Lincoln or Otto von Bismarck. They were initially quite moderate and hesitant on a range of issues but as a result of circumstances, pragmatism, ruthlessness and acknowledgement of popular sentiment, they came to become more radical than anyone had planned or expected to be. By the time they tried to return to their moderate roots, they had no support base too fall on.
* TheIlluminati: The first book of ConspiracyTheory on the Revolution by the Abbé Barruel, presented the Jacobins as a front organization for the Illuminati and the Free Masons, starting a long romanesque tradition of associating Jacobins with an organization that provides freedom and bloodshed ForTheEvulz.
* TheLeader: Averted at first, they would rotate presidents for different sessions. However, Robespierre towards the end became the first-among-equals within the club and wielded real influence.
* NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering: While royalist writers like Abbé Barruel present Jacobins as an all-powerful entity, they were closer to this according to the many minutes of their meetings that survived. They kept dissolved repeatedly into factions and counter-factions, until finally turning against Robespierre's faction, destroying the club's legitimacy in the process, since for most of France, Robespierre was THE Jacobin.
* RenegadeSplinterFaction: Initially, ''everyone'' was a Jacobin. Royalists, Moderates, future Radicals were all members of this party at its beginnings, including Mirabeau, Sieyes, Lameth, Barnave and Robespierre. However, the rapid divisions between moderates and radicals led royalists to form first their own club (Feullants). Jacobins faced another division when Brissot and his followers, became the Girondins, even if they never formed their own club as such. The Jacobins were virtually kept alive single-handedly by Robespierre during the royalist repression after the Champs-de-Mars massacre and eventually became extreme left, at which point the other clubs saw the Jacobins, and the Montagne (their coalition in the National Assembly) as the renegades.
* ShortLivedBigImpact:[[invoked]] The Jacobins in its popular left-wing form only held power for a few months during the ReignOfTerror, which came about as a result of its alliances with the sans-culottes and moderates. Towards the end, repeated purges ruined that alliance and the club imploded, ending the main part of the Revolution with it. Remnants of the club were hunted down by Girondins and the Directory, groups called Neo-Jacobins tried to briefly enter politics as a loyal opposition in the Directory government but coups kept them out for good. Despite having power for at most a year, the Jacobins have entered the annals of history as the quintessential Revolutionary party, cited as an inspiration by the likes of Lenin and Trotsky, as well as other leftists later on, many of them taking positions that the Jacobins themselves suppressed in their hebertist opponents.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: The Jacobins became unpopular in the later stages of the Terror for turning against the popular support base of the sans-culottes who had brought them into power. They restricted their assemblies, arrested and executed their leaders, and used the price ceilings demanded by the sans-culottes for bread prices, to institute [[KickTheDog a fix on lower wages]]. It was for these reasons that the Jacobins had few friends among the populace after Robespierre's downfall, they had become highly unpopular despite leading France BackFromTheBrink.

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!!Tropes

* BourgeoisBohemian: The Jacobins were a largely middle-class party who advocated nationalism, a strong Union and a centralized state - positions that give them much
%%!!Tropes as portrayed in common with say, Abraham Lincoln or Otto von Bismarck. They were initially quite moderate and hesitant on a range of issues but as a result of circumstances, pragmatism, ruthlessness and acknowledgement of popular sentiment, they came to become more radical than anyone had planned or expected to be. By the time they tried to return to their moderate roots, they had no support base too fall on.
* TheIlluminati: The first book of ConspiracyTheory on the Revolution by the Abbé Barruel, presented the Jacobins as a front organization for the Illuminati and the Free Masons, starting a long romanesque tradition of associating Jacobins with an organization that provides freedom and bloodshed ForTheEvulz.
* TheLeader: Averted at first, they would rotate presidents for different sessions. However, Robespierre towards the end became the first-among-equals within the club and wielded real influence.
* NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering: While royalist writers like Abbé Barruel present Jacobins as an all-powerful entity, they were closer to this according to the many minutes of their meetings that survived. They kept dissolved repeatedly into factions and counter-factions, until finally turning against Robespierre's faction, destroying the club's legitimacy in the process, since for most of France, Robespierre was THE Jacobin.
* RenegadeSplinterFaction: Initially, ''everyone'' was a Jacobin. Royalists, Moderates, future Radicals were all members of this party at its beginnings, including Mirabeau, Sieyes, Lameth, Barnave and Robespierre. However, the rapid divisions between moderates and radicals led royalists to form first their own club (Feullants). Jacobins faced another division when Brissot and his followers, became the Girondins, even if they never formed their own club as such. The Jacobins were virtually kept alive single-handedly by Robespierre during the royalist repression after the Champs-de-Mars massacre and eventually became extreme left, at which point the other clubs saw the Jacobins, and the Montagne (their coalition in the National Assembly) as the renegades.
* ShortLivedBigImpact:[[invoked]] The Jacobins in its popular left-wing form only held power for a few months during the ReignOfTerror, which came about as a result of its alliances with the sans-culottes and moderates. Towards the end, repeated purges ruined that alliance and the club imploded, ending the main part of the Revolution with it. Remnants of the club were hunted down by Girondins and the Directory, groups called Neo-Jacobins tried to briefly enter politics as a loyal opposition in the Directory government but coups kept them out for good. Despite having power for at most a year, the Jacobins have entered the annals of history as the quintessential Revolutionary party, cited as an inspiration by the likes of Lenin and Trotsky, as well as other leftists later on, many of them taking positions that the Jacobins themselves suppressed in their hebertist opponents.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: The Jacobins became unpopular in the later stages of the Terror for turning against the popular support base of the sans-culottes who had brought them into power. They restricted their assemblies, arrested and executed their leaders, and used the price ceilings demanded by the sans-culottes for bread prices, to institute [[KickTheDog a fix on lower wages]]. It was for these reasons that the Jacobins had few friends among the populace after Robespierre's downfall, they had become highly unpopular despite leading France BackFromTheBrink.
fiction:



