34 10 1079 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven, our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him! With these cries, numbers of the women lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends until they dropped into a passionate swoon, and were only saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled under foot. Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment! This Foulon was at the Hotel de ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs! Armed men and women flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs after them with such a force of suction, that within a quarter of an hour there was not a human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom but a few old crones and the wailing children. No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination, where this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the adjacent open space and streets. The Defarges, husband and wife, The Vengeance, and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance from him in the Hall. "See!" cried Madame, pointing with her knife. "See the old villain bound with ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon his back. Ha, ha! That was well done. Let him eat it now!" Madame put her knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play. The people immediately behind Madame Defarges, explaining the cause of her satisfaction to those behind them, and those again explaining to others, and those to others, the neighboring streets resounded with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge's frequent expressions of impatience were taken up, with marvelous quickness, at a distance: the more readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful exercise of agility climbed up the external architecture to look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph between her and the crowd outside the building. At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of hope or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner's head. The favor was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had got him! It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd. Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch in a deadly embrace. Madame Defarge had but followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied—The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped into the hall, like birds of prey from their high perches—when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, "Bring him out! Bring him to the lamp!" Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go—as a cat might have done to a mouse—and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionately screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the rope was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of. Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint Antoine so shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the dispatched, another of the people's enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him—would have torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company—set his head and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through the streets. Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the children, wailing and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers' shops were beset by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time by embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving them again in gossip. Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened and frayed away; and then poor lights began to shine in high windows, and slender fires were made in the streets, at which neighbors cooked in common, afterwards supping at their doors. Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as of most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meager children; and lovers, with such a world around them and before them, loved and hoped. It was almost morning, when Defarge's wine shop parted with its last knot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to Madame his wife, in husky tones, while fastening the door: "At last it is come, my dear!" "Eh well!" returned Madame. "Almost." Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The Vengeance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have awakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine's bosom. Sortable Date 1859-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, intro. G. K. Chesterton (London: J. M. Dent, [1906] 1955), 218–21. Description An account of the resource Charles Dickens’s (1812–70) novels generally appeared in serial form in popular newspapers. Usually he took his subjects and characters from contemporary English society, but in this novel he created one of the most enduring and pessimistic English–language portrayals of the French Revolution, particularly the fearsome female "knitters" of the Faubourg Saint–Antoine in Paris, like Madame Defarge, to whom he attributes much of the Revolution’s bloodthirstiness. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 586 Title A name given to the resource Dickens, Tale of Two Cities Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/586/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1859 Economic Conditions Popular Politics Public Opinion Sans-culottes Text The Terror The US and Great Britain in Revolution Women Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document This five-member group functioned as the executive for the governmental system created by the Constitution of 1795. As its most visible component, the Directory gave its name to the entire government. It existed from October 1795 to November 1799, when it was overthrown by Napoléon Bonaparte with the assistance of one of the directors, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès. The directors staged a series of coups in Fructidor Year V (August-September 1797) and Floréal Year VI (April-May 1798) to overturn electoral results that they did not like, and the legislature purged the directors in Prairial Year VII. The Directory consolidated many of the gains of the first years of the Revolution and prosecuted the war successfully with the help of its brilliant young general Napoléon Bonaparte, but proved incapable of protecting the republic. