Enragés (nonfiction)
The Enraged Ones (French: Les Enragés) were a small number of firebrands known for defending the lower class and expressing the demands of the radical sans-culottes during the French Revolution.
They played an active role in the May 31-June 2, 1793 Paris uprisings that forced the expulsion of the Girondins from the National Convention, allowing the Montagnards to assume full control.
The Enragés became associated with this term for their angry rhetoric appealing to the Convention to take more measures that would benefit the poor.
Jacques Roux, Jean Varlet, Théophile Leclerc, and Claire Lacombe, the primary leaders of the Enragés, were strident critics of the Convention for failing to carry out the promises of the Revolution.
The Enragés were not a unified party. Rather, the individual figureheads that comprised the group identified as the Enragés worked for their own objectives, and evidence of cooperation is inconclusive. As individual political personalities, the Enragés were cynical to the point of anarchism, suspicious of most political organizations and individuals, and they resisted ties to others.
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