The Gilded Youth of Thermidor

By François Gendron and James Cookson

The jeunesse dor e, or "gilded youth," were a parallel militia recruited from the ranks of minor officials and small shopkeepers. They formed a distinctive subculture, defined by age and social origin, with their own forms of extravagant dress, their own anthem ("Le R veil du Peuple"), their own affectations of speech, their own regular meeting-places in the caf s of the Palais-Royal, and even their own passwords, which were usually indirect references to Louis XVII. Gendron sees them as the shock-troops of the Thermidorian Convention, encouraged and sometimes employed by its Committee of General Security to force the pace of the reaction against the "terrorists," the sans-culottes. This provocation led to the uprisings of Germinal and Prairial and the consequent eviction of the sans-culottes from the political arena. Social historians such as Albert Soboul have written mainly about the sans-culottes at the peak of the Revolution. In focusing on the jeunesse dor e, Gendron highlights the ways in which, although initially used as a means to counteract the revolts of the sans-culottes, they were to become one of the driving forces of the reaction, carrying the Convention well beyond its political aims. This work, available in French since 1979, won the M daille d'Argent du Prix Biguet (Acad mie Fran aise). This translation will be welcomed by English-speaking historians and students of the French Revolution.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 077350902X
• ISBN13: 9780773509023
• Release Date: March 1993
• Publisher: Carleton University Press
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.2" x 9.1"