The sans-culottes (, "without culottes") were the common people of the lower classes in late 18th century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the Ancien Régime. The appellation sans-culottes refers to their lower class status; culottes were the fashionable silk knee-breeches of the nobility and bourgeoisie, as distinguished from the working class sans-culottes, who traditionally wore pantalons, or trousers, instead. The sans-culottes, most of them peasants and urban labourers, served as the driving popular force behind the revolution. Though ill-clad and ill-equipped, they also made up the bulk of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars.