Sans-culottes
The name, though it is about clothing, is actually a way to talk about the sans-culottes' social status. Culottes were the fashionable silk knee-breeches of the 18th-century nobility and bourgeoisie. The working class sans-culottes wore pantaloons, or trousers, instead. The sans-culottes, most of them urban labourers, were the force behind the French Revolution. The other members of the revolution thought that they were "radicals" because they wanted a direct democracy. This would mean that the people would vote on laws themselves, and that there would be no legislature. Though they had bad clothes and equipment, and got little or no support from the rich, they were most of the Revolutionary army and executed many people during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars.