Sansculottes

Sansculottes, i.e. 'without breeches,' was the name given in scorn, at the beginning of the French Revolution, by the court party to the democratic party in Paris. The latter accepted the title with pride, and used it as the distinctive appellation of a 'good patriot.' According to the current interpretation in England (as in Carlyle's works), a sansculotte was a radical revolutionist who made a point of neglecting his apparel, and cultivating rough and cynical manners. But Littre makes no mention of breechlessness in the sense of raggedness in his definition of the word; on the contrary, he says that the sansculottes 'were so called because they gave up the knee-breeches in fashion during the ancien régime and took to wearing trousers or pantaloons.'