Cordeliers

Cordeliers, branch of the religious order of Franciscans in France, known elsewhere as Observants, and the name of a club of French revolutionaries. The Franciscans were distinguished by their girdles of knotted cord, and the name Cordeliers was derived from the French word for “cord”. A monastery of the Cordeliers near Paris that had been closed early in the French Revolution (1789) became the meeting place in 1790 of a revolutionary club known as the Club of the Cordeliers. In 1793, at the height of the Reign of Terror, the club was led by the radical journalist Jacques René Hébert. In that year it was instrumental in destroying the power of the Girondin moderates, and thereafter was identified with extremist groups that opposed the ruling Jacobin faction. Several members were guillotined in the extermination of the Hébert group in 1794, and the club was outlawed by the Committee of Public Safety in 1795.