!!Tropes
* BourgeoisBohemian: The Cordeliers were more bohemian than bourgeois as compared to the Jacobins. Their location at the Cordeliers District was famously radical even before the Revolution and several early initiates were among the people who stormed the Bastille. One contemporary observer described one meeting of the club in this fashion:
--> ''"About three hundred persons of both sexes filled the place; their dress was so unkempt and so filthy that one would have taken them for a gathering of beggars."''
* FriendlyRivalry: With the Jacobins for most of the French Revolution. Notably, Desmoulins, Robespierre and Danton were friends.
* HufflepuffHouse: Despite the membership of Danton and Marat, the Cordeliers as an organization are rarely acknowledged in the popular and artistic depictions of the French Revolution.
* ThePurge: The Cordeliers were victims of this twice; first the Hébertists, then the Dantonists were sent to guillotine by Robespierre and the Jacobins.
* SlobsVersusSnobs:
** They were the Slobs to the Jacobins' Snobs. They had similar political beliefs, more or less, but the Cordeliers were more natural, less ideological and theory-based while the Jacobins were fanatically insistent on "Republic, One and Indivisible". The two leaders, Danton and Robespierre, likewise have this equation among historians for several generations, the practical, man-of-the-people BoisterousBruiser versus the cold, intellectual KnightTemplar.
** Ironically, while the Cordeliers had a spontaneous mixage of different classes, they came to oppose the Jacobins at the time they became radically-left and committed themselves to social reform and wealth redistribution. Their faction in the National Convention during the Terror was called "The Indulgents" and they wanted to end the price-fixing, controlled economy and forced austerity, so much so, they collaborated with the Committee to purge the extreme left faction of Cordeliers - the Hebertists.
* SpannerInTheWorks:
** The Cordeliers really had very little support and activitiy during the Terror, however ThePurge of both factions - Dantonists and Hebertists - proved to be self-destructive for the Committee and the Jacobins. It ended up costing them their support base and left no one to defend their social reform program in the Thermidor crisis, where the centrists and reactionaries took over.
** Fabre d'Eglantine is perhaps a more literal example. A poet and a close friend of Danton, he was famous for coming up with names of the Republican Calendar (otherwise designed by Gilbert Romme and the scientists of the Metric System[[note]]It was intended partly as a test-run to educate people about the system[[/note]]). During the Terror, Eglantine was involved in large scale fraud and in order to divert attention from his shady dealings, he told Robespierre of a mostly imaginary "foreign plot" that made the famously paranoid revolutionary increase his police surveillance. When Robespierre discovered that [[BerserkButton Eglantine had used him to cover up corruption]], he felt personally betrayed and cited Danton's support of his wayward friend as a reason to cut-off ties with the other Cordeliers. This pretty much sunk the main thrust of the Revolution and ended up bringing both the Cordeliers and Jacobins down with them.

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!!Tropes
* BourgeoisBohemian: The Cordeliers were more bohemian than bourgeois
!!Tropes as compared to the Jacobins. Their location at the Cordeliers District was famously radical even before the Revolution and several early initiates were among the people who stormed the Bastille. One contemporary observer described one meeting of the club portrayed in this fashion:
--> ''"About three hundred persons of both sexes filled the place; their dress was so unkempt and so filthy that one would have taken them for a gathering of beggars."''
* FriendlyRivalry: With the Jacobins for most of the French Revolution. Notably, Desmoulins, Robespierre and Danton were friends.
* HufflepuffHouse: Despite the membership of Danton and Marat, the Cordeliers as an organization are rarely acknowledged in the popular and artistic depictions of the French Revolution.
* ThePurge: The Cordeliers were victims of this twice; first the Hébertists, then the Dantonists were sent to guillotine by Robespierre and the Jacobins.
* SlobsVersusSnobs:
** They were the Slobs to the Jacobins' Snobs. They had similar political beliefs, more or less, but the Cordeliers were more natural, less ideological and theory-based while the Jacobins were fanatically insistent on "Republic, One and Indivisible". The two leaders, Danton and Robespierre, likewise have this equation among historians for several generations, the practical, man-of-the-people BoisterousBruiser versus the cold, intellectual KnightTemplar.
** Ironically, while the Cordeliers had a spontaneous mixage of different classes, they came to oppose the Jacobins at the time they became radically-left and committed themselves to social reform and wealth redistribution. Their faction in the National Convention during the Terror was called "The Indulgents" and they wanted to end the price-fixing, controlled economy and forced austerity, so much so, they collaborated with the Committee to purge the extreme left faction of Cordeliers - the Hebertists.
* SpannerInTheWorks:
** The Cordeliers really had very little support and activitiy during the Terror, however ThePurge of both factions - Dantonists and Hebertists - proved to be self-destructive for the Committee and the Jacobins. It ended up costing them their support base and left no one to defend their social reform program in the Thermidor crisis, where the centrists and reactionaries took over.
** Fabre d'Eglantine is perhaps a more literal example. A poet and a close friend of Danton, he was famous for coming up with names of the Republican Calendar (otherwise designed by Gilbert Romme and the scientists of the Metric System[[note]]It was intended partly as a test-run to educate people about the system[[/note]]). During the Terror, Eglantine was involved in large scale fraud and in order to divert attention from his shady dealings, he told Robespierre of a mostly imaginary "foreign plot" that made the famously paranoid revolutionary increase his police surveillance. When Robespierre discovered that [[BerserkButton Eglantine had used him to cover up corruption]], he felt personally betrayed and cited Danton's support of his wayward friend as a reason to cut-off ties with the other Cordeliers. This pretty much sunk the main thrust of the Revolution and ended up bringing both the Cordeliers and Jacobins down with them.
fiction:






!!Tropes
* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: The Feuillants were sympathetic to the demands of Colonial slaveowners, with Lameth owning property in Saint Domingue. Barnave famously tried to issue an ordinance supporting slavery in the Consitution, only to be furiously denounced by Robespierre.
* WithFriendsLikeThese: The Feuillants were talented political thinkers who heavily invested themselves in protecting Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from the radical revolutionaries, but couldn't save them from themselves. They actually wanted to avoid the 1792 war(which brought them on the same page with the likes of Robespierre and Marat) but the King and Queen committed to it, in the hope that a defeat would restore the Ancien Regime. In their eyes, the likes of Barnave and other advocates of constitutional monarchy were NotSoDifferent from the Republican advocates.

to:

