daydreaming

•she/her •🇪🇸💜 •esp/eng/cat •leftist •feminist •bi •my interests are RC, greek mythology, classics, philosophy, politics and especially history— I plan to major in it ❣ I tend to hyper-fixate on topics for months/years (right now frev)

[daintyfairysj]

Happy Birthday to the one and only Jean-Paul Marat!

Went on a nice little café date today in honour of his birthday + a photo of the tattoo I got back in January and the one time I was in Paris and lucky enough to visit the David exhibition

[vamppollution]

liberals be like "I HATE CAPITALISM SMASH THE PATRIARCHY" but start cursing out your entire bloodline when you DARE mention communism.

[robespierres-secret-daughter]

I just realised I have never posted my Robespierre ita bag here on Tumblr.. I spent four hours on it.. I handmade everything...

Anyway here it is(⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠)

(Art credits to @aramistinguette and @theorahsart)

I made it in like.. February?March?Idk it took me a lot of time cuz I don't have a printer or a pinmaker

[itssemisstuff]

Some things Barras said about Josephine in his memoirs

Out of curiosity, I started digging through Barras's memoirs every time he mentioned Josephine. And he really speaks low about her. It seems he has personal beef with her. But anyways, I'll put my favorite fragments:

😐😐😐

Wtf Barras? Holy fanfiction 😭

[janellefeng]

Joyeux anniversaire, Robespierre. Wherever you are, thank you again and here's to another year.

*The biography is called Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life. For the Introduction's title, Peter Mcphee was in fact referencing another quote by another biographer (Janet Malcolm) for a different biography.

[theorahsart]

Happy Birthday to this visionary day dreamer~

[itssemisstuff]

I was running out of ideas for Tomodachi Life, so I decided to create the Marquis de Sade, why not? But then...

YES. Restif de la Bretonne. I created him too.

I just wanted them to have met and try to make them have beef or something, since they hated each other in real life, but instead, de Sade fell for him 😭😭

There we are. I gave Restif a hat to disguise how bald he is lol.

And this is de Sade's room (the why I decided to create him; it's so him lmao)

[ganymedian]

nobody suffers like someone who yearns for a historical figure who died before photographs and audio recordings existed

[ic-napology]

hello gorgeous ~~ i need your help as a joséphine specialist, do you have reliable sources to answer in an educational way to people using the "napoléon reestablished slavery to please joséphine because her family used to own slaves" stance ?

Hi Mathilde! Thanks for asking (and for calling me for gorgeous🤭)

So, my main source - especially for the most controversial topics around Joséphine - is always Pierre Branda's biography, Joséphine - le paradoxe du cygne. He basically states that she never actively encouraged Napoleon towards the reinstatement of slavery and that there's no written evidence of any involvement by her in the matter.

But even better, here on Tumblr @nesiacha is a goldmine of sources and historiographic debates, especially on the subject of Caraibbean history during the Revolution and Napoleonic era - among numerous topics. They know about Joséphine and her relationship with her homeland very well, so they'll complete this answer.

Here are my personal thoughs on the matter, whom I invite people to discuss upon as always, I'll be glad to hear yours too.

It's well known how Napoleon hated women being active and outspoken in political matters, and he certainly didn't encourage his own wife to be so. And he himself would NEVER take political decisions based on such "irrational" things such as feelings - for a woman, of all things. Being a mysoginist and emotionally constipated were the undersides of the intention of being the as rational and level-headed as possible in a leading role, I guess.

I think that behind the decision of reinstating slavery there was rather a comparison with the British Empire, whose economy thrived thanks to colonialism like nobody else. He couldn't cut them from their colonies in West Asia during the campaign of Egypt, so he would try to compete with them on the economic level. So a very pragmatic reason. Not that it makes the decision of reinstating slavery better.

(Also Napoleonic historians like Thierry Lentz debated that Napoleon didn't actually do anything that wasn't happening already as the Revolution had never managed to impose the abolition de facto, but I suspect that it's something said with the intention of making Napoleon look better than reality rather than being balanced and seeking the truth. Fondation Napoléon is very good with sources but can sometimes be a little biased. Here's Branda's, Lentz' and Lheureux-Prévot essay on the subject).

