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.
Floréaclass="underline" 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.
Germinaclass="underline" 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.