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1085 Title A name given to the resource Directory Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/1085/ Glossary Popular Politics Event A non-persistent, time-based occurrence. Metadata for an event provides descriptive information that is the basis for discovery of the purpose, location, duration, and responsible agents associated with an event. Examples include an exhibition, webcast, conference, workshop, open day, performance, battle, trial, wedding, tea party, conflagration. Sortable Date 1795-05-23 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 973 Title A name given to the resource Disarmament of Paris sections by the army. Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/973/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 23, 1795 Timeline Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document In opposition to the wishes of a judicious few (among who was the intelligent De Charmilly) and even to the prohibitions of the government, the impetuous proprietors summoned provincial and parochial meetings, for the purpose of electing themselves to legislative functions; heated resolutions were passed; and eighteen deputies were elected, to represent the island in the meeting of the Estates-General, without any other authority than the noise of demagogues, and their own inclinations. Twelve were never recognized in France, and the other six were received with difficulty. The mulattoes, who could have no share in this self-created body, thought it naturally time to show an attention to themselves; and, accordingly, not only communicated with numbers of their brethren then resident in the mother-country, but augmented those powerful advocates in their behalf, with much more effect than was produced by the self-created body of colonial deputies. The negroes, however, more successful than all, without either deputies or intercessors, obtained, unsolicited, the interest of such a powerful body in their behalf, as to drown the recollection of every other object. A society, in which were enrolled the names of several great and good men, under the title of "The Friends of the Blacks" (Amis des Noirs), circulated its protests and appeals with such vigor, that, before the negroes themselves, although eager and alert in their inquiries, were acquainted with the importance which they had obtained in the deliberations of the mother-country, they were the prominent subjects of conversation and regret in half the towns of Europe. They were not, however, tardy in acquiring this information and though it would be difficult to contemplate any thing in human nature so bad, as to suppose that the highest and best of motives did not actuate so respectable a body as that which composed this society, or the similar establishment which had before obtained in London; yet the unhappy eloquence with which the miseries of slavery were depicted by them, and the forcible points of view in which all the errors of their opponents were placed, as well as the enthusiasm, which always accompanies the exertions of ardent minds, were certainly the cause of bringing into action, on a broad basis, that spirit of revolt which only sleeps in the enslaved African, or his descendant and which has produced on their side, and on that of the white inhabitants of the colonies, such horrors as "make ev'n the angels weep." I conclude this account of the origin of the revolution of St. Domingo, with observing how much better it would have been for themselves, and perhaps for humanity, if happily discerning the signs of the times, the planters of this delightful and flourishing colony (a character which none have attempted to deny it), by resigning an overweening fondness for dominion, and an undue avarice of gain, had rather calmed than provoked the dissentions of those whose interest should have bid them to agree and by softening the evils of a state which is so bad in its best form, have conciliated the affections of those to whose labors, under the present regimen, every thing productive of wealth or prosperity must depend. A partial concession to those who, by complexion itself, claim half a right to political existence, would have been sufficient: with a little regard for the morals of a people who require them the most, and a revolution in their own minds, as far as human nature will admit. These would have preserved to them, now lingering in a melancholy exile, if not the sudden victims of their impolicy, an island the boast of the new world, and a powerful support of the old. If they had then contemplated some more legitimate means of prosecuting the labors, of their colony, they might, however immediately unavailing, have laid a foundation for their posterity more lasting than the bequest of inordinate wealth, and have claimed the approbation of society. Sortable Date 1805-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Marcus Rainsford, An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti: Comprehending a View of the Principal Transactions in the Revolution of Saint-Domingo; with its Ancient and Modern State (London, 1805), 106–8. Description An account of the resource Rainsford wrote one of the first favorable accounts of the Haitian Revolution. He blamed the colonists for refusing to alter the slave system. Our excerpts begin with reactions to the revolution in mainland France in 1789 and continue through the death in prison in France of Toussaint L’Ouverture in 1803. