Les Enragés were a loose amalgam of radicals active during the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

. Politically they stood to the left of the Jacobins

Jacobin Club

The Jacobin Club was the most famous and influential political club in the development of the French Revolution, so-named because of the Dominican convent where they met, located in the Rue St. Jacques , Paris. The club originated as the Club Benthorn, formed at Versailles from a group of Breton...

. Represented by Jacques Roux

Jacques Roux

Jacques Roux was a radical Roman Catholic priest that took an active role in the revolutionary politics of Paris 1789, during the French Revolution...

, Théophile Leclerc

Jean Theophile Victor Leclerc

Jean Théophile Victor Leclerc, aka Jean-Theophilus Leclerc and Theophilus Leclerc d'Oze , was a radical French revolutionist and publicist...

, Jean Varlet and others, they believed that liberty for all meant more than mere constitutional rights. Roux once said that "liberty is no more than an empty shell when one class is allowed to condemn another to starvation and no measures taken against them".

The demands of the enragés included:

• Price controls on grain
• The assignat
  Assignat
  Assignat was the type of a monetary instrument used during the time of the French Revolution, and the French Revolutionary Wars.- France :...
  
  as the only legal tender
• Repression of counterrevolutionary activity
• A progressive income tax

They were supported by the sans-culottes. To the left of the Montagnards

The Mountain

The Mountain refers in the context of the history of the French Revolution to a political group, whose members, called Montagnards, sat on the highest benches in the Assembly...

, the enragés were fought against by Maximilien de Robespierre and reemerged as the group of Hébertistes. Their ideas were taken up and developed by Babeuf and his associates.

Other groups

Another group styling itself les enragés emerged in France in 1968 among students at Nanterre University. They were heavily influenced by the Situationists and would go on to be one of the leading groups in the May 1968 French insurrection.