Sans-culottes

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The sans-culottes (French: [sɑ̃kylɔt]; lit. 'without breeches') 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 name sans-culottes refers to their clothing, and through that to their lower-class status: culottes were the fashionable silk knee-breeches of the 18th-century nobility and bourgeoisie, and the working class sans-culottes wore pantaloons, or long trousers, instead. The sans-culottes, most of them urban labourers, served as the driving popular force behind the revolution. Journalists and political activists such as Jean-Paul Marat, Jacques Hébert, and Jacques Roux became influential spokesmen for the sans-culottes, although the movement had no formal leadership. The word sans-culotte, which is opposed to "aristocrat", seems to have been used for the first time on 28 February 1791 by Jean-Bernard Gauthier...

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