Two muscadins in 1795
The muscadins were mobs of well-off and dandyish, middle-class young men from Paris, France who formed anti-Jacobin street gangs and took part in the street fighting between the Thermidorians and the Jacobin Club during after the Thermidorian Reaction. The Muscadins' name comes from their musky perfume, they were recognizable by their tight breeches, long tailcoats, tangled haircuts, and were armed with weighted wooden clubs called "constitutions" when carried into battle. National Convention member Louis-Marie Stanislas Freron led 3,000 muscadins in the suppression of the sans-culottes from 1794 to 1795 during the First White Terror, but they became a threat to the Convention after the downfall of the Jacobins. Following the 13 Vendemiaire uprising of 1795, they ceased to hold any power, as they had outlived their usefulness.