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The aim of the article is to reflect on the notion of the people as a concept in politics. It argues that, thus considered, the concept is an essentially ambiguous one that is caught up in a conflictual field where competing forces struggle to appropriate it, thus conferring on it a meaning which can only be understood in opposition to other valencies. Such an ambiguity can be regarded as the ideological matrix of the opposition between republicanism and populism. It is exhibited in the discursive event which, through the voice of Mirabeau in June 1789, inaugurated the usage of the concept in modern politics. The article will thus examine Hegel’s failed attempt to devise a philosophical conceptualisation of the term, which he finally casts aside in favor of the category of the State. Returning to Mirabeau, it highlights the affective dimension of the word, when the notion is apprehended as a factor of unification of the multitude.