Chouans: royalist insurgents who took their name from four brothers named Cottereau, known more often as Chouan, a corruption of chat-huant, screech-owl, because they imitated that bird’s cry in order to recognize each other in the woods at night. Three of the four brothers were killed in battle. Chouans were active in La Vendée, Brittany and Normandy.
comités de surveillance: watch-committees formed in each commune in March 1793 to assist the police, keep an eye on officialdom and supervise public security and order. They were usually controlled by extreme Jacobins and often took the place of local government. They later became known as comités revolutionnaires and after Thermidor as comités d’arrondisements.
Commune: the revolutionary local government authority of Paris. It was formed in July 1789 and disbanded after Thermidor. The official Commune was displaced by an Insurrectionary Commune on 9 August 1792, the day before the attack on the Tuileries.
Cordeliers: the Parisian district that today includes the Odéon and the Hôtel de la Monnaie. It was inhabited by many actors and playwrights (Fabre d’Églantine and Collot d’Herbois both lived here) and by many booksellers, publishers, printers and journalists, Marat and Camille Desmoulins among them. Danton also lived here and became a powerful figure in the area. So did Fréron, Billaud-Varenne, Chaumette, Momoro and Loustalot.
Cordeliers’ Club (Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen): Formed when the Commune redivided Paris and the Cordeliers’ District was absorbed into the section Théâtre François. It took as its model the Jacobin Club and styled itself the ‘elixir of Jacobinism’. Its emblem was an open eye, representative of its aim to keep a close watch on the government. Its members met first in the church of the monastery of the Cordeliers (Franciscan Observantists), then in a hall in the Rue Dauphine. After 10 August 1792 the more moderate members such as Danton and Desmoulins stopped attending, and the Enragés began to dominate it.
corvées royales: direct taxes paid in service rather than money. They consisted of corvées royales, by which peasants were called upon to lend carts for the transportation of troops and military supplies, and corvées des routes, by which peasants who lived within ten miles of main roads were required to supply not only carts but labour and animals to keep these roads in repair.
décade: the ten-day week of the Revolutionary Calendar introduced in October 1793.
décadi: the tenth day of a decade.
département: territorial and administrative sub-division of France. By a decree of 15 January 1790, the Assembly created eighty-three of them. They were named after their geographical features.
droits de colombier: feudal rights which enabled the seigneur’s pigeons to be fed at the peasants’ expense.
Encyclopédie: one of the great masterpieces of the eighteenth century, a dictionary of the arts, sciences and trades. It was conceived when two publishers approached Denis Diderot for a translation of Ephraim Chamber’s Cyclopaedia of 1728. Diderot persuaded them to bring out a more ambitious work. Seventeen volumes of text and eleven of plates appeared between 1751 and 1772. Seven additional volumes were published 1776–80.
Enragés: extremist revolutionaries, led by Jacques Roux and Jean Varlet, who became a powerful force in Paris in 1793. They were particularly antagonistic to those whom they suspected of hoarding or speculating.
faubourgs: these former suburbs originally lay outside the walls of the old city but by the time of the Revolution they had all been enclosed within the city’s boundaries.
Fédéralisme: a movement, supported by the Girondins, which sought to grant provincial areas the running of their own affairs.
fédérés: the citizen soldiers who came to Paris from the provinces for the Festival of the Federation on 14 July 1792. Prominent among them were units from Brest and the men from Marseilles who popularized the Marseillaise.
fermier: an agent contracted to collect dues. Fermiers généraux paid large sums for the right to collect various indirect taxes and made fortunes by exploiting them.
Feuillants: constitutional monarchists who resigned from the Jacobin Club in July 1791 in protest against moves by certain Jacobins to have the King deposed.
Floréal: the eighth month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 20 April to 19 May, from the Latin florens, flowery.
Frimaire: the third month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 21 November to 20 December, from frimas, hoar-frost.
Fructidor: the twelfth month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 18 August to 16 September, from the Latin fructus, fruit, plus doron, Greek gift.
gabelle: the government salt monopoly by which people were made to buy specific amounts of salt at prices far higher than they would have fetched on an open market. Several rich noblemen bought shares in the Tax Concession which managed the monopoly and collected customs duties.
Garde Nationale: the citizens’ militia which was formed by the Paris districts in 1789. Originally a predominantly bourgeois institution, it gradually changed its character – as did so many other institutions and terminologies – as the Revolution progressed.
Gardes-françaises: royal troops stationed in the capital when the Revolution began. Most of them proved sympathetic towards the Vainqueurs de la Bastille. ‘While the rabble hacked, tore up, threw down and burnt the barriers of the Chausée d’Antin and the railings, offices and registers of the customs officers,’ wrote an eye-witness of an attack on a barrère in July 1789, ‘the Gardes-françaises came up to stand between the fire-raisers and the spectators, leaving the former free to act.’
générale: drum-beat; battre la générale, to beat to arms.
Germinal: the seventh month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 21 March to 19 April, from the Latin germen, bud.
