Question

Who was the leader of Jacobins?
a. Robespierre
b. Rousseau
c. Locke
d. Montesquieu

Answer 1

Hint:
During the French Revolution of 1789, he was a radical Liberal and a central figure. He briefly chaired the powerful Paris-based Jacobin Club, a political club.


Complete step by step solution:
In the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre was a radical Jacobin leader and one of the principal figures. Maximilien-François-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre was his full name. He was born in Arras, France, on May 6, 1758. The Committee of Public Safety, the principal organ of the Revolutionary government during the Reign of Terror, came to dominate in the latter months of 1793, but in 1794 he was overthrown and executed in July 1794 in the Thermidorian Reaction.

Jacobin Party, also known as “Jacobins” by name was the French Revolution's most prominent political group, associated with extreme egalitarianism and violence and associated with extreme egalitarianism and violence.

The Jacobins emerged at Versailles as the Club Breton, where the deputies of Brittany to the Estates-General (later the National Assembly) of 1789 met to arrange their operation with deputies from other parts of France. The party was reconstituted, possibly in December 1789, under the name of the “Society of the Friends of the Constitution”, after the National Assembly moved to Paris, although it was usually called the “Jacobin Club” because its sessions were held in a former convent of the Dominicans, known as the Jacobins in Paris. Its goal was to defend the revolution's gains against a potential aristocratic reaction. The club soon welcomed non-deputies and gained members across France, typically wealthy bourgeois and men of letters. By July 1790, the Parisian club and 152 associate clubs had around 1,200 members.

In July 1791, following Louis XVI’s failed attempt to leave France, the Jacobin Club split over a petition calling for his expulsion; several of the moderate deputies left to join the rival Feuillant club. One of the few deputies who remained was Maximilien Robespierre, and he took on a position of prominence in the club.


Hence, the correct answer is option A.

Note:
 In several senses, the political terms Jacobin and Jacobinism are used today. It is often used as a pejorative for radical left-wing revolutionary politics in Britain, where the word Jacobin is primarily linked to The Mountain of the French Revolution and not something to do with Jacobitism, a political movement a century earlier linked to James I, particularly when it exhibits dogmatism and violent repression.