I don't remember if he did it before or making peace with England at Amiens, but they were rivalries no matter the good relationship (which was fragile anyway as we know).

On the other hand, I don't buy Joséphine's neutrality and passivity either. Just like in the matter of her alleged extramarital affairs, a lack of primary sources doesn't automatically deny that something happens. We may lack correspondance proving her involvement on the reinstatement of slavery, but she could still have talked in private with Caraibbean grand blancs and Napoleon.

Branda's biography itself is all about proving how Joséphine had much more agency and business skills than pop culture credits her for. During Thermidor, Thérèse Tallien and her moved mountains in order to save individual friends and friends's friends. And during the Empire she continued to serve as PR between Napoleon and the world.

We also know how partial she was when it came to support friends. Being both a survivor and a woman (=socially underprivileged) taught her not to hold on political ideals but rather on relying on personal relationships, which also came from her Martinican background. Sadly, that also means that she was friends with many other slave owners who had the best interest in maintaining slavery.

So believing that she may have influenced Napoleon in some way the decision of reinstating slavery is the opposite of nonsense.

Hope it's a good answer, I did my best even if I'm not the most expert when it comes to topic of slavery in the Carribean and Napoleon, so I would love to be checked🙏 I loved writing this anyway, bisous✨️

[saintjustitude]

...should I bother to explain the truth to this person? About how the word "terrorist" came into existence?

[theartisticcrow]

I say yes. It'll be fun to watch and there's nothing wrong with knowing more about history

[saintjustitude]

*strerches my fingers*

Alright this is going to be long. I should get some alcohol ready or something.

[saintjustitude]

So I've been working on this for three hours now. Three hours with only one short pause coz I got a phone call. It has not been reread. I need and deserve a fucking break.

Feel free to add comments and corrections. I'm sure I messed up in many many many parts. This is a vulgarization for the uninitiated and I have to summarize and skip some stuff.

But damn I'm exhausted and I want to share this with you first before I add that to a post that already has 11k notes.

If you live anywhere in the Anglosphere, you might have learned about something that happened during the French Revolution as "the Reign of Terror".

95% of what you think you know about this is most likely false. The British propaganda built to distort and demonize the French Revolution was one of the most successful in history.

See, the British Empire and their successor the American Empire need you to believe that the French Revolution was a chaotic, repugnant bloodbath that accomplished nothing. It's actually explained in one chapter of the book by Domenico Losurdo I mentioned earlier:

Now let's go back a bit and talk about the Terror.

First things first, I know you all call it "the Reign of Terror" and I sound like I'm nagging when I say this but: stop calling it that. Terror doesn't reign. It doesn't make sense. The French don't call it that. It's exclusively an Anglophone term to make it sound more sinister.

What you've probably heard is this: there was some guy named Robespierre who went insane, made himself dictator, and killed everyone who disagreed with him via guillotine.

Well, none of that is true.

What we call the Terror (French: la Terreur) is an ill-defined period that's usually set to begin on 5 September 1793 and ends on 28 July 1794.

On 10 August 1792, the palace of the Tuileries was stormed and put an end to the regime of constitutional monarchy they had been trying to establish so far, bit failed for many reasons including the fact Louis XVI was never truly in favor of that, as he proved when he tried to run away from France to join the enemy they were at war with but was caught on 20 June 1791. The chief of State runninh away to join the enemy - lead by his brothers in exile, his wife's family and their many supporters - is obviously a very bad thing that broke everyone's trust in him. The fact he kept vetoing a series of measures in 1792 didn't help either. Nor the fact that on 25 July 1792, the Duke of Brunswick, commander of the Prussian and Austrian armies, issued a threatening "unforgettable vengeance" against all of Paris if harm or humiliation was to be done to the royal family. The Parisians, quite naturally, Did Not Like That. At all. So they did the very thing this douchebag was threatening them not to do: they stormed the palace where the royal family lived, taken prisoners, and led to the Assembly where the people demanded action. The monarchy was abolished. A new Assembly was convened, the National Convention, to create a constitution for the new regime, a Republic.