!!Tropes
* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: The Feuillants were sympathetic to the demands of Colonial slaveowners, with Lameth owning property
%%!!Tropes as portrayed in Saint Domingue. Barnave famously tried to issue an ordinance supporting slavery in the Consitution, only to be furiously denounced by Robespierre.
* WithFriendsLikeThese: The Feuillants were talented political thinkers who heavily invested themselves in protecting Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from the radical revolutionaries, but couldn't save them from themselves. They actually wanted to avoid the 1792 war(which brought them on the same page with the likes of Robespierre and Marat) but the King and Queen committed to it, in the hope that a defeat would restore the Ancien Regime. In their eyes, the likes of Barnave and other advocates of constitutional monarchy were NotSoDifferent from the Republican advocates.
fiction:



!! Tropes

* CosmopolitanCouncil: The Girondins tried to encourage this by inviting several expatriates to France, including Creator/ThomasPaine and arguing for "world revolution" whereby France would go to war and bring freedom to other nations.
* CreateYourOwnVillain: The Girondins in many ways spurred the Jacobins to become more extreme than they would otherwise have been. They used their radical newspapers to print libel against Robespierre and Marat. They were the ones who brought Marat to a show trial in a KangarooCourt using the recently installed Revolutionary Tribunals, thus politically establishing the same precedents used against them. Their advocacy of war and failure to prosecute it properly led to the conditions that led to the emergency laws of the ReignOfTerror.
** Pro-Girondins historiography insists to the contrary that they were never a highly organized faction do begin with. Their partisans insist that the purge struck almost randomly deputies who simply had the misfortune to disagree with the Montagnards. [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade In this version]], the Montagnards are the one who created their own villains [[TheScapegoat to justify their dictature]].
* EmbarrassingNickname: "Brissotin" was originally a derogatory nickname, as it's has "sot" (i.e. "fool, imbecile, idiot") in it.
* LastOfHisKind: Jean-Baptist Louvet was one of the very few high-profile Girondins to survive the purge and live to see the Directory.
* MoleInCharge: The Jacobins and the Montagne accused Brissot (the de-facto leader of the Girondins) of being not only a counter-revolutionary but an active royalist or foreign AgentProvocateur. Camille Desmoulins put these accusations in the pamphlet called "Brissot Unmasked". For a long time, most historians saw this as similar to other Jacobin paranoid accusations (which they turned on each other), noting how they had very little evidence. In the 20th and 21st Century, historians such as [[https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEQQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJacques_Pierre_Brissot&ei=unepVIGGBIqIuAT91oKICg&usg=AFQjCNHYDv_lei79DhzeKmXAKFy-loms0Q&sig2=o2YqS3rrcPdw0DN_FNjr5Q&bvm=bv.82001339,d.c2E Robert Darnton]] and [[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wsfh/0642292.0034.006/--uses-of-power-lafayette-and-brissot-in-1792?rgn=main;view=fulltext Sylvia Neely]] have found evidence that Brissot was a paid police agent and that he ''indeed'' served as a saboteur and provocateur who willingly plunged France into a self-destructive war.
* OvershadowedByAwesome: The Girondins are largely obscure for the fact that none of their leaders became as famous or notorious as Robespierre, Marat or Saint-Just. The likes of Marquis de Condorcet (whose 1792 Constitutional Project provided a base for the Jacobin 1793 constution) who was only Girondin out of circumstance and was skeptical of some of their positions, are not as well-known outside France (where his name adorns a prominent Educational Institute). Their most famous member is undoubtedly Charlotte Corday, the Assassin of Marat.
* PrecisionFStrike: The Girondins recieved a rather brutal one on the day of the Insurrection that toppled them. 30,000 Parisian radicals surrounded the National Convention with canons and guns and Francois Hanriot demanded the arrest and custody of Girondins:
--> ''"Tell your fucking president [Brissot] that he and his Assembly are fucked, and that if within one hour he doesn't deliver to me the Twenty-two [Girondins] I'm going to blast it"''
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Marie Antoinette of all people cruelly mocked the Girondins for agitating to war. In a letter to Axel Fersen she stated:
--> ''"These imbeciles don't see that they are helping us, because in the end all the powers will have to join in."''
* StayInTheKitchen:
** The Girondins were ''slightly'' more feminist than the Jacobins, but ironically, they were unpopular among Parisian lower-class women, most of whom were Robespierre supporters. Several of these women known as Jacobines often agitated and booed Girondins spokesmen during speeches in the Assembly. These same women later assaulted Théroigne de Mericourt for her Girondin sympathies, leading her to be rescued by Marat of all people. Several prominent feminist writers such as Olympe de Gouges were Girondins and became victims of the Terror. While Jacobins crassly argued against Girondins among sans-culottes by pointing out that several of them had politically ambitious wives.
** Marquis de Condorcet privately lamented how poor education and Jacobin appeals to sentiment led these women to argue against their own interests. That said, while Condorcet was the most consistent advocate of women's rights, when it came time to writing his Constiutional proposal, he kept [[{{Hypocrite}} Women's Vote off the table]].
* WarHawk: The Girondins radically advocated going for war against all of Europe at a time when the government was highly vulnerable and unstable. After declaring war, they started suffering defeats and defections and were unable to reform the army to meet the challenges. These facts ultimately led to their downfall by insurrection and purge.
--> ''"Out of a toxic mixture of ignorance, wishful thinking, and pure, naked ambition, the Girondins were pushing France towards wars that would last for twenty-three years and take millions of lives."''
-->-- '''David A. Bell''', ''The First Total War''
* WeAreStrugglingTogether: The Girondins were a faction within the Jacobins that violently clashed with its parent party. In terms of class and issues, they weren't all that different, both factions believed in free markets and capitalism. Later upon the triumph of the Jacobins, the Girondins started provincial rebellions that led them to briefly ally with royalists and other enemy collaborators. This was a mistake, as they got ''very quickly'' overwhelmed by those, which in turn led to a brutal repression of Lyon during the Terror.
* WrittenByTheWinners: Funnily enough, the Girondins ended up writing the dominant narratives of the Revolution in the early half of the 19th Century, courtesy of memoirs written in prison and the fact that many of them survived the Terror (ironically the partial result of Robespierre stopping 75 deputies from being executed alongside the leaders in the original purge). They also rejoined the government after Thermidor ended and helped pursuing ex-Jacobins for revenge. It's only years later that their warmongering and war-profiteering, as well as their provincial counter-revolutions at a time of invasion, were given attention. However since they were victims of political persecution, they remain largely more sympathetic to this day than the Jacobins.

