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what is san-cullotes?
The sans-culottes were the common people of Paris, and were so named this because they didn't wear upper class breeches or culottes. They were the working people, the shop owners, the tradespeople, the artisans, and even the factory workers. They were among the prominent losers of the first, more subtle revolution. While the middle class and wealthy classes benefitted greatly from the revolution, the sans-culottes saw their livelihoods disappearing and inflation driving them to fight for survival. Of all the groups of France, the views of the sans-culottes is what drove the radical revolution from 1792 to 1794.

   The desires of the sans-culottes were simple. They believed that survival was a right of all people, inequality of any kind was to be abolished, and the aristocracy and the monarchy were to be eliminated. Property was not to be completely eliminated, but to be shared in communal groups. These ideas were far more radical than what the Jacobins had in mind. However, more radical Jacobins sympathized with the sans-culotte and began to work with them. This radical group of Jacobins were called the Mountain, because they took the highest seats in the Assembly.

   As the convention came more under the control of the Mountain and the sans-culottes, it turned its attention to doing away with the monarchy. In December of 1792, the Convention put Louis XVI on trial. The Girondists and more moderate Jacobins struggled to save his life, but the Convention narrowly voted to execute him. On January 31, 1793, he was beheaded.


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