The first months of the National Convention were mostly busy trying to figure out what to do with the king. They put him on trial - arguably one of the first trial for crimes against humanity as the monarchy itself and the position of king was seen as such. He was found guilty and executed on 21 January 1793.

The next few months were busy working on the Constitution but also marked with severe conflicts within Paris and in all of France. War was still raging at the borders - France was being invaded by a coallition of all the monarchs of Europe who saw the new Republic as an obvious threat to their power. An assembly mostly made of commoners had executed a king who used to derive his power from divine right. The Kingdom of France was one of the most powerful defenders of Rome and Catholicism. The French Revolutionaries had declared an end to The World That Was And Seemed Would Be Forever. It was absolutely devastating to all of Europe and had an impact across the entire world. Saint-Domingue rose up in insurrection in 1791 and became the Republic of Haiti in 1804. The entirery of the status quo was thrown into chaos with both commoners and slaves rising up and demanding power. Capitalism, which was in its beginning stages, was also threatened. This is when conservatism was born as an ideology, and I love linking this video as it does a far better job at explaining it than me:

So to sum things up: most of the world wants to crush the French Republic. The armies of Europe are marching on them. And because things aren't hard enough, civil war breaks out from within with different factions with different goals. By the time they finally finished and proclaimed the Constitution of 1793 on 24 June 1793, one of the most progressive that existed at the time in the world with protections for socio-economical rights that would not be considered again until the 20th century, the state of France was on the brink of disaster. They had to proclaim a state of emergency - something that most liberal democracies accept (and often abuse) nowadays but bizarrely refuse to consider as "justified" for the First French Republic.

Because this state of emergency is what you've learned to call "the Reign of Terror".

What it actually was though was a series of laws and measures taken to fight the wars raging inside and at the border.

Power started to be focussed on an entity called the Committee of Public Safety (French: Comité de salut public, hereafter referred to as the CSP), which basically micromanaged all of France to fix all of the problems. The CSP was first controlled by a political group that came to be known as the Girondins. (France did not have political parties then as we do now.) The Girondins were in a lot of problems because they had defended the king and tried to save his life. They were also more liberal than the more radical Montagnards. Internal fighting ensued. The Montagnards eventually took over, strongly supported by the working class of Paris rallied in what was called the revolutionary sections and the Club des Jacobins, a political club of petit bourgeois and artisans. They were strongly committed to the progressive principles of the Constitution, which basically promised a sort of "Providential" or "Welfare State" that promised to keep the worst impulses of capitalism in check.

On 5 September 1793, the most radical groups of Paris stormed the Convention and demanded they take action: they wanted a revolutionary army, which they got, and that "the Terror be put on the order of the day", which is much more ambiguous. Some historians claim it was approved. Others actually bothered to look into the very detailed accounts of the Assemblies and found out it was... a bit more complicated than that. Long story short: the CSP agreed to take new measures to take care of various urgent problems, notably food scarcity but also the punishment of those seen as responsible for this situation. On October 10th 1793 the Constitution was suspended "until peace" and a revolutionary government was proclaimed instead. The CSP was a de facto executive - though if you want to go into strict terminology, they weren't really. They emanated from the Assembly, thus the legislative branch. The executive, which used to be the king and his ministers, was progressively emptied of its power and transferred to the CSP. The second most important committee at the time, the Committee of General Security (French: Comité de sûreté générale, hereafter referred to as CSG) was put in charge of overseeing the judicial process via the Revolutionary Tribunal.

On 5 September 1793 was also when two more radical deputies, Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne, were added to the CSP which remained mostly the same in composition until 28 July 1794, except from one member, Hérault-Séchelles, who resigned in December 1793 and was later arrested and executed in the Spring of 1794.