to:

!! Tropes

* CosmopolitanCouncil: The Girondins tried to encourage this by inviting several expatriates to France, including Creator/ThomasPaine and arguing for "world revolution" whereby France would go to war and bring freedom to other nations.
* CreateYourOwnVillain: The Girondins
%%!!Tropes as portrayed in many ways spurred the Jacobins to become more extreme than they would otherwise have been. They used their radical newspapers to print libel against Robespierre and Marat. They were the ones who brought Marat to a show trial in a KangarooCourt using the recently installed Revolutionary Tribunals, thus politically establishing the same precedents used against them. Their advocacy of war and failure to prosecute it properly led to the conditions that led to the emergency laws of the ReignOfTerror.
** Pro-Girondins historiography insists to the contrary that they were never a highly organized faction do begin with. Their partisans insist that the purge struck almost randomly deputies who simply had the misfortune to disagree with the Montagnards. [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade In this version]], the Montagnards are the one who created their own villains [[TheScapegoat to justify their dictature]].
* EmbarrassingNickname: "Brissotin" was originally a derogatory nickname, as it's has "sot" (i.e. "fool, imbecile, idiot") in it.
* LastOfHisKind: Jean-Baptist Louvet was one of the very few high-profile Girondins to survive the purge and live to see the Directory.
* MoleInCharge: The Jacobins and the Montagne accused Brissot (the de-facto leader of the Girondins) of being not only a counter-revolutionary but an active royalist or foreign AgentProvocateur. Camille Desmoulins put these accusations in the pamphlet called "Brissot Unmasked". For a long time, most historians saw this as similar to other Jacobin paranoid accusations (which they turned on each other), noting how they had very little evidence. In the 20th and 21st Century, historians such as [[https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEQQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJacques_Pierre_Brissot&ei=unepVIGGBIqIuAT91oKICg&usg=AFQjCNHYDv_lei79DhzeKmXAKFy-loms0Q&sig2=o2YqS3rrcPdw0DN_FNjr5Q&bvm=bv.82001339,d.c2E Robert Darnton]] and [[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wsfh/0642292.0034.006/--uses-of-power-lafayette-and-brissot-in-1792?rgn=main;view=fulltext Sylvia Neely]] have found evidence that Brissot was a paid police agent and that he ''indeed'' served as a saboteur and provocateur who willingly plunged France into a self-destructive war.
* OvershadowedByAwesome: The Girondins are largely obscure for the fact that none of their leaders became as famous or notorious as Robespierre, Marat or Saint-Just. The likes of Marquis de Condorcet (whose 1792 Constitutional Project provided a base for the Jacobin 1793 constution) who was only Girondin out of circumstance and was skeptical of some of their positions, are not as well-known outside France (where his name adorns a prominent Educational Institute). Their most famous member is undoubtedly Charlotte Corday, the Assassin of Marat.
* PrecisionFStrike: The Girondins recieved a rather brutal one on the day of the Insurrection that toppled them. 30,000 Parisian radicals surrounded the National Convention with canons and guns and Francois Hanriot demanded the arrest and custody of Girondins:
--> ''"Tell your fucking president [Brissot] that he and his Assembly are fucked, and that if within one hour he doesn't deliver to me the Twenty-two [Girondins] I'm going to blast it"''
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Marie Antoinette of all people cruelly mocked the Girondins for agitating to war. In a letter to Axel Fersen she stated:
--> ''"These imbeciles don't see that they are helping us, because in the end all the powers will have to join in."''
* StayInTheKitchen:
** The Girondins were ''slightly'' more feminist than the Jacobins, but ironically, they were unpopular among Parisian lower-class women, most of whom were Robespierre supporters. Several of these women known as Jacobines often agitated and booed Girondins spokesmen during speeches in the Assembly. These same women later assaulted Théroigne de Mericourt for her Girondin sympathies, leading her to be rescued by Marat of all people. Several prominent feminist writers such as Olympe de Gouges were Girondins and became victims of the Terror. While Jacobins crassly argued against Girondins among sans-culottes by pointing out that several of them had politically ambitious wives.
** Marquis de Condorcet privately lamented how poor education and Jacobin appeals to sentiment led these women to argue against their own interests. That said, while Condorcet was the most consistent advocate of women's rights, when it came time to writing his Constiutional proposal, he kept [[{{Hypocrite}} Women's Vote off the table]].
* WarHawk: The Girondins radically advocated going for war against all of Europe at a time when the government was highly vulnerable and unstable. After declaring war, they started suffering defeats and defections and were unable to reform the army to meet the challenges. These facts ultimately led to their downfall by insurrection and purge.
--> ''"Out of a toxic mixture of ignorance, wishful thinking, and pure, naked ambition, the Girondins were pushing France towards wars that would last for twenty-three years and take millions of lives."''
-->-- '''David A. Bell''', ''The First Total War''
* WeAreStrugglingTogether: The Girondins were a faction within the Jacobins that violently clashed with its parent party. In terms of class and issues, they weren't all that different, both factions believed in free markets and capitalism. Later upon the triumph of the Jacobins, the Girondins started provincial rebellions that led them to briefly ally with royalists and other enemy collaborators. This was a mistake, as they got ''very quickly'' overwhelmed by those, which in turn led to a brutal repression of Lyon during the Terror.
* WrittenByTheWinners: Funnily enough, the Girondins ended up writing the dominant narratives of the Revolution in the early half of the 19th Century, courtesy of memoirs written in prison and the fact that many of them survived the Terror (ironically the partial result of Robespierre stopping 75 deputies from being executed alongside the leaders in the original purge). They also rejoined the government after Thermidor ended and helped pursuing ex-Jacobins for revenge. It's only years later that their warmongering and war-profiteering, as well as their provincial counter-revolutions at a time of invasion, were given attention. However since they were victims of political persecution, they remain largely more sympathetic to this day than the Jacobins.
fiction:
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* ShortLivedBigImpact:[[invoked]] The Jacobins in its popular left-wing form only held power for a few months during the ReignOfTerror, which came about as a result of its alliances with the sans-culottes and moderates. Towards the end, repeated purges ruined that alliance and the club imploded, ending the main part of the Revolution with it.

to:

* ShortLivedBigImpact:[[invoked]] The Jacobins in its popular left-wing form only held power for a few months during the ReignOfTerror, which came about as a result of its alliances with the sans-culottes and moderates. Towards the end, repeated purges ruined that alliance and the club imploded, ending the main part of the Revolution with it. Remnants of the club were hunted down by Girondins and the Directory, groups called Neo-Jacobins tried to briefly enter politics as a loyal opposition in the Directory government but coups kept them out for good. Despite having power for at most a year, the Jacobins have entered the annals of history as the quintessential Revolutionary party, cited as an inspiration by the likes of Lenin and Trotsky, as well as other leftists later on, many of them taking positions that the Jacobins themselves suppressed in their hebertist opponents.

