Revolutionary Tradition and Les Mis

 

Revolution 1789

 

People

--The Monarchy

--Desmoulins

--Robespierre

--Danton

--Marat

--Jacobins

--Sans-culottes

--Napoleon

 

Events

--Tennis Court Oath

--Fall of the Bastille

--October Days

--Varennes

--Declaration of War

--Palace Invaded

--Louis XVI

--Reign of Terror

-- Fall of Robespierre

--At war

--Napoleon

 

 

Timeline

 

1789 in Les Miserables

--The Terror

--The People

--The Students

--Revolutionary

--The Monarchy

--Philosophy

 

Monuments

--Elephant

--Bastille

• Kings

--L'arc

--Place de Concord

--Pantheon

• People of

--Tuileries

--Notre Dame

--Elysées

 

Daily Sites

--Restraunts

--Cafes

--Street Names

--Guillotine

• # dead

--Children's Names and Games

 

Works Consulted

Dowd,The French Revolution, p. 7

Anonymous print from Dowd In this allegorical drawing some typical san-culottes dance around a liberty tree. Onthe right is the captured Bastille, and on the left is the Austrian army. The patriotic ardor of the sans-culottes is clearly expressed here.

The Sans-Culottes were the working men of Paris, who longed for a political voice in the tumultous political scene of the early 1790s. The man who provided them with a place to air their political views was George Jacques Danton. He founded the Cordeliers Club to give the Sans-Culottes a voice in government because they were too poor to qualify as voters. Members paid a few cents a month for the privilege of gathering as a group and hearing the Club's prominent members speak (Camille Desmoulins and Jean Paul Marat were among them). The sans-culottes circulated petitions that demanded the removal of the King and the declaration of a republic. Although their petitions were initially rejected, their demands were eventually met as the Revolution played out. The sans culottes were a powerful force in Paris throughout the Revolution, but disappeared from the political scene when Robespierre fell from power in 1794.

This sketch of a sans-culotte was taken from Decaux. This man is a sterotypical sans-culotte. He weres pants, and not breeches and a red stocking cap known as a bonnet rouge. His pants are red, white and blue: the colors of the French flag. He carries both a sword and a pike and appears ready to fight for France.