The members of the CSP who oversaw the period known as "the Terror" were: Bertrand Barère, Robert Lindet (both elected in April 1793), Georges Couthon (May), André Jeanbon Saint-André (June), Pierre-Louis Prieur, Louis-Antoine Saint-Just (both elected on July 10), Maximilien Robespierre (July 26), Claude-Antoine Prieur, Lazare Carnot (both added in August) and finally Collot d'Herbois and Billaud Varenne (September).

As you might have noticed, Robespierre is only one member among 12 then 11. No, he was not the leader. It was collegial. They didn't always agree. He didn't always get his way - and everyone but two who died with him and the one who resigned survived him. Hérault's execution wasn't because Robespierre had a personal vendetta against him either.

So, what happened, and how does this connect with the creation of the term "terrorist"?

Well, long story short, the CSP struggled with typical inter-leftist fighting. They also fought with the CSG. They were exhausted and worked at least 14 hours a day while being under the constant threat of assassination - and yes, there were attempted assassinations, it wasn't just paranoia. Things got Very Bad and distrust, more than terror, reigned among them. Envy too. Robespierre was never the leader of anything, but he had amassed a huge following and an impressive reputation since had started fighting for the most marginalized all the way in 1789 when he was in the minority position. He was huge. He was popular. To many ordinary people who didn't quite get all the intricacies of collegiality, he was the CSP. He became a symbol. He embodied the most progressive principles of the Revolution, including those he was actually lukewarm about. Collot and Billaud were more to the left than him. While they could sometimes rally Saint-Just to their side, it was much harder to get Robespierre's approval. Robespierre had never been a good team player. He was better at being the Lone Advocate who spoke against the oppressors. But now he was on the government. Ideological and personal conflicts soon ripped the CSP apart: on one side, there was Robespierre, who stopped attending the Committee entirely in the last month of his life. Saint-Just and Couthon were his allies and were left to deal with the others. Saint-André and one of the Prieurs had been dispatched to the West to oversee the war and the armies. Saint-Just was often dispatched to the East and the North. Couthon was disabled and suffered from pain in his legs which caused many absences. Soon from 12 to 11, the Committee was in the hands of only half of them: Barère, Lindet, Collot, Billaud, Carnot and the other Prieur. That Prieur and Lindet mostly did office work concerning the supplying of armies and civilians (food, gunpowder, weapons). Carnot oversaw the armies and though his work was supposed to be shared with Lindet, Prieur and also Saint-Just, he soon decided that should be his domain. Prieur agreed. Saint-Just did not. Lindet was too busy trying to feed all of France to get into the bickering. Barère was the designated spokesperson who gave reports almost daily to the Convention about their work but also news from the war and all the generals and representatives dispatched in war zones who they corresponded with. As such, he was the official organ of government propaganda. Robespierre didn't always agree with what he had to say. Saint-Just didn't approve of how he overdid his praise of military victories, as all of them lived in fear of a Caesar rising from the generals (and wouldn't you know that, it did happen eventually). Collot and Billaud were rightfully bitter that Robespierre was willing to concede and compromise with centrists.

It was a huge fucking mess.

And so the six conspired with most members of the CSG and other representatives to get rid of Robespierre and his allies Saint-Just and Couthon.

Because Robespierre had managed to piss off a whoooole lot of representatives during the last few months for a vast array of reasons, ranging from "petty and absurd" to "legitimately you might have a point", it actually wasn't that hard to turn the entire Convention against him. Propaganda had already been written against him by many of his political opponents through his career, from the Girondins to the Royalists including the British who had every reason in the world to take him down. (For one thing, he was a strong vocal opponent of slavery.) When he was executed on 28 July 1794, followed by a purge of hundreds of people who supported him who were either imprisoned or executed to, all they had to donwas pick up the preexisting narratives circulating against him to build him up ad The Most Evil Dictator of France. Why though? Well everyone had different ideas and the coallition formed against him, known as the Thermidorians, divided just as fast.

The Terror had not been going quite as well as planned. There had been war crimes. There had been sham trials. There had been bad laws that led to a spike in execution in June-July 1794. They needed a scapegoat, and Robespierre was perfect.

But it wasn't enough.