Indulgents: those, mostly Dantonists, who advocated a policy of clemency during the height of the First Terror.
insoumis: men who evaded conscription.
intendants: local agents of the King during the ancien régime.
Jacobin Club: founded at Versailles in 1789 and then known as the Breton Club as most of its members came from Brittany. On the removal of the Assembly to Paris it became known as the Jacobin Club because it met in the convent of the Jacobin friars, Dominican friars who were called Jacobins since their first house in Paris was in the Rue Saint-Jacques. In 1791 the Club was named Société des amis de la constitution, séante aux Jacobins and, after the fall of the monarchy Société des Jacobins, amis de la liberté et de l’égalité. Fairly moderate at first, the Club became increasingly revolutionary. It was closed in November 1795.
jeunesse dorée: gangs of young anti-Jacobins, armed with whips and weighted sticks, who were encouraged by Fréron to attack left-wing agitators and recalcitrant workers. They were mostly drawn from that class of youth to whom the sans-culottes referred as muscadins.
journée: an important day, particularly one upon which some violent action of revolutionary significance occurred.
lanterne: a lamp-post which served as a gibbet in the early part of the Revolution, such as that upon which Foullon was hanged in the Place de Grève. ‘À la lanterne!’ was consequently an earlier version of the threatening cry ‘À la guillotine!’
lettre de cachet: a royal decree, in the form of a sealed letter, by which the King could have a person imprisoned without explanation or trial.
levée en masse: the mobilization of the country’s total human and material resources. It was approved reluctantly by the Convention on 23 August 1793.
lit de justice: a special session of the Paris parlement in which the King could force its members to register his decree.
livre: unit of weight and monetary value. 4 liards = 1 denier, 12 deniers = 1 sou, 20 sous = 1 livre, 3 livres = 1 ecu, 8 ecus = 1 louis. The journalist, Linguet (1736–1794) said that a man needed 300 livres a year to live in reasonable comfort.
loi
agraire: a policy favoured by some Enragés by which wealth would be more equally distributed by the enforced division of property.
Marais: the group in the Convention, also known as the Plain, that occupied the middle ground between Girondins and Jacobins.
Marseillaise, La: first called the Chant de guerre pour l’armée du Rhin when published at Strasbourg, became known by its present title when popularized by the Marseilles fédéré’s in Paris. It was banned for a time by Napoleon and after the Restoration.
maximum: declaration of maximum prices. The maximum des denrées fixed the maximum for foodstuffs, the maximum des salaries for wages. The maximum of May 1793 imposed a limit on the price of grain only, that of September 1793 on most essential articles. The maximum was abolished in December 1794. Many shopkeepers had flagrantly disregarded it. ‘So much for fixed prices,’ butchers were heard to say as they flung bits of heads and hooves into the meat on the scales, ‘and if you don’t like it you can bloody well lump it’
menus plaisirs: now pocket-money or pin-money, but in the context of Versailles those ‘small pleasures’ of the Court unconnected with hunting.
Messidor: the tenth month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 20 June to 18 July, from the Latin messis, harvest, and Greek doron, gift.
Montagnards: Jacobin deputies, collectively known as the Mountain, who occupied the higher seats in the Convention. Originally led by Danton and Robespierre, they helped to form the government after the overthrow of the Girondins.
muscadins: name given to bourgeois youth, particularly the jeunesse dorée, by the Jacobins.
Nivôse: the fourth month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 21 December to 19 January, from the Latin nivosus, snowy.
noblesse de robe: magistrates of the ancien régime who had acquired the status of nobility either by buying or inheriting their office.
ouvriers: urban citizens who worked with their hands, small manufacturers as well as workers.
péquin (pékiri): epithet used by soldiers for a civilian.
Père Duchesne, Le: Hébert’s notorious journal which appeared three times a week between 1790 and 1794 took its name from a stock character of the Théâtre de la Foire. He was depicted as a stove merchant in a vignette at the head of the front page with a pipe in his mouth and tobacco in his hand. Beneath the vignette were the words, ‘Je suis le véritable père Duchesne, foutre.’
philosophes: the writers and philosophers of the middle of the eighteenth century who substituted for traditional beliefs an ideal of social well being based on a trust in the progress of humanity and science. Their ideas influenced many of the revolutionary leaders, as Robespierre was, for instance, influenced by Rousseau and his Contrat social.
physiocrates: writers on economics who believed that the source of national wealth was agriculture and advocated free trade.
Plain: See Marais.
Pluviôse: the fifth month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 20 January to 18 February, from the Latin, pluvial, rain.
Poissarde: fishwife, but also applied to other market-women.
