Member of the Jacobin Club, founded in 1789 and dominated by Robespierre in the most radical phase of the Revolution, the Terror. The club was closed in November 1794. After the Revolution, conservatives began to use the word as an insult against any politician who seemed revolutionary to them.
Where It Appears
- Book I, Chapter 18: A king in Verrières
- Book II, Chapter 1: The pleasures of the country
- Book II, Chapter 9: The ball
Quotes
There was a Te Deum, clouds of incense, endless volleys of muskets and artillery; the peasants were drunk with happiness and devotion. A day like that undoes the work of a hundred issues of Jacobin newspapers.
Book I, Chapter 18: A king in Verrières, the narrator
You and I, at this dinner, will be the only ones without a stain of blood, but I will be despised and almost hated as a bloodthirsty Jacobin monster, and you, despised simply as a man of the people, an intruder in good society.