Sandrine Berges
  • Home
  • The Voices of the Abolition
  • Liberty in thy name!
  • The Home: A Philosophical Project
    • The Philosophy of Domesticity
  • Women Philosophers Calendars
  • Research
  • Public Philosophy
  • Events
    • Wollstonecraft at Bilkent
    • Bridging the Gender Gap Through Time
    • Wollapalooza
    • Wollapalooza II
  • Historical zombies and other fiction
  • Teaching
  • Crafts and things
  • Feminist History of Philosophy

Liberty in their Names

Get the Free Calendar
Order the book!

From Marseilles to Paris and Sophie's home

6/27/2018

0 Comments

 
​On 19 June 1792, the Jacobin club of Marseilles wrote to Jerome Petion, the mayor of Paris warning him that the King, with his corrupt civil list, was a threat to French Liberty, and that they were ready to come and lend a hand. A few days later, a  deputation of 500 Marseillais set off for Paris on foot – over 700 km. Their leader, a captain from Montpellier, sang for them a war song celebrating the Revolution, written by Rouget de Lisle. On  30 July, the Marseillais entered Paris singing that same song. 
Picture
One can only imagine what 500 hungry, thirsty, and possibly ill soldiers suddenly entering the Capital must have been like. And of course, they had come for a reason, to confront the King and defend Liberty. So it’s no surprise perhaps that on 10 August, they took part in the massacre of the Swiss guards in the Tuileries. 

​
Picture
Marseillais vs Swiss guards, the massacre of the Tuilieries.

​But before they did, 400 of them made a stop at the Hotel des Monnaies, the home of the Condorcets. The building is not small, nonetheless, making space for, and serving 400 scruffy soldiers must have been a challenge. But if it was, Sophie met it well. According to her biographer, Guillois, she was the ‘Queen of the party’, and that:  

she charmed them so well that she could have, had the Gironde listened to her, saved, with the help of the Marseillais, Coutnry and Liberty. ​
​
Picture
Hotel des Monnaies in the 18th century (BNF archives)
0 Comments

The Horrible Details of the Terror - Manon's account of the September Massacres.

10/25/2017

0 Comments

 
​On the afternoon of 2 September 1792, the Tocsin was rung, and and canon was shot as an alarm. Word was out that France had lost Verdun, and the traitors to the republic were blamed - they must have spread intelligence. Who were the traitors? Mostly two kinds: the aristocrats, and the priests who had refused to pledge allegiance to the new civic religion, known as the refractory priests.
But most of those were in prison. 

​Manon reports the following anecdote: her husband was then minister of the interior, and one of his deputies came to alert the Paris Commune that some of the prisoners might be at risk. Danton replied testily: 

"I don't give a fuck for the prisoners or what happens to them!"  (Portrait de Danton). 
​There was indeed cause for worry: the last time the tocsin was rung and the canon shot was the 10 August, when the Parisians stormed the Tuileries, where the King and his family was held, and massacred the Swiss guards who were there for their protection. The King and Queen were now at the Temple prison, and quite safe for the time being. But the Swiss guards that survived, and some of the nobles of their entourage, such as the Princess of Lamballe, were in the Paris prisons. 
Picture
metropostcard.com Massacre of the Swiss Guards
​By the evening of 5 September, most of them were dead.
 
The British Caricaturist James Gilray published the following picture of  a sans-culotte (here depicted literally without trousers!) family eating the flesh of their victims after a day of murders.
Picture
Gilray "Un petit souper à la parisienne ... A Family of Sans Culotte refreshing after the fatigues of the day". http://mikerendell.com/the-september-massacre-paris-1792/
​Unfortunately the caricature was not as far from the truth as it might have been, as Manon reports to a friend a few days later. 
​"If you knew the horrible details of these expeditions! Women are brutally raped, before these tigers tear them apart, entrails are worn as ribbons, human flesh eaten, still bleeding!  You know my enthusiasm for the Revolution, well, I am ashamed of it. It has been stained by scelerats, it has become ugly!|"| (letter to Bancal, 9 September 1792)." 
​This episode marked a turn in the Revolution. Those who had been critical of the Commune, or Robespierre, Danton, and Marat - "My friend Danton leads all, Robespierre is his dummy, Marat holds his torch and his knife." - were now reluctant to have anything to do with them. By January, Roland had  handed in his demission from the ministry, on 1 June, his wife was arrested, and on 2 June a decree for the arrest of the Girondins was issued. By November, all were dead. 
​"The whole of Paris let it happen... the whole of Paris is damned in my eyes, and I no longer hope that liberty may take root amongst such cowards, insensible to the worst outrages inflicted on nature and humanity, cold spectators of attacks that could easily have been prevented by fifty armed men." (Memoires)
0 Comments

    About

    This is where I live blog about my new book project, an intellectual biography of three French Revolutionary women philosophers.

    Categories

    All
    1789
    1793
    Abolitionism
    America
    Biography
    Bonheur Primitif
    Brissot
    Cabanis
    Champ De Mars Massacre
    Charity
    Charlotte Corday
    Childhood
    Conciergerie
    Condorcet
    Declaration Of The Rights Of Man
    Dumont
    Education
    England
    Eon
    Feminism
    Frances Wright
    Gender
    Germaine De Stael
    Ghostwriting
    Guillotine
    Haiti
    Hannah Mather Crocker
    Helvetius
    HIstorians
    Journalism
    La Fayette
    Les Trois Urnes
    Letters
    Letters On Sympathy
    Louise Keralio
    Macaualy
    Manon Roland
    Mary Shelley
    Memoir
    Olympe De Gouges
    Paine
    Painting
    Paris
    Pregnancy
    Prison
    Religion
    Roland
    Rousseau
    Saint-Domingue
    Salons
    September Massacres
    Sexism
    Sieyes
    Slavery
    Sophie De Grouchy
    Terror
    Theatre
    The Great Fear
    Theroigne De Mericourt
    Translation
    Trial
    Wollstonecraft

    Archives

    November 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    March 2021
    February 2021
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • The Voices of the Abolition
  • Liberty in thy name!
  • The Home: A Philosophical Project
    • The Philosophy of Domesticity
  • Women Philosophers Calendars
  • Research
  • Public Philosophy
  • Events
    • Wollstonecraft at Bilkent
    • Bridging the Gender Gap Through Time
    • Wollapalooza
    • Wollapalooza II
  • Historical zombies and other fiction
  • Teaching
  • Crafts and things
  • Feminist History of Philosophy