Prairial: The ninth month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 20 May to 19 June, from pré, meadow.
rentier: person whose income comes from investments, man or woman of property.
répresentants en mission: delegates sent out by the Convention to the army and the provinces to explain and enforce its policies.
sans-culottes: literally meaning without breeches, a form of dress associated with aristocrats and the well-to-do; workers wore trousers. The term had political as well as economic significance. Santerre, the brewer, who was rich, liked to consider himself a sans-culotte; so did numerous shopkeepers and master craftsmen who read revolutionary newspapers and pamphlets and influenced their illiterate workmen. But sans-culottes were generally poor, if not so poor that they were more concerned with getting enough to eat than with politics. Pétion defined them, cierks as well as artisans, petty traders and craftsmen as well as labourers, as the ‘have-nots as distinct from the haves’. ‘A great many sans-culottes did not work with their hands,’ Professor Richard Cobb has written, ‘could not tile a roof, did not know how to make a pair of shoes, were not useful. The trouble was that there was a vast range of disagreement about what constituted a sans-culotte, and as in the Year II it was a good thing to be, if one could not get in under one count – social origin, economic status, category of employment – one could go round to the back and get in under quite another – moral worth, revolutionary enthusiasm, simplicity of dress or of manner, services rendered to the Revolution…past sufferings at the hands of various oppressors…The sans-culotte is not an individual with an independent life of his own. It could not be said of him “once a sans-culotte, always a sans-culotte”; for, apart from the difficulties of an exact definition of the status…he exists at all only as a unit within a collectivity, which itself exists only in virtue of certain specific, unusual, and temporary institutions: once the sectionary institutions have been destroyed, or tamed, the sans-culotte too disappears; in his place, there is what there had been before – a shoemaker, a hatter, a tailor, a tanner, a wine merchant, a clerk, a carpenter, a cabinet-maker, an engraver, a miniaturist, a fan-maker, a fencing-master, a teacher. There is nothing left save perhaps the memory of militancy and a hankering after Brave Times, that appear all the braver when remembered under very hard ones. The sans-culotte then is not a social or economic being, he is a political accident.’
sans-culottides: the five days of the Revolutionary Calendar left over after the year had been divided into twelve months of thirty days each. The Convention agreed that they would be feast days celebrating respectively Virtue, Intelligence, Labour, Opinion, Rewards. The sixth extra day in leap year was to be the sans-culottide on which Frenchmen were to come ‘from all parts of the Republic to celebrate liberty and equality, to cement by their embraces national fraternity, and to swear, in the name of all on the altar of the country, to live and die as brave sans-culottes’.
séance-royale: a royal session of the Estates General.
sections: Before the Revolution, Paris was divided into sixty districts. The Commune redivided it into forty-eight sections. Each section had its own particular flavour, its own revolutionary committee and armed force upon which it could rely in times of trouble.
septembriseurs: those responsible for the prison massacres of September 1792, later, like bouveur de sang, a term of opprobrium.
taille: basic tax of the French monarchy during the ancien régime which varied from province to province, being paid in the north on total income and in the south on income from landed property only (taille réelle). The privileged and influential managed to escape paying it so that in practice it was paid almost entirely by the poor, principally the peasants.
taxation populaire: the enforced sale by bakers, grocers and other food merchants of goods at lower prices by mobs that invaded their premises.
Terreur, la: method of revolutionary government by intimidation during which the powers of the state – economic, judicial and military – were used to direct the life of the nation and draconian punishments were inflicted on those who opposed it. Also applied to those periods from October to December 1793 and March to July 1794 when the Jacobins imposed such a government upon France.
Thermidor: the eleventh month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 19 July to 17 August, from the Greek therme, heat, plus doron, gift.
tricoteuse: a woman who sat and knitted during the sessions of the Revolutionary Tribunal and around the guillotine.
Vainqueurs de la Bastille: title bestowed upon those who were able to satisfy the authorities that they had taken an active part in the storming of the Bastille. As they enjoyed a pension and uniform as well as an honoured title, applications to join their number were numerous; and it seems that many Vainqueurs may w
ell have been present in spirit rather than in person.
Vendémiaire: first month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 22 September to 21 October, from the Latin vindemia, vintage.
Ventôse: the sixth month of the Revolutionary Calendar which corresponded with the days from 19 February to 20 March, from the Latin ventosus, windy.
vingtième: originally intended as a five per cent tax on income, it had either been compounded for a lump sum by the privileged orders and by various corporate organizations of the bourgeoisie or had been largely evaded by them by the concealment of their real income. By the time of the Revolution it was mostly paid by the peasants.
APPENDIX 3
Table of principal events
1788
8 August
Announcement of recall of Estates General
25 August
Baron Necker appointed to Ministry
25 September
Paris parlement recommends Estates General should be constituted as in 1614
6 November
Assembly of Notables meets
1789
5 May
Estates General meet at Versailles
4 June
Death of Dauphin
17 June
Third Estate adopts title of National Assembly
19 June
Majority of clergy vote to join Third Estate
20 June
Tennis Court Oath
23 June
Séance royale
26 June
Troops begin to concentrate around Paris
27 June
King orders clergy and nobility to join the Third Estate
11 July
Dismissal of Necker
12–17 July
Riots in Paris
The Days of the French Revolution Page 34