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 603 Title A name given to the resource Discontent Spreads from An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/603/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1805 Popular Politics Text Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Report of the Committee Charged with Analyzing Constitutional Projects The general idea aroused by the word citizen is that of a member of the polity, of civil society, of the nation. In a strict sense, it signifies only those who are admitted to the exercise of political rights, to vote in the people's assemblies, those who can elect and be elected to public offices; in a word, the members of the sovereign. Thus children, the insane, minors, women, and those condemned to corporal punishment or to a loss of civil rights until their rehabilitation, would not be citizens. But in common usage, this expression is applied to all those who form the social body, that is, who are neither foreigners nor civilly dead, whether or not they have political rights; finally, to all those who enjoy the fullness of civil rights, whose person and goods are governed in all things by the general laws of the country. These are citizens in the most ordinary language. . . . I conclude from this that the denomination of active citizen, invented by Sieyès, would still be useful even today; it would bring clarity to our constitutional language. . . . There are essential conditions for being an active citizen: namely, a suitable age, the use of reason, the declaration of wanting to belong to the French nation, a time of residence after that declaration which would make apparent the persevering will to belong to this nation, and not to have been deprived by court judgment of the quality of citizen or of the right to vote. Before turning to the question of age, we must speak about sex. The committee appears to exclude women from political rights, but several projects have opposed this exclusion; our colleague Romme [another deputy] has already brought you his complaints, and Guyomar has given us an interesting dissertation on the subject. It is true that the physique of women, their goal in life, and their position distance them from the exercise of a great number of political rights and duties. Perhaps our current customs and the vices of our education make this distancing still necessary at least for a few years. If the best and most just institutions are those most in conformity with nature, it is difficult to believe that women should be called to the exercise of political rights. It is impossible for me to think that taking everything into consideration, men and women would gain anything good from it. Sortable Date 1793-04-29 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The materials listed below appeared originally in The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt (Bedford/St. Martin's: Boston/New York), 1996, 132–35. Description An account of the resource In the discussion of a new constitution in April 1793, Jean–Denis Lanjuinais spoke for the constitutional committee. He admitted that the question of women’s rights had aroused controversy. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 484 Title A name given to the resource Discussion of Citizenship under the Proposed New Constitution (29 April 1793) Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/484/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 29, 1793 Laws Public Opinion Text Women Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Fabre d'Eglantine, 29 October 1793 There have already been troubles about the cockade [the tricolor ribbon decoration used to signify support of the Revolution]; you have decreed that women should wear it. Now they ask for the red cap [of liberty]. They will not rest there; they will soon demand a belt with pistols. These demands will coincide perfectly with the maneuvers behind the mobs clamoring for bread, and you will see lines of women going to get bread as if they were marching to the trenches. It is very adroit on the part of our enemies to attack the most powerful passion of women, that of their adornment, and on this pretext, arms will be put into their hands that they do not know how to use, but which bad subjects would be able to use all too well. This is not even the only source of division that is associated with this sex. Coalitions of women are forming under the name of revolutionary, fraternal, etc. institutions. I have already clearly observed that these societies are not at all composed of mothers, daughters, and sisters of families occupied with their younger brothers or sisters, but rather of adventuresses, female knights-errant, emancipated girls, and amazons. (Applause) I ask for two very urgent things because women in red caps are in the street. I ask that you decree that no individual, under whatever pretext, and on pain of being prosecuted as a disturber of the public peace, can force any citizen to dress other than in the manner that he wishes. I ask next that the Committee of General Security make a report on women's clubs. (Applause) Decree: No person of either sex may constrain any citizen or citizeness to dress in a particular manner. Everyone is free to wear whatever clothing or adornment of his sex seems right to him, on pain of being considered and treated as a suspect and prosecuted as a disturber of public peace. Amar, 30 October 1793 In the morning at the market and charnel-house [mortuary] of the Innocents, several women, so-called women Jacobins, from a club that is supposedly revolutionary, walked about wearing trousers and red caps; they sought to force the other citizenesses to adopt the same dress. Several have testified that they were insulted by these women. A mob of some 6,000 women formed. . . . Your committee believed it must go further in its inquiry. It has posed the following questions: (1) Is it permitted to citizens or to a particular club to force other citizens to do what the law does not command? (2) Should the gatherings of women convened in popular clubs in Paris be allowed? Do not the troubles that these clubs have already occasioned prohibit us from tolerating any longer their existence? These questions are naturally complicated, and their solution must be preceded by two more general questions: . . . 