Glossary of The French Revolution - Political Groupings

Political Groupings

• Royalists or Monarchists – Generally refers specifically to supporters of the Bourbon monarchy and can include both supporters of absolute and constitutional monarchy. See Reactionary.
• Jacobins – strictly, a member of the Jacobin club, but more broadly any revolutionary, particularly the more radical bourgeois elements.
• Feuillants – Members of the Club des Feuillants, result of a split within the Jacobins, who favoured a constitutional monarchy over a republic.
• Republicans – Advocates of a system without a monarch.
• The Gironde – Technically, a group of twelve republican deputies more moderate in their tactics than the Montagnards, though arguably many were no less radical in their beliefs; the term is often applied more broadly to others of similar politics. Members and adherents of the Gironde are variously referred to as "Girondists" ("Girondins") or "Brissotins"
• The Mountain (Montagne) – The radical republican grouping in power during the Reign of Terror; its adherents are typically referred to as "Montagnards".
• Septembriseurs — The Mountain and others (such as Georges Danton) who were on the rise in the period of the September Massacres
• Thermidorians or Thermidoreans– The more moderate (some would say reactionary) grouping that came to power after the fall of the Mountain.
• Society of the Panthéon, also known as Conspiracy of the Equals, and as the Secret Directory – faction centered around François-Noël Babeuf, who continued to hold up a radical Jacobin viewpoint during the period of the Thermidorian reaction.
• Bonapartists – Supporters of Napoleon Bonaparte, especially those who supported his taking on the role of Emperor.
• Émigrés – This term usually refers to those conservatives and members of the elite who left France in the period of increasingly radical revolutionary ascendancy, usually under implied or explicit threat from the Terror. (Generically, it can refer to those who left at other times or for other reasons.) Besides the émigrés having their property taken by the State, relatives of émigrés were also persecuted.