HIST20068 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Claire Lacombe, The Communards, Maximilien Robespierre
18 Oct 2018
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HIST20068
Lecture Ten
Quotes
‘In 1790, the French Revolution had achieved its goal. It had defeated despotism and it had
defeated privilege. This rupture was also definitive. A return to the Old Regime was simply out of
the question. ... the revolutionaries [subsequently] drove very large numbers of women and men
to a profound revulsion against them and all their works when they stripped away the markers that
gave their lives meaning’. - (Donald Sutherland, The French Revolution and Empire: the Quest for
a Civic Order (Oxford, 2003), pp. 382, 387) !
‘We are simple women but not made of weaker stuff than our grandmothers of ‘93. Let us not
cause their memories to blush for us, but be up and doing, as they would be were they living
now.’ - From a women’s club during the Paris Commune, 1871, Stewart Edwards, The
Communards of Paris, 1871 (London, 1973), p. 110
“Already by 1802 a million French citizens lay dead; a million more would perish under Napoleon,
and untold more abroad. How many millions more had their lives ruined? Inspiring and ennobling,