Sans-culottes

In the French Revolution, the sans-culottes ("without culottes", from cul, bottom, arse) were the radical left-wing partisans of the lower classes; typically urban laborers, which dominated France. Though ill-clad and ill-equipped, they made up the bulk of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars. The appellation refers to the fashionable culottes (silk knee-breeches) of the moderate bourgeois revolutionaries, as distinguished from the working class sans-culottes, who traditionally wore pantalons (trousers).