THE GENS DE METIER OF PARIS, both masters and journeymen, were active in the Revolution from the start. They constituted the numerical majority of the Parisian menu peuple (little people or populace), and they participated in large numbers in all of the great popular movements of the Revolution. According to George Rudé's figures, for example, workers and masters in the arts and trades of Paris made up some 75 to 80 percent of those who took part in capturing the Bastille. They continued to play a central role in the Parisian revolution, participating prominently in the insurrections that toppled the monarchy in 1792 and purged moderates from the Legislative Convention in 1793. Moreover, it was workers and masters in the Parisian trades- shoemakers and tailors, locksmiths and stonecutters, hatters and typographers, jewelers and wheelwrights, brewers and pastrycooks - who made up the mass of the sans-culotte movement of 1792 to 1794 and gave the Committee of Public Safety the popular backing it needed to carry through its resolute and merciless policies when the Revolution was most in danger. The victory of the Revolution over the leagued monarchs of Europe and over the internal rebellions of the Federalists and the Vendee was in no small part due to the limitless energy and the fanatical patriotism of the Parisian sans-culottes.

The patriotism of the gens de metier did not mean that they had abandoned their corporations- at least not in the beginning.