WOMEN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BY WINIFRED STEPHENS Author of Madame Adam, The France I Know, etc., and Editor of The Book of France NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON CO. 1922 FOREWORD THE Women of the French Revolution is so vast a theme that hitherto, even in France, it has not yet met with anything like exhaustive treatment. Michelet himself - admits that the title of his book, Le Femmes de la Revolution, 1 is misleading, and that he has written of a few heroines rather than of the mass of revolutionary women. A much later writer, M. Adrien Lasserre, in his work on Womens Participa tion in the Revolution 2 says that he has found it impossible to cover completely a field so extensive. The attempt which M. Lasserre has renounced cannot be made here. All I hope to do is to give some idea of the rank and file of revolutionary women and of their famous leaders, during little more than a brief period of five memorable years. That period extends from May, 1789, until July, 1794, with some glances now and then, before and after. One aspect of this subject of revolutionary women their connection with the secret societies of the day I have purposely ignored. It is obscure and highly controversial. Unfortunately, though these societies have been much, written about, and especially of late, it has often been in a partisan spirit. This book will constantly deal with parties, but I trust not in the spirit of a partisan. Of the three methods of treating this subject, the strictly chronological method, the biographical, and a 1 Edition definitive revue et corrigie CEuvres Completes de Michelet, Ernest Flammarion. q La Participation Collective de Femmes la Revolution Franfaise 1906, D FOREWORD classificationaccording to the play of ideas and the modes and fields of action, I have chosen the last. Though it has its drawbacks, one of which is some slight repetition, it seems to me that this method gives the clearest impression of tjie movement as a whole, and of the part women played in it. I have spent some time in the Bibliothque Nationale consulting pamphlets published during the Revolution, and in the Galerie des Estampes looking through portfolios of contemporary prints. Otherwise I can lay no claim to having made any original research. I have reaped where others have sown and gladly do I here acknowledge my debt and record my gratitude first to Professor Aulard for the interest he has taken in this book and the help he has given me in writing it, and then to the works of Professor Albert Mathiez, M. Louis Madelin, M. Adrien Lasserre, M. Leopold Lacour, M. L6on Abensour, Le Baron Marc de Villiers, and other living writers on the Revolution, as well as to their predecessors, who are no longer with us. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS PACK FOREWORD . . . . t ... 5 INTRODUCTION Womans part in the Revolution . . . . .13 CHAPTER I WOMEN AGITATORS Mme Legros succeeds in delivering the prisoner, Latude Women at the taking of the Bastille Women and the food scarcity The womens procession to Versailles The orderly and disorderly elements in the procession and throughout the Revolution Origin of the term Tricoteuse The leaders of the procession Th roigne de M6ricourt Her previous story Her part in the proces sionLa Reine Audu Her trial by the Chatelet Law Court Her imprisonment and subsequent history The result of womens d6but in the Revolution . . .21 CHAPTER II SALONS AND SALONNI RES The new seriousnessPolitical influence of the Revolution salon Marat at Mme Talmas Mme de Condorcet Her early life Marriage Her salon at 1 Hdtel des Monnaies The Lyc6e The salon of Mme Helv6tius at Auteuil The Condorcets at Auteuil Condorcet proscribed and in hid ingHis wifes poverty His death Auteuil after Thermidor Bonaparte at the salon of Mme Helv6tius Her death Mme de Condorcet as a salonniere compared with Mme de Stael The salon of Mme de Stael . ...
