Jacobin

(jak'o-bin.) (Fr. Hist.) One of a body of turbulent republican demagogues, who, during the first French Revolution, formed themselves into a political club, 1789, which took its name from their meetings being held in the hall of a building anciently belonging to the Jacobins (a suppre ed order of Dominican monks), in the Rue St. Honoré, Paris. The agitation for the death of the king, the storm which destroyed the Girondists, the excitement of the lowest cla es against the bourgeoisie or middle cla es, and the reign of terror over all France, were the work of the Jacobins. But the overthrow of Robes pierre on the 9th Thermidor, 1794, gave also the death-blow to the Jacobin Club, which, on Nov. 9, was finally closed. [s. 498]