Sans-culottes

Painted rendition of a sans-culotte.

(left) Sans-culotte, contrast with culotte-wearing figures on right

Sans-culottes (French pronunciation: [sɑ̃ kylɔt], Without knee-breeches) was a term created 1790 - 1792 by the French to describe the poorer members of the Third Estate, according to the dominant theory because they usually wore pantaloons (full-length trousers) instead of the fashionable knee-length culotte.

The 'Sansculottes' arguably provided the only alternative to the bourgeois radicalism of the Jacobins. Eric Hobsbawm notes that they were a 'shapeless, mostly urban movement of the labouring poor, small craftsmen, shopkeepers, artisans, tiny entrepeneurs and the like'.^[1] The 'Sansculottes' were organised notably in the local political clubs of Paris and 'provided the main striking-force of the revolution'. These were the actual demonstrators, rioters and the constructors of barricades. However, Hobsbawm argues that 'Sanculottism' provided no real alternative to the radicalism of the Jacobins. Its ideal, which sought to express the interests of the 'little men' who existed between the poles of the bourgeois and the proletarian, was contradictory and ultimately unrealisable.

History

The term came to refer to the ill-clad and ill-equipped volunteers of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, but, above all, to the working class radicals of the Revolution.^[2] From this comes the now slightly archaic term sansculottism or sans-culottism, meaning extreme egalitarian republican principles.

The sans-culottes were for the most part members of the poorer classes, or leaders of the populace, but during the Reign of Terror, public functionaries and persons of good education styled themselves citoyens sans-culottes.^[2]

The distinctive costume of typical sans-culottes featured:^[2]

• the pantaloon (long trousers) - in place of the culottes (knee-breeches) worn by the upper classes (hence the name 'without breeches')
• the carmagnole (short-skirted coat)
• the red cap of liberty
• sabots (clogs, wooden footwear mainly worn in the countryside)

Their support came from domestic crises, such as shortages of bread and political injustices. Led by revolutionaries such as Jacques Hébert, the sans-culottes played a crucial role in such events as the September massacres of 1792, and supported the most radical left-wing factions in successive revolutionary governments. During the Reign of Terror, they provided important support for Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety; in March 1794, though, the government distanced itself from the Hébertists; Hébert himself was convicted by the very Revolutionary Tribunals he had lauded, and was guillotined; months later, in the Thermidorian Reaction, Robespierre would suffer the same fate.

The influence of the sans-culottes ceased with the reaction that followed the fall of Robespierre (July 1794), and the name itself became proscribed.^[2] Without effective leadership of their own, and no longer allied with the Jacobins, the sans-culottes largely ceased to be a major factor in French politics.

Derived terms

• Sanculottism, from the French sanculottisme, originally refers to the period and 'patriotic' revolutionary movement of the sansculottes
• The Republican Calendar at first termed the complementary days at the end of the year Sans-culottides; however, the National Convention suppressed the name when adopting the Constitution of the Year III (1795) and substituted the name jours complémentaires.^[2]

See also

• Descamisado, ("shirtless one"), from Peronist-era Argentina, another term for a revolutionary based on dress

References

External links

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Sans-culottes". Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• EtymologyOnLine