1. Should women exercise political rights and get mixed up in the affairs of government? Governing is ruling public affairs by laws whose making demands extended knowledge, an application and devotion without limit, a severe impassiveness and abnegation of self; governing is ceaselessly directing and rectifying the action of constituted authorities. Are women capable of these required attentions and qualities? We can respond in general no. . . . 2. Secondly, should women gather together in political associations? . . . No, because they will be obliged to sacrifice to them more important cares to which nature calls them. The private functions to which women are destined by nature itself follow from the general order of society. This social order results from the difference between man and woman. Each sex is called to a type of occupation that is appropriate to it. Its action is circumscribed in this circle that it cannot cross over, for nature, which has posed these limits on man, commands imperiously and accepts no other law. Man is strong, robust, born with a great energy, audacity, and courage; thanks to his constitution, he braves perils and the inclemency of the seasons; he resists all the elements, and he is suited for the arts and difficult labors. And as he is almost exclusively destined to agriculture, commerce, navigation, voyages, war, to everything that requires force, intelligence, and ability, in the same way he alone appears suited for the profound and serious cogitations that require a great exertion of mind and long studies and that women are not given to following. . . . In general, women are hardly capable of lofty conceptions and serious cogitations. And if, among ancient peoples, their natural timidity and modesty did not permit them to appear outside of their family, do you want in the French Republic to see them coming up to the bar, to the speaker's box, to political assemblies like men, abandoning both the discretion that is the source of all the virtues of this sex and the care of their family? Decree: The clubs and popular societies of women, under whatever denomination, are prohibited. Sortable Date 1793-10-29 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The materials listed below appeared originally in The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt (Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1996), 135–138. Description An account of the resource On 29 October 1793, a group of women appeared in the National Convention to complain that female militants had tried to force them to wear the red cap of liberty as a sign of their adherence to the Revolution, but they also presented a petition demanding the suppression of the women’s club behind these actions. Their appearance provided the occasion for a discussion of women’s political activity more generally. Philippe Fabre d’Eglantine (1755–94) gave a speech denouncing both the agitation about dress and the women’s clubs. Fabre, a well–known poet and playwright, took an active role in the dechristianization movement that was getting under way in the fall of 1793. He went to the guillotine in April 1794, supposedly for financial fraud but really for opposing Robespierre’s policies. (Robespierre distrusted the dechristianization movement) The National Convention immediately passed a decree reaffirming liberty of dress but put off to the next day consideration of the clubs. On 30 October 1793, Jean–Baptiste Amar (1755–1816) spoke for the Committee of Public Security and proposed a decree suppressing all women’s political clubs, which passed with virtually no discussion. He outlined the government’s official policy on women: women’s proper place was in the home, not in politics. Broad agreement about the role of women did not prevent internal dissension among the men. Amar himself denounced Fabre a few months later and then joined the opposition to Robespierre in July 1794, which ended in Robespierre’s own execution. The club at issue in the October debate was the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, founded in May 1793 to agitate for firmer measures against the country’s enemies. The club supported the establishment of companies of amazons, armed to fight internal enemies, but it did not advance specifically feminist demands such as the demand for the right to vote. Nonetheless, the deputies found any organized women’s political activity threatening and forbade it henceforth. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 294 Title A name given to the resource Discussion of Women’s Political Clubs and Their Suppression, 29–30 October 1793 Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/294/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 29, 1793 Popular Politics Sans-culottes Text The Terror Women Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document There have already been troubles about the cockade [the tricolor ribbon decoration used to signify support of the Revolution]; you have decreed that women should wear it. Now they ask for the red cap [of liberty]. They will not rest there; they will soon demand a belt with pistols. These demands will coincide perfectly with the maneuvers behind the mobs clamoring for bread, and you will see lines of women going to get bread as if they were marching to the trenches. It is very adroit on the part of our enemies to attack the most powerful passion of women, that of their adornment, and on this pretext, arms will be put into their hands that they do not know how to use, but which bad subjects would be able to use all too well. This is not even the only source of division that is associated with this sex. Coalitions of women are forming under the name of revolutionary, fraternal, etc., institutions. I have already