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Removed: 47

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--> ''"Tell your fucking president [Brissot] that he and his Assembly are fucked, and that if within one hour he doesn't deliver to me the
Twenty-two [Girondins] I'm going to blast it"''

to:

--> ''"Tell your fucking president [Brissot] that he and his Assembly are fucked, and that if within one hour he doesn't deliver to me the
the Twenty-two [Girondins] I'm going to blast it"''
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None

Added DiffLines:

* PrecisionFStrike: The Girondins recieved a rather brutal one on the day of the Insurrection that toppled them. 30,000 Parisian radicals surrounded the National Convention with canons and guns and Francois Hanriot demanded the arrest and custody of Girondins:
--> ''"Tell your fucking president [Brissot] that he and his Assembly are fucked, and that if within one hour he doesn't deliver to me the
Twenty-two [Girondins] I'm going to blast it"''
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None

Added DiffLines:

* UsefulNotes/{{Anarchism}}: Jacques Roux advocated for a direct democracy in a classless society devoid of private property. This makes him a precursor of anarchism, albeit a largely forgotten one nowadays.
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* MoleInCharge: The Jacobins and the Montagne accused Brissot (the de-facto leader of the Girondins) of being not only a counter-revolutionary but an active royalist or foreign AgentProvocateur. Camille Desmoulins put these accusations in the pamphlet called "Brissot Unmasked". For a long time, most historians saw this as similar to other Jacobin paranoid accusations (which they turned on each other), noting how they had very little evidence. In the 20th and 21st Century, historians such as [[https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEQQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJacques_Pierre_Brissot&ei=unepVIGGBIqIuAT91oKICg&usg=AFQjCNHYDv_lei79DhzeKmXAKFy-loms0Q&sig2=o2YqS3rrcPdw0DN_FNjr5Q&bvm=bv.82001339,d.c2E Robert Darnton]] and [[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wsfh/0642292.0034.006/--uses-of-power-lafayette-and-brissot-in-1792?rgn=main;view=fulltext Sylvia Neely]] have found evidence that Brissot was a paid police agent and that he ''indeed'' served as a saboteur and provocateur who willingly plunged France into a self-destructive war.
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[[caption-width-right:350: Danton at the Cordeliers Club, by Fred Zeller -- Note the social mix of sans-culottes, lower-class and middle-class.]]

to:

[[caption-width-right:350: Danton at the Cordeliers Club, by Fred Zeller -- Note the social mix of sans-culottes, lower-class and middle-class. Also, the presence of women.]]
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Moving to proper namespace.

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[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the-tennis-court-oath-jacques-louis-david_5792.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''[[BringIt ...for we shall yield to nothing but bayonets.'']] - Tennis Court Oath by Jacques-Louis David]]

Even if political parties as we understand them didn't exist at the time, the French revolutionaries tended to organize themselves on common interests, shared ideals and vision of governments, as well as means on how to bring it about. This meeting ground resulted in factions, sub-factions and splinter groups. Some of the factions though, were even less homogeneous and more akin to social categories, like the Sans-culottes. The very concepts of political "left" and "right" which still organize the nowadays political life originate in the [[TropeMaker French Revolution]].

Broadly speaking, the parties can be divided into popular groups and clubs:
* The Popular Movement is characterized by collective actions, leaderlessness, spontaenity, improvisation as well as amateurish stunt-making, excessive violence and lack of organization. Though many of these in imitation of the political clubs, formed popular societies to match their skills. These people were at the heart of all the great events of the Revolution from the Fall of the Bastille to the Insurrections that drove out the King and the Girondin ministry. Their alliance with the Jacobins in the Year of the Terror proved decisive in securing France.
* Political Clubs as the name suggests were communal meeting grounds where people gathered to discuss revolutionary ideas and political concepts that would solve emerging crisis. Clubs by their nature were more organized, more middle-class and professional in outlook than the popular movement. They tended to operate in a fashion not very different from say, a political machine or a lobby, and attracted ambitious men (women were never allowed members in the major clubs) seeking careers in the government bureaucracy. They came out of the Estates-General and ran parallel to the popular movement which nonetheless energized it.


[[Characters/TheFrenchRevolution Back to characters main index]]

[[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution Back to main page]]
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[[foldercontrol]]

! Popular Movement

[[folder:Sans-Culottes & Parisian ''sections'']]
!! Sans-Culottes and the Sections
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sans-culotte_1787.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350: Portrait of a sans-culotte by Louis-Léopold Boilly]]

A loose, leaderless faction composed of everyone from militant women, ex-actors, shopkeepers, rabble-rousers, demagogues, ex-aristocrats, dissident priests and real trouble-makers. They were predominantly Parisian. The Sans-Culottes remain so called because of their distinct fashion style. Mostly poor people wearing clothes with no breeches, they became IconOfRebellion at the time, the image and representative of the popular movement. They were initially seen as highly romantic figures by the middle-class revolutionaries and politicians, and the Phrygian Cap became the legendary symbol thanks to their efforts. It was this group of people, largely leaderless, anonymous and unknown that led the Storming of the Bastille, the Champs de Mars protest, the Insurrections against the King (August 10) and the Girondins (May-June 1793). They were also responsible for the events of the September Massacres and other scenes of street violence.