All those who had been suspect and imprisoned were suddenly released after Robespierre's execution. They wanted revenge. Among them you had average people who no doubt had every right to be upset, but also the worst of reactionary scumbags who did want to destroy the Revolution.

And that is when the term "terrorist" was invented.

First it meant the partisans of the Terror, the partisans of Robespierre. But as the reaction progressed, it came to mean the leftists. Collot and Billaud were arrested and deported to Guyana. Others too. The Girondins who had been under house arrest for a long time now rejoined the Convention. The right grew stronger. The Montagne was thinning in numbers and came to be mockingly called the Crest. Those still wanted all the social measures they had adopted during the Terror to continue - because even though the Constitution had been suspended, they still had adopted many of its progressive measures or were in the process to. But the working class supported the Terror. The petit-bourgeois of the Club des Jacobins too. Supporting the Terror meant supporting bloodshed and also the rule of the poor over the rich. The right didn't want the Constitution of 1793 anymore. The liberals who used to support it abandoned it, perceiving it as the root cause for all of this "anarchy". By Spring 1795, after a terrible winter of starvation that wasn't helped by the new losers in charge who decided to deregulate everything and give capitalism a chance, the working class of Paris did rise up. And for the first time since 1789, it was defeated by the bourgeois who no longer aligned with them. It was the end of the popular Revolution: on the 1st Prairial of Year III, 20 May 1795. From now on, the Bourgeois didn't need the People anymore. The Revolution had finally truly been seized by the bourgeoisie. No more compromises. No more leftist policies. or a very brief moment there had been hope for a better world, but it had coincided with bloodshed.

And that is why the political category of "terrorist" was created.

[0cordei0]

Today I'm celebrating my birthday and, since last year I've been obsessed with Robespierre and the French Revolution, my friends gave me this as a gift.

[robespierres-secret-daughter]

I’m new to French Revolution history, can you recommend some recourses and books please? 🥹

Hello citizen (⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠)

I'll try to recommend some books and blogs that I know are trustworthy sources, sorry if it's always the same stuff but I'm trying to start doing research as well and I'm learning as I go.

Anyway for books I'd recommend:

- Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life by Peter McPhee (great book that isn't straight up themidor propaganda)

- liberty or death by Peter McPhee

- Saint-Just by Vinot

- Charlotte Robespierre's memoirs

- Saint-Just, apostle of the terror by Geoffrey Bruun

- Twelve who ruled by Robert Roswell Palmerq

For movies I'd recommend:

le terreur et la vertu

Part 1:

Part 2 :

And if you want to

La révolution française (1989) although that IS NOT accurate and does contain a lot of Thermidorian propaganda so be very careful

Part 1:

Part 2 :

For documentaries

Deconstructing the myth of Robespierre the dictator

And this one as well

Moving onto blogs I'd recommend

@saintjustitude

@anotherhumaninthisworld

That's pretty much it I'm sorry if it's not a lot as I said I'm learning as I go and unfortunately I'm not one of the many trustworthy historians in the community, I gave you where to start and I hope you have fun!(⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

Also you might wanna consider learning french if you don't already know it, you'll need it like air if you want to search deeper

Amuse-toi bien, citoyen! (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

[fuckyeahhistorycrushes]

A couple of weeks ago, someone submitted French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre as their history crush.

While I was pleased to see Robespierre spotlighted, I was not pleased to see how he was depicted. Contrary to popular (and frankly erroneous opinion), Robespierre was not a lunatic, a tyrant, or a mass murderer. He did not “go insane” or kill thousands of people. In fact, he saved thousands and lost his life because of it.

Pretty crush worthy right?

Well, it gets better.

Throughout some of the bloodiest points of the revolution, Robespierre made it his mission to stand up against the very excesses he is now accused of promoting. He protected the lives of thousands of his political enemies, personally intervened in the condemnation of King Louis XVI’s sister (Madame Elisabeth), and promptly scolded/recalled those deputies responsible for military atrocities on the war front.

