“The rise of the Cordelier Club in France was significant for the revolutionary body.”

Identity. Founded in 1790 in the Cordeliers district of Paris, its full name was the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and its declared purpose was to denounce abuses of power.

What made it significant. Its subscription was deliberately low, admitting artisans, shopkeepers and wage-earners, where the Jacobin Club's fee confined it to the propertied. The Cordeliers were therefore the point at which the sans-culottes entered organised revolutionary politics, drawing strength from a radical quarter with its own sections and National Guard battalions. Its leaders were the revolution's most effective popular communicators — Danton, Marat with L'Ami du peuple, Desmoulins, and later Hébert.

Its interventions.

• It led the demand for a republic after the flight to Varennes, drafting the petition that produced the Champ de Mars massacre in July 1791.
• It was central to the insurrection of 10 August 1792 that overthrew the monarchy.
• It pressed the Convention on price controls, producing the Law of the Maximum.

Its end. Its radicalism outran the Committee of Public Safety; the Hébertists were executed in March 1794 and the club did not survive them.

Significance. It is the clearest institutional link between the Parisian crowd and revolutionary decision-making, showing that the revolution's leftward movement came from organised popular pressure outside the assemblies.