Parisian life under the Directoire

The history of French society during the Directoire depinct the use of the stick during this period as follows :

The war against the Robespierrism found, at the exit of the City Theater, an army ordered for battle. This army, that was reckless to better be brave, called for dangers, fighting and enemy.

They were eager to win, be it by sizing at the collar; they wanted to save themselves from the remorse, to wash themselves from the defeats without resisting, to forget their silence and their slip during the hard days; and they swear the will get revenge on the pommel of their bludgeons.

With the brutality of the revolutionary customs, the stick became l'ultima ratio of the protests.

The stick is not only the sword, the weapon to defend and attack; it outlaws the ostracism applied to the red cap. It doesn't knock only in the name of a cockade or of a party; it bans in the name of fashion; and he seeks more for the way back of the fashion than for the death of the Jacobins.

Among the carmagnoles, the stick open up a way to the grey coats, to the green ties; among the hair shopped heads, the stick open up a way to the curly powdered heads; amid the muddy trousers, the stick open up a way to the tight trousers, to white stockings, to the loose garters.

Those who hold these sticks, are the muscadins-their name coming from the Lyon's apprentices or from the musk drops of the the Ancienne comédie (a treater)-, it doesn't matter.

So, the muscadins, the jeunesse dorée de Fréron (gilded youth), as we say, they are devoted, hearts and wrists, at any power that will bring France back to the country of the youth, the country of gallant habits, gay companies, permitted recreations, the dresses in fashion, the women who are the talk of the town, the balls that make a scene, and the loves that scandalize.

Royalist or republican, the muscadins put their desires before their preferences, their hate before their opinion; they have no flag; they only have a war cry: death to Jacobins, down with the institutions of Saint-Just!

The gilded youth had as natural allies the women. The women, whose opinion is made from emotion, and whom ordinary party if the one of charity, were soon on the side of the persecuted, when these persecuted were only victims, and were not yet a majority. So, the war began by a victory. Women seduce the hearts. The theaters, the actors flare up the imagination. The sticks of the youth bite into the backs of the Jacobins.