Robespierre did believe in terror - but his terror was a necessary one, a terror which relied on clemency and reason to achieve its means. It was not “the Terror” we are taught or the the Terror that we know. That terror was the one carried out by Robespierre’s political enemies, enemies who then utilized propaganda to attribute their excesses to Robespierre posthumously.

As the esteemed historian William Doyle writes:

Robespierre himself, he was never a dictator, and there is no reliable evidence to suggest that it was his aim…men called him a dictator because they feared moral inflexibility in one who had power. After they had destroyed him, they used the charge to justify what they had done. It also enabled them to blame him for acts they themselves had helped to commit, but which became increasingly a subject for shame, recrimination, and revenge during the months of retreat from terror and ruthless government which now began.

Need more proof? Put down that AP Euro textbook and look into some accredited works on the subject from JM Thompson, Albert Mathiez, George Rude, or RR Palmer.

Vive Robespierre!  

[itssemisstuff]

Vive Robespierre!

[itssemisstuff]

Was the repression of the Vendée a genocide?

Before discussing this topic, I want to clarify that I am not an expert in the Vendée: I've only read a few books on the subject. So, if I say anything incorrect, I would be very grateful if you would correct me.

I must add that I also haven't read Secher's famous doctoral thesis, but I did read Alberto Bárcena's La Guerre de la Vendée. This book is heavily based on Secher's work, but with an even more religious and idealistic perspective.

The War in the Vendée remains a controversial topic that sparks much debate among historians. It is documented that there were tens of thousands of deaths, the vast majority of them civilians. For this reason, some historians speak of genocide, but that would lead us into unstable territory, as this term is often overused.

Genocide is something very specific and well-defined by the Rome Statute. Genocide is when there is an attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. It's a relatively recent term, coined in the 20th century, in 1944. It was created to name the Nazis' Final Solution for the extermination of Jews in occupied territories. Genocide is the persecution of a group with clearly defined ethnic and religious characteristics to the bitter end. Genocide is a political decision made by a government that believes a group must be eradicated.

In the case of the Vendée, this isn't entirely accurate. The Vendéans were eliminated first by the Convention's army and then by the Directory's because they were considered counter-revolutionary rebels. They were killed not for being Vendéans, nor for being Catholic, but because a significant number of them had taken up arms against the revolution. There was no order from the Convention or the Directory to exterminate Vendéans simply for being Vendéans. The Vendéans didn't even recognize themselves as a specific regional or ethnic group. The objective was to crush a rebellion. Furthermore, many Republicans were also massacred.

In the book I mentioned before, the author argues that the Vendée massacre was a genocide because it was planned by the revolutionary government and that the main cause was religious, since the Revolution was anti-Catholic. I disagree. It is true that the Revolution adopted anti-Catholic measures, but I believe we must try to separate politics from religion —although they were very intertwined at that time. The measures taken were an attempt to dismantle the political power of the Church, not to eliminate the faith itself; there was de-Christianization, but that doesn't represent the entire Revolution. It is true that the Vendée was predominantly Catholic, but they had more reasons to take up arms than that, and, I repeat, they were not eliminated for being Catholic, but for staging an insurrection against the revolutionary government.

It is not my intention to deny that it was a very brutal repression, because it was. But what the revolutionaries did during those years in the Vendée falls into the category of war crimes, or, to be more specific, it could be called populicide (the total or partial annihilation of a people or population by a government—a term coined by Babeuf in 1795 to describe what happened in the Vendée). But it does not fall into the category of genocide. It is incorrect to use that term; if it is used, genocide could also be applied to many other things, and we would be distorting what genocide truly means.

[cowperviolet]

I am currently absolutely fascinated by this primary source find - one of the ‘grievance lists’ (cahiers de doléances) written in 1789. This one was created by a widow from Normandy. And… if half of these lines had been given to a period drama character, the screenwriters would have been raked over the coals for being hamfisted and anachronistic.

[nesiacha]

No, Olympe de Gouges Was Not Executed for Being a Feminist

As @mathildeaquisexta and @robespapier already explained so well in this post, let’s be clear once and for all: Olympe de Gouges was not executed because she was a feminist, nor for any misogynistic reason.