clearly observed that these societies are not at all composed of mothers, daughters, and sisters of families occupied with their younger brothers or sisters, but rather of adventuresses, female knights-errant, emancipated girls, and amazons. (Applause) I ask for two very urgent things because women in red caps are in the street. I ask that you decree that no individual, under whatever pretext, and on pain of being prosecuted as a disturber of the public peace, can force any citizen to dress other than in the manner that he wishes. I ask next that the Committee of General Security make a report on women's clubs. (Applause) Decree: No person of either sex may constrain any citizen or citizeness to dress in a particular manner. Everyone is free to wear whatever clothing or adornment of his sex seems right to him, on pain of being considered and treated as a suspect and prosecuted as a disturber of public peace. Sortable Date 1793-10-29 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The materials listed below appeared originally in The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt (Bedford/St. Martin's: Boston/New York), 1996, 135–36. Description An account of the resource On 29 October 1793, a group of women appeared in the National Convention to complain that women militants had tried to force them to wear the red cap of liberty as a sign of their adherence to the Revolution, but they also presented a petition demanding the suppression of the women’s club behind these actions. Their appearance provided the occasion for a discussion of women’s political activity more generally. Philippe Fabre d’Eglantine (1755–94) gave a speech demanding freedom of dress and denouncing all women’s "coalitions." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 486 Title A name given to the resource Discussion of Women’s Political Clubs and Their Suppression, October 29–30, 1793 Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/486/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 29, 1793 Clubs Public Opinion Sans-culottes Text The Terror Women Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document In the morning at the market and charnel-house [mortuary] of the Innocents, several women, so-called women Jacobins, from a club that is supposedly revolutionary, walked about wearing trousers and red caps; they sought to force the other citizenesses to adopt the same dress. Several have testified that they were insulted by these women. A mob of some 6,000 women formed. . . . Your committee believed it must go further in its inquiry. It has posed the following questions: 1) Is it permitted to citizens or to a particular club to force other citizens to do what the law does not command? 2) Should the gatherings of women convened in popular clubs in Paris be allowed? Do not the troubles that these clubs have already occasioned prohibit us from tolerating any longer their existence? These questions are naturally complicated, and their solution must be preceded by two more general questions: . . . 1) Should women exercise political rights and get mixed up in the affairs of government? Governing is ruling public affairs by laws whose making demands extended knowledge, an application and devotion without limit, a severe impassiveness and abnegation of self; governing is ceaselessly directing and rectifying the action of constituted authorities. Are women capable of these required attentions and qualities? We can respond in general no. . . . 2) Secondly, should women gather together in political associations? . . . No, because they will be obliged to sacrifice to them more important cares to which nature calls them. The private functions to which women are destined by nature itself follow from the general order of society. This social order results from the difference between man and woman. Each sex is called to a type of occupation that is appropriate to it. Its action is circumscribed in this circle that it cannot cross over, for nature, which has posed these limits on man, commands imperiously and accepts no other law. Man is strong, robust, born with a great energy, audacity, and courage; thanks to his constitution, he braves perils and the inclemency of the seasons; he resists all the elements, and he is suited for the arts and difficult labors. And as he is almost exclusively destined to agriculture, commerce, navigation, voyages, war, to everything that requires force, intelligence, and ability, in the same way he alone appears suited for the profound and serious cogitations that require a great exertion of mind and long studies and that women are not given to following. . . . In general, women are hardly capable of lofty conceptions and serious cogitations. And if, among ancient peoples, their natural timidity and modesty did not permit them to appear outside of their family, do you want in the French Republic to see them coming up to the bar, to the speaker's box, to political assemblies like men, abandoning both the discretion that is the source of all the virtues of this sex and the care of their family? Decree: The clubs and popular societies of women, under whatever denomination, are prohibited. Sortable Date 1793-10-29 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The materials listed below appeared originally in The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt (Bedford/St. Martin's: Boston/New York), 1996, 136–38. Description An account of the resource In a follow–up to Fabre d’Eglantine’s speech on 29 October, Jean–Baptiste Amar proposed an official decree on 3 October forbidding women to join together in political associations. A deputy tried to argue that this notion ran contrary to the right of freedom of association, but he was shouted down by the other deputies. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 487 Title A name given to the resource Discussion of Women’s Political Clubs—Amar Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/487/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 29, 1793 Clubs Public Opinion Sans-culottes Text The Terror Women Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document At that time, counting on the new principles of the National Convention, I thought I would be able to take advantage of the circumstances and go up to the rostrum to deliver a legitimate criticism of the Montagnards for their disgraceful practices towards the "people's appellate" (i.e., in the trial of Louis XVI), and towards the Nation's representatives who they had stifled. They suspected my intentions when they saw me at the rostrum, where no deputy from the Right had appeared in a long time. They did not want to hear me. But times had changed, and I forced them to give me the floor. My speech, which was nothing more that a motion calling for the freedom of opinion, was delivered on 4 Fructidor, Year II [21 August 1794], a little more than three weeks after the fall of Robespierre. I gave them nothing that they could use against me. I made them listen, however, to the truths that reminded several Montagnards how unjust a persecution is that can lead to the gallows simply for having an opinion. This reprimand was taken to heart, since Bentabolle, during this same session, took the floor and said: "Among the opinions offered to the Tribunal, I noticed Durand-Maillane's, for which I request that he give us a report. Every honest man should want that the freedom of opinion never be jeopardized by unproven charges or invective. We should not swear at men whom we look upon as 'weak beings' in order to shackle the opinions that they only want to express for the good of the People. If someone here believes that they should make a serious reproach toward one of his colleagues, let him explain himself and stipulate the facts, not just offer insults. Let the accused be heard, and let us not seek to make people fear from threats. Only the conspirators should be afraid." [Excited applause.] This is what is written in the Journal of Debate on the session of 4 Fructidor, Year II. Bentabolle's proposition requesting a report on my motion was rightfully argued against, since the freedom of opinion is the right of a representative of the people, and that without this freedom, the entire State would be oppressed. Also, far from wanting either a report or a decree on this matter, I proposed that only those who were against this sacred right receive a punishment. In addition, Bentabolle's language made it clear how the Montagnards judged the silence of their colleagues on their right. They called them the "weak beings," a name which, if they were right, was a serious charge against us, since we were sent by the Nation to uphold its interests. To neglect those interests, or sacrifice them through weakness, would have been a real failure to do our duty. But we only had the appearance of weakness, because, not being able to fight the follies of the Mountain under pain of death, our inertia was but a great strength. We preferred the dangers, the disrespect, the humiliations with which we were bombarded, than giving in to being accomplices of the Mountain for our own safety. Nothing was easier for us than to line up in the reassuring ranks of our dominators. But the price to pay for this peace was worse than death. . . . There was, in the space that separated the Right from the Mountain, a spot in the hall that was called "the stomach." Those that sat there were not of the Right, they did not share in our humiliations, but neither did they have the courage to disprove the evil done by the left side by sitting so close. They had nonetheless the silly pride to call themselves wiser that those on their right, even though they were less courageous, and alone deserved the name "weak beings." Sortable Date 1794-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mathurin de Lescure, ed., Mémoires sur les assemblées parlementaires de la révolution, 2 vols. (Paris: Firmin-Didot et cie, 1881), 2:410–13. Translated by Exploring the French Revolution project staff from original documents in French found in John Hardman, French Revolution Documents 1792–95, vol. 2 (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1973), 263–64. Description An account of the resource In condemning Robespierre on 9 Thermidor, the Convention deputies did not necessarily intend to end the Terror as much as prevent Robespierre and his followers from turning it on them. Yet in the weeks and months that followed, it became clear that Thermidor had been a turning point away from "revolutionary government" and toward a revival of procedural, parliamentary politics. In this passage from the memoirs of a Thermidorean Convention deputy named Pierre–Toussaint Durand–Maillane, we see how it once again become politically feasible to express differences of opinion without fear of being brought before a Revolutionary Tribunal. Note the expectation that people are "weak beings" who cannot be, as Robespierre had demanded, constantly virtuous or spontaneously aligned with the "general will." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 448 Title A name given to the resource Dismantling the Terror: Parliamentarianism Reasserted Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/448/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1794 Clubs Laws Text The Terror Event A non-persistent, time-based occurrence. Metadata for an event provides descriptive information that is the basis for discovery of the purpose, location, duration, and responsible agents associated with an event. Examples include an exhibition, webcast, conference, workshop, open day, performance, battle, trial, wedding, tea party, conflagration. Sortable Date 1774-08-24 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 751 Title A name given to the resource Dismissal of Maupeou and Terray. Restoration of parlements. Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/751/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 24, 1774 Timeline