Politically, the sans-culottes were all over the map. While later generations would see them as the prototype of the urban working-class/proletariat, they were actually a RagtagBunchOfMisfits, that included small-businessmen, out of work artisans, unemployed youth, low-rent actors and actresses, and even, strangely enough, aristocrats who started SlummingIt hippie-style. One of these aristocrats was none other than Creator/MarquisDeSade, an ImpoverishedPatrician who went into the Bastille a sex-offender and came out (two weeks before quatorze juillet) a quasi-anarchist. The nearest thing to organization was the newly formed Paris Commune, the civic body of the defiantly revolutionary city, whose different sections were administered with direct democracy. The unruliness of the Paris Commune, their incredible energy and canny instinct for political chicanery meant that several factions tried in vain, to neutralize them or in the case of Girondins, try and move the capital out of Paris.

Among revolutionaries, Marat was highly popular with the sans-culottes, while others such as Jacques Roux (with the Enragés) and journalist Jacques Hebert (simply Hébertists) formed factions of extremists among them. Marat played a key part in the Jacobin-Sans-culottes alliance that toppled the Girondins but after his assassination, they lacked another figure to bridge that role. When the Committee of Public Safety purged the Hebertists and arrested Roux, they also banned several other organizations from assembling. This largely ended the popular movement and several sans-culottes either joined the army, took advantage of new opportunities or returned to their former lives of poverty and anonymity.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Enragés]]
!! Enragés
The ''Enragés'' were a small group of members of the Convention led by the priest Jacques Roux. Closely associated with the Sans-culottes, they were more leftist than Marat but not demagogues, unlike Hébert. Marat wrote several scathing papers against them. Roux advocated direct democracy, end of private property, progressive taxation and absolutely hated any kind of speculation, be it financial or on food prices. His ideas later inspired Babeuf and he can be seen as an ancient precursor of anarchism, socialism and every priest in line with the Liberation theology.

Roux was arrested in September 1793 and committed suicide in his cell in February 1794.
----
!! Tropes
* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Everyone seemed to dislike them. Marat, Robespierre, even their fellow Cordeliers.
* TurbulentPriest: Jacques Roux is the ur-Example. Agitating food riots, abolishing private property, calling for insurrections in the middle of war against the Revolutionary Government.
[[/folder]]

----
! Political Clubs


[[folder:Jacobins]]
!! Jacobins
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/clture_de_la_salle_des_jacobins_1794_8427.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Engraving of the Closure of the Club on 9 Thermidor[[note]]the sign states ''Society of Jacobins -- Unity, Liberty, Equality, Indivisibility of the Republic, Fraternity or Death''[[/note]]]]

Officially known as the ''Society of the Friends of the Constitution'', located in the Convent of the Jacobins, Rue Saint-Honoré. "Jacobins" was a nickname for the Dominican order, originating from the location of their main convent Rue Saint-Jacques ("Jacobus" in Latin, hence the nickname). The Jacobins became in the course of events the most radical and influential party of the Revolution.

Initially, it was a political club where people gathered to discuss ideas. It was largely comprised of members of the middle-class - businessmen, bankers, lawyers, and other notables. It also had high membership fees and restricted itself to men only, though under Robespierre's leadership, women often attended their meetings in the galleries for public debates. These facts are usually glossed over in later interpretations of Jacobins as radical leftist/proto-Bolshevik party. The Jacobins had a network of subsidiary clubs across France, which at its height counted 500,000 members. They often gathered at clubs and publicly discussed ideas and issues in regions. They also distributed pamphlets and government missives they had printed themselves. This wide network proved useful during the ReignOfTerror where the Jacobins organizational competence proved effective in centralizing authority and defending France.

Among people who were members of the Jacobin Club at various stages were Mirabeau, L'Abbé Sieyes, Brissot, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Danton (who was also a member of the Cordeliers), Marat, the priest Henri Grégoire, and in Corsica, UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte.
----
!!Tropes

* BourgeoisBohemian: The Jacobins were a largely middle-class party who advocated nationalism, a strong Union and a centralized state - positions that give them much in common with say, Abraham Lincoln or Otto von Bismarck. They were initially quite moderate and hesitant on a range of issues but as a result of circumstances, pragmatism, ruthlessness and acknowledgement of popular sentiment, they came to become more radical than anyone had planned or expected to be. By the time they tried to return to their moderate roots, they had no support base too fall on.
* TheIlluminati: The first book of ConspiracyTheory on the Revolution by the Abbé Barruel, presented the Jacobins as a front organization for the Illuminati and the Free Masons, starting a long romanesque tradition of associating Jacobins with an organization that provides freedom and bloodshed ForTheEvulz.
* TheLeader: Averted at first, they would rotate presidents for different sessions. However, Robespierre towards the end became the first-among-equals within the club and wielded real influence.
* NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering: While royalist writers like Abbé Barruel present Jacobins as an all-powerful entity, they were closer to this according to the many minutes of their meetings that survived. They kept dissolved repeatedly into factions and counter-factions, until finally turning against Robespierre's faction, destroying the club's legitimacy in the process, since for most of France, Robespierre was THE Jacobin.
* RenegadeSplinterFaction: Initially, ''everyone'' was a Jacobin. Royalists, Moderates, future Radicals were all members of this party at its beginnings, including Mirabeau, Sieyes, Lameth, Barnave and Robespierre. However, the rapid divisions between moderates and radicals led royalists to form first their own club (Feullants). Jacobins faced another division when Brissot and his followers, became the Girondins, even if they never formed their own club as such. The Jacobins were virtually kept alive single-handedly by Robespierre during the royalist repression after the Champs-de-Mars massacre and eventually became extreme left, at which point the other clubs saw the Jacobins, and the Montagne (their coalition in the National Assembly) as the renegades.
* ShortLivedBigImpact:[[invoked]] The Jacobins in its popular left-wing form only held power for a few months during the ReignOfTerror, which came about as a result of its alliances with the sans-culottes and moderates. Towards the end, repeated purges ruined that alliance and the club imploded, ending the main part of the Revolution with it.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: The Jacobins became unpopular in the later stages of the Terror for turning against the popular support base of the sans-culottes who had brought them into power. They restricted their assemblies, arrested and executed their leaders, and used the price ceilings demanded by the sans-culottes for bread prices, to institute [[KickTheDog a fix on lower wages]]. It was for these reasons that the Jacobins had few friends among the populace after Robespierre's downfall, they had become highly unpopular despite leading France BackFromTheBrink.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Cordeliers]]
!! Cordeliers
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/danton_au_club_des_cordeliers_rclame_de_laudace_toujours_de_laudace_6426.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350: Danton at the Cordeliers Club, by Fred Zeller -- Note the social mix of sans-culottes, lower-class and middle-class.]]

