@Bodhioshea @Nochem
People had a common sense of place:
* mountain people are known for their steadfastness;
* in Paris, the moderates and the centrists were busy only in the plain at the time. (On the right bank of the river Seine.)
This opposition was familiar to revolutionaries from a classic text, the ‘Life of Solon’, in which Plutarch describes the political divisions in Athens in these terms: ‘The inhabitants of the mountains strongly supported democracy, those of the plains oligarchy; the inhabitants of the coast formed a third party, in favour of an intermediate form of government…’
(For other readers: i am stressing that ‘democracy’ here means the assembly of the citizens, not a parliament of representatives.)
Left-wing men could be proud of belonging to the mountain as a metaphor of the most difficult policy… if we follow historians Marc Belissa and Yannick Bosc (fr) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX03HWtOEa4