She was executed under suspicion of modérantisme—a political stance that did not necessarily imply opposition to executions or support for clemency—and more crucially, under accusations of counter-revolutionary activity. In her writings, she advocated either a return to constitutional monarchy or the establishment of a federal republic. Given the intense internal and external civil war at the time, such views were considered dangerously destabilizing. The Montagnards, under mounting pressure, resorted to increasingly harsh measures—something that does not excuse their actions, many of which were indefensible, but places them in a broader revolutionary context.

Some sources—though I’ve yet to locate them again, so this should be taken cautiously—even suggest that she may have called for Robespierre’s death. In any case, she was far from the saintly figure some portray her as.

Did Olympe de Gouges deserve to die? Absolutely not. Was her execution condemnable, especially from a human standpoint? Yes. But from a legal perspective—however flawed the laws may have been—her writings were seen as criminal and therefore her trial was not, strictly speaking, unlawful.

Her feminism itself was full of contradictions. She opposed revolutionary women taking up arms, for instance. An interesting detail: historian Mathilde Larrère pointed out in a video that when de Gouges rewrote Article 12 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen(La Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen) for her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (Déclarations des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne), she significantly altered its meaning.

Here is the original Article 12: "The security of the rights of man and citizen requires public military forces: these forces are therefore instituted for the benefit of all, and not for the personal use of those to whom they are entrusted."

Now Olympe's version: "The guarantee of the rights of woman and citizen requires a major utility; this guarantee must be instituted for the advantage of all and for the particular benefit of those to whom it is entrusted."

Where other revolutionary women were requesting weapons—and rightly so, given that they were at war—de Gouges stood firmly against it. At times, I can’t help but wonder if she wasn’t somewhat disconnected from the reality on the ground.

Yes, it's necessary to condemn lynchings, murders, and other excesses of the Revolution. But we must also avoid the "black legend" narrative that demonizes figures like the Montagnards, the CSP of the year II, Hébertistes, or the Enragés, just as we must reject the "golden legend" that romanticizes the Revolution. Much of the Revolution’s progress was driven by violent struggle: the storming of the Bastille, the fall of the Tuileries (which finally removed Louis XVI—a serious threat to the nation and the revolution because of his betrayal), or even the uprisings of enslaved Black people in the colonies.

These were violent acts—but how else could centuries of brutal oppression be overthrown? Enslavers were never going to relinquish power simply because someone asked nicely. The system itself was inventive in its cruelty and designed to resist any path toward Black liberation.

And yet, Olympe de Gouges, despite being an abolitionist, condemned the Haitian revolt in 1792. In a striking and disturbing passage from her play L'Esclavage des Noirs ou l'Heureux Naufrage, she directly addresses the enslaved and says:

"It is to you, now, slaves, men of color, that I am going to speak; I may have undeniable rights to condemn your ferocity: cruel ones, by imitating the tyrants, you justify them. Most of your masters were humane and kind, and in your blind rage, you do not distinguish innocent victims from your persecutors.

Men were not born for chains, and yet you prove they are necessary. If overwhelming force is on your side, why unleash all the furies of your burning lands? Poison, iron, daggers, the invention of the most barbaric and atrocious tortures cost you nothing, they say. What cruelty! What inhumanity! Ah! How deeply you make those groan who sought to prepare, through tempered means, a gentler fate for you — a fate more worthy of envy than all those illusory advantages with which the authors of France’s and America’s calamities have misled you.

Tyranny will follow you, as crime clings to those perverse men. Nothing will ever bring harmony among you. Fear my prediction — you know whether it is founded on true and solid grounds. I speak my oracles based on reason and divine justice. I do not recant: I abhor your tyrants; your cruelties fill me with horror »

Frankly, this is appalling. To suggest that enslaved people—who had endured horrors that defy comprehension—were just as bad as their oppressors is a cruel and absurd false equivalence when we know all the horrors of the slavery system and even if there were deaths on the other side who were truly regrettable, it is clearly not comparable. And what “tyrants” is she referring to? At the time, there was no formal revolutionary government in place in Saint-Domingue. There was no “major force” on their side. At that point in time, slavery had not yet been abolished, and the arrival of Sonthonax — a proponent of the gradual abolition of slavery — marked a turning point. One of the key factors behind the push for abolition was the execution of Louis XVI, which led some white royalist planters to seriously consider turning Saint-Domingue over to the British. In this context, the text appears, in my view, somewhat disconnected from the historical and political realities of the time.