Officially named the ''Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen''. Like the Jacobins, it was located in a former convent, Convent of the Cordeliers (another name for the Franciscans), in the street of the same name. As there was no fixed cotisation for membership (people donated what they wanted near the entry), it was much more popular in its composition than the Jacobins, and thus more in touch with the sans-culottes opinion.

Several very important revolutionaries were Cordeliers: Danton, Marat, Desmoulins and Hébert. Unlike the Jacobins who allied with the Popular Movement very late in the revolution (with considerable reluctance as well), the Cordeliers had a more collegiate atmosphere. Its influence declined when the Terror officially went into effect. Marat was dead, Danton had briefly retired from politics and the Cordeliers were run by Hebertists much to the dislike of Desmoulins. The latter started a campaign to reclaim the club and its vision away from the Hebert, even titling his newspaper ("Le Vieux Cordelier") to attack them for their extremism. Desmoulins even had the early support of Robespierre but it all fell apart when his articles attacked both the Committee of Public Safety and the Hebertists, compromising both the extreme and moderate elements of the Club in their eyes. In the end, both sides got purged and this spelled the doom of the popular movement in toto.

The Cordeliers were much more proactive than the Jacobins. They were the ones who organized the petition in the Champ-de-Mars asking for the destitution of Louis XVI after the Flight to Varennes. They also played a key role in the successive falls of the Monarchy and the Girondins.
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!!Tropes
* BourgeoisBohemian: The Cordeliers were more bohemian than bourgeois as compared to the Jacobins. Their location at the Cordeliers District was famously radical even before the Revolution and several early initiates were among the people who stormed the Bastille. One contemporary observer described one meeting of the club in this fashion:
--> ''"About three hundred persons of both sexes filled the place; their dress was so unkempt and so filthy that one would have taken them for a gathering of beggars."''
* FriendlyRivalry: With the Jacobins for most of the French Revolution. Notably, Desmoulins, Robespierre and Danton were friends.
* HufflepuffHouse: Despite the membership of Danton and Marat, the Cordeliers as an organization are rarely acknowledged in the popular and artistic depictions of the French Revolution.
* ThePurge: The Cordeliers were victims of this twice; first the Hébertists, then the Dantonists were sent to guillotine by Robespierre and the Jacobins.
* SlobsVersusSnobs:
** They were the Slobs to the Jacobins' Snobs. They had similar political beliefs, more or less, but the Cordeliers were more natural, less ideological and theory-based while the Jacobins were fanatically insistent on "Republic, One and Indivisible". The two leaders, Danton and Robespierre, likewise have this equation among historians for several generations, the practical, man-of-the-people BoisterousBruiser versus the cold, intellectual KnightTemplar.
** Ironically, while the Cordeliers had a spontaneous mixage of different classes, they came to oppose the Jacobins at the time they became radically-left and committed themselves to social reform and wealth redistribution. Their faction in the National Convention during the Terror was called "The Indulgents" and they wanted to end the price-fixing, controlled economy and forced austerity, so much so, they collaborated with the Committee to purge the extreme left faction of Cordeliers - the Hebertists.
* SpannerInTheWorks:
** The Cordeliers really had very little support and activitiy during the Terror, however ThePurge of both factions - Dantonists and Hebertists - proved to be self-destructive for the Committee and the Jacobins. It ended up costing them their support base and left no one to defend their social reform program in the Thermidor crisis, where the centrists and reactionaries took over.
** Fabre d'Eglantine is perhaps a more literal example. A poet and a close friend of Danton, he was famous for coming up with names of the Republican Calendar (otherwise designed by Gilbert Romme and the scientists of the Metric System[[note]]It was intended partly as a test-run to educate people about the system[[/note]]). During the Terror, Eglantine was involved in large scale fraud and in order to divert attention from his shady dealings, he told Robespierre of a mostly imaginary "foreign plot" that made the famously paranoid revolutionary increase his police surveillance. When Robespierre discovered that [[BerserkButton Eglantine had used him to cover up corruption]], he felt personally betrayed and cited Danton's support of his wayward friend as a reason to cut-off ties with the other Cordeliers. This pretty much sunk the main thrust of the Revolution and ended up bringing both the Cordeliers and Jacobins down with them.
* WrittenByTheWinners: Since they were eliminated by the Jacobins, the importance of the Cordeliers is often downplayed.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Feuillants]]
!! Feuillants

The Feuillants were a result of a schism among the Jacobins in the aftermath of the flight of LouisXVI. The overwhelming majority, still supportive of the constitutional monarchy in spite of what happened, abandoned Robespierre and a handful of now republican members one month after Varennes (July 1791). Like the Cordeliers and the Jacobins, the Feuillants took their name from the convent where they settled. They were influent from summer 1791 to spring 1792, with several ministers in government. They tried to convince the King to play by the constitutional rules but the royal Court (especially [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter Marie Antoinette]]) despised them and wouldn't listen to their advice. In March 1792, Girondins campaigned for war and managed to replace at government the divided Feuillants, who were lukewarm to downright hostile to war. The Feuillants quickly faded into irrelevance, and ceased to exist after the fall of the Monarchy, 10th August 1792. Their two most prominent leaders were Antoine Barnave and [[MarquisDeLafayette La Fayette]]. They were arrested after the fall of Monarchy and some of its leaders were executed in the wake of the Queen's trial.

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!!Tropes
* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: The Feuillants were sympathetic to the demands of Colonial slaveowners, with Lameth owning property in Saint Domingue. Barnave famously tried to issue an ordinance supporting slavery in the Consitution, only to be furiously denounced by Robespierre.
* WithFriendsLikeThese: The Feuillants were talented political thinkers who heavily invested themselves in protecting Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from the radical revolutionaries, but couldn't save them from themselves. They actually wanted to avoid the 1792 war(which brought them on the same page with the likes of Robespierre and Marat) but the King and Queen committed to it, in the hope that a defeat would restore the Ancien Regime. In their eyes, the likes of Barnave and other advocates of constitutional monarchy were NotSoDifferent from the Republican advocates.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Girondins]]
!! Girondins
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/640px-girondistsforce_293.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Girondins at La Force Prison. The sign on the doorway, half-blocked is -- [[MeaningfulBackgroundEvent Le Liberté ou la Mort]]]]

The Girondins was never a single club or party, but a loose group of politicians led by Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a journalist and pamphleteer. Other members of note were François Buzot, Charles Barabaroux, Marquis de Condorcet, Jérôme Pétion, Monsieur Jean-Marie and Madame Manon Roland and Pierre Vergniaud. The Girondins were all Jacobins themselves at the height of their influence until Robespierre and others kicked them out. In their day they were described as Brissotins or Rolandins (after their leaders). The term Girondin comes from the Gironde, the provincial region with Bordeaux at its capital, that formed (along with Lyon) the main support base for the Girondins. The term was used by later historians rather than people of that era.

The Girondins came to power in the short-lived Legislative Assembly that followed the National Assembly. Towards the end of the National Constituant Assembly, Robespierre put forth a "Self-denying ordinance" that meant that none of its members could be elected in following Legislative assembly, including himself. This would be cited by later historians Benjamin Constant and François Furet as highly destabilizing, since it prevented politicians who had gained two years of experience from continuing to govern into the stage of consolidation. It also backfired on Robespierre himself since he had no political platform to argue against Girondin policies he regarded as highly dubious. Chief among these was the 1792 Declaration of War. The Girondins faction favored an unworkable government with the capital moved away from Paris while the Jacobins wanted a centralized state. They also proved hesitant to reforms and kept backtracking on the trial of the King. Even when several of them voted for his execution, they sought to delay it or put it on a public appeal, which the Jacobins felt would destabilize the government further. In the end, the schism between them became more and more intense leading to the May-June Insurrection of 1793, the arrest, trial and execution of its leaders and the first major purge of the Revolution.
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!! Tropes

* CosmopolitanCouncil: The Girondins tried to encourage this by inviting several expatriates to France, including Creator/ThomasPaine and arguing for "world revolution" whereby France would go to war and bring freedom to other nations.
* CreateYourOwnVillain: The Girondins in many ways spurred the Jacobins to become more extreme than they would otherwise have been. They used their radical newspapers to print libel against Robespierre and Marat. They were the ones who brought Marat to a show trial in a KangarooCourt using the recently installed Revolutionary Tribunals, thus politically establishing the same precedents used against them. Their advocacy of war and failure to prosecute it properly led to the conditions that led to the emergency laws of the ReignOfTerror.
** Pro-Girondins historiography insists to the contrary that they were never a highly organized faction do begin with. Their partisans insist that the purge struck almost randomly deputies who simply had the misfortune to disagree with the Montagnards. [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade In this version]], the Montagnards are the one who created their own villains [[TheScapegoat to justify their dictature]].
* EmbarrassingNickname: "Brissotin" was originally a derogatory nickname, as it's has "sot" (i.e. "fool, imbecile, idiot") in it.
* LastOfHisKind: Jean-Baptist Louvet was one of the very few high-profile Girondins to survive the purge and live to see the Directory.
* OvershadowedByAwesome: The Girondins are largely obscure for the fact that none of their leaders became as famous or notorious as Robespierre, Marat or Saint-Just. The likes of Marquis de Condorcet (whose 1792 Constitutional Project provided a base for the Jacobin 1793 constution) who was only Girondin out of circumstance and was skeptical of some of their positions, are not as well-known outside France (where his name adorns a prominent Educational Institute). Their most famous member is undoubtedly Charlotte Corday, the Assassin of Marat.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Marie Antoinette of all people cruelly mocked the Girondins for agitating to war. In a letter to Axel Fersen she stated:
--> ''"These imbeciles don't see that they are helping us, because in the end all the powers will have to join in."''
* StayInTheKitchen:
** The Girondins were ''slightly'' more feminist than the Jacobins, but ironically, they were unpopular among Parisian lower-class women, most of whom were Robespierre supporters. Several of these women known as Jacobines often agitated and booed Girondins spokesmen during speeches in the Assembly. These same women later assaulted Théroigne de Mericourt for her Girondin sympathies, leading her to be rescued by Marat of all people. Several prominent feminist writers such as Olympe de Gouges were Girondins and became victims of the Terror. While Jacobins crassly argued against Girondins among sans-culottes by pointing out that several of them had politically ambitious wives.
** Marquis de Condorcet privately lamented how poor education and Jacobin appeals to sentiment led these women to argue against their own interests. That said, while Condorcet was the most consistent advocate of women's rights, when it came time to writing his Constiutional proposal, he kept [[{{Hypocrite}} Women's Vote off the table]].
* WarHawk: The Girondins radically advocated going for war against all of Europe at a time when the government was highly vulnerable and unstable. After declaring war, they started suffering defeats and defections and were unable to reform the army to meet the challenges. These facts ultimately led to their downfall by insurrection and purge.
--> ''"Out of a toxic mixture of ignorance, wishful thinking, and pure, naked ambition, the Girondins were pushing France towards wars that would last for twenty-three years and take millions of lives."''
-->-- '''David A. Bell''', ''The First Total War''
* WeAreStrugglingTogether: The Girondins were a faction within the Jacobins that violently clashed with its parent party. In terms of class and issues, they weren't all that different, both factions believed in free markets and capitalism. Later upon the triumph of the Jacobins, the Girondins started provincial rebellions that led them to briefly ally with royalists and other enemy collaborators. This was a mistake, as they got ''very quickly'' overwhelmed by those, which in turn led to a brutal repression of Lyon during the Terror.
* WrittenByTheWinners: Funnily enough, the Girondins ended up writing the dominant narratives of the Revolution in the early half of the 19th Century, courtesy of memoirs written in prison and the fact that many of them survived the Terror (ironically the partial result of Robespierre stopping 75 deputies from being executed alongside the leaders in the original purge). They also rejoined the government after Thermidor ended and helped pursuing ex-Jacobins for revenge. It's only years later that their warmongering and war-profiteering, as well as their provincial counter-revolutions at a time of invasion, were given attention. However since they were victims of political persecution, they remain largely more sympathetic to this day than the Jacobins.
[[/folder]]

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