Muscadin

The term "Muscadin" existed well before the post-Thermidor gangs, who are also referred to as the "jeunesse dorée" ("gilded youth") or simply les jeunes gens ("the young people").

The term had long been current in Lyon, used by the working class of "white-collar" domestic servants, shop boys and clerks of the merchants.

The split among the Jacobins was to be resolved the next year by the execution of both men with many of their respective factions; in the meeting of the Committee of Public Safety that moved against the "Hébertistes" in March 1794, Barère complained that Muscadins, along with foreigners and deserters, were seen to "congregate at the theatre, dressed with ridiculous ostentation, and ... show themselves with dirty stockings, large moustaches, and long sabres, threatening the good citizens, and especially the people's representatives" – he saw them as supporting the ultra-radical "Hébertistes".

However, more muted versions of some of these characteristics can be seen in the self-portrait painted in jail in 1794 by Jacques-Louis David after the fall of the Jacobins; the Muscadins took to extremes elements of the shared fashions of the day.

Their walking sticks, clubs or bludgeons are often thick twisted pieces of wood, perhaps artificially grown in that style; they are supposed to have referred to these as "constitutions".