In short, this is a deeply misjudged and insulting passage. That said, she's far from the only historical figure with contradictory views on slavery—Brissot and even Robespierre had their own problematic moments.

To her credit, de Gouges was lucid in other respects. She opposed the war that Brissot advocated, aligning instead—whether consciously or not—with Danton, Robespierre, and Billaud-Varenne, who foresaw the catastrophe it would bring. According to historian Antoine Resche, she supported constitutional monarchy but rejected the property-based voting system (suffrage censitaire).

Still, Olympe de Gouges was not widely known among revolutionary women of her time. Her Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen) had limited impact. The true revolutionary womens "stars" were Théroigne de Méricourt, Pauline Léon, Claire Lacombe, Sophie de Grouchy, Louise Reine Audu, Manon Roland, Louise de Kéralio, Simone Evrard, Albertine Marat, the Ferning sisters, Rosalie Jullien, Sophie Momoro (as Goddess of Reason), Jeanne Odo, and perhaps Marguerite David ( of the group of Enragés).

In fact, it’s likely that de Gouges knew of these women, but not necessarily the other way around. Even after her execution, I’ve found almost no evidence of posthumous recognition during the revolutionary period.

From Year III to IV, women like Sylvie Audouin, Thérésia Tallien, Marie-Anne Babeuf, Sophie Lapierre, and possibly Élisabeth Le Bon (widow of Joseph Le Bon) gained more visibility — though Thérésia and Babeuf were probably more famous than Audouin or Lapierre. Still, Olympe remained largely absent from the collective memory ( at least to my knowledge). So she wasn't completely unknown, but her importance wasn't as great as some people would have us believe.

According to Mathilde Larrère, Olympe de Gouges only emerged from oblivion thanks to feminist Benoîte Groult, who revived her memory and her declaration. This was a fantastic move—it's always good to recover lost revolutionary voices.

But ironically, her legacy has since been co-opted by people who hold a very dark view of the French Revolution, some even veering toward counter-revolutionary ideals—because, yes, de Gouges was a staunch monarchist. Even worse, some who now praise her aren’t feminists at all, but use her image dishonestly to discredit the Revolution as a whole.

And the tragic twist? The women who were famous during the Revolution—Louise-Reine Audu, the Ferning sisters, Sophie Momoro, Marguerite David, Jeanne Odo, Rosalie Jullien, Sylvie Audouin, Sophie Lapierre, Marie-Anne Babeuf, Elisabeth Le Bon, Louise de Kéralio—have largely disappeared from collective memory. Others have been demonized or reduced to caricatures: Pauline Léon, Claire Lacombe, Simone Evrard, Albertine Marat.

Once again, my point is not to demonize Olympe de Gouges, but to highlight the problem of turning her into the only legitimate feminist voice of the French Revolution, while erasing or vilifying all others just because they held different political views.

If people genuinely want to honor Olympe de Gouges, they should portray her in full:

Her strengths—her opposition to property-based voting, her fight for the rights of children born out of wedlock, her courage in speaking out, her revolutionary spirit, her willingness to denounce Louis XVI’s betrayal despite her monarchist leanings.

And her flaws—her rejection of women bearing arms, her naivety about nonviolent change, her harsh and misguided condemnation of enslaved people fighting for their freedom.

She was sincere in her convictions, passionate about justice, and undoubtedly brave. But she was also human, with contradictions and limits like any of us.

One day, I hope to see a real film that portrays all the women of the French Revolution—regardless of their political alignment—without distortion or demonization.

[uoyiiii]

Waterlily LIs if they were cast by different authors

Sasha

Remy (sorry for that)

Anton

Langley

Alice

Wincy

Anastasia