Feuillants

Feuillants (föyäN`), political club of the French Revolution. It emerged in July, 1791, when those Jacobins who opposed a petition for the dethronement of the king split off and began to meet at the former Feuillant convent. Its chief member was Antoine Barnave. The Feuillants advocated a constitutional monarchy. In Mar., 1792, Girondists helped overthrow the Feuillant ministry, which opposed war against Austria. From then on, the Feuillants were identified with the royalists and aristocrats and, after the fall (Sept., 1792) of the monarchy, were suppressed by the Jacobins.

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Feuillants 

members of a political club in Paris founded in July 1791, during the French Revolution. The group was named after the site of its meetings, a room at the Abbey of Feuillants; the full name was the Society of Friends of the Constitution, Meeting at the Feuillants’.

The Feuillant Club was composed of members of the big bourgeoisie who supported a constitutional monarchy and members of the liberal aristocracy who had left the Jacobin Club after its adoption on July 16, 1791, of a petition demanding the overthrow of the king. A. Barnave, A. Lameth, and A. Duport played a leading role among the Feuillants. At the open legislative meeting of the Feuillants on Oct. 1, 1791, the group’s right wing gained a dominant position. Representing the interests of the big bourgeoisie, it attacked the republic and called for the strengthening of the constitutional monarchy within the framework of the Constitution of 1791. After the overthrow of the monarchy on Aug. 10, 1792, the Feuillant Club ceased to exist.

The term “Feuillants” is also frequently used in the literature for a group of constitutional monarchists between 1789 and 1791, when the Feuillant Club had not yet been founded.