The Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: Société des Amis des droits de l'homme et du citoyen [sɔsjete dez‿ami de dʁwa də lɔm e dy sitwajɛ̃]), mainly known as Cordeliers Club (French: Club des Cordeliers [klœb de kɔʁdəlje]), was a populist political club during the French Revolution from 1790 to 1794, when the Reign of Terror ended and the Thermidorian Reaction began.

The club had its origins in the Cordeliers district, a famously radical area of Paris called, by Camille Desmoulins, "the only sanctuary where liberty has not been violated".

[2] Under the leadership of Georges Danton, this district had played a significant role in the Storming of the Bastille and was home to several notable figures of the Revolution, including Danton himself, Desmoulins and Jean-Paul Marat—on whose behalf the district placed itself in a state of civil rebellion, when in January 1790 it refused to allow the execution of a warrant for his arrest that had been issued by the Châtelet.

Having issued in November 1789 a declaration affirming its intent to "oppose, as much as we are able, all that the representatives of the Commune may undertake that is harmful to the general rights of our constituents",[3] the Cordeliers district remained in conflict with the Parisian government throughout the winter and spring of 1790.

A contemporary account describes one meeting: About three hundred persons of both sexes filled the place; their dress was so unkempt and so filthy that one would have taken them for a gathering of beggars.

Large demonstrations in support of this and similar petitions led to civil unrest, and culminated in the Champ de Mars massacre on 17 July.

Subsequent to this insurrection and to the September Massacres that followed closely on its heels, the Cordeliers Club became increasingly the province of ultra-revolutionary factions, particularly the Hébertists, who advocated extreme measures to intensify the Terror.

In the seven numbers of the journal, Desmoulins attacked the Hébertists and called for an end to the Terror, comparing revolutionary Paris to Rome under the tyrants.

The Hébertists were arrested and, on 24 March 1794, executed, but the less extreme Desmoulins, Danton and the "Old Cordeliers" of the Dantonist faction quickly followed them to the guillotine.

The inventory of the pictures found in 1790 in the Cordeliers Convent was published by J. Guiffrey in Nouvelles archives de l’art français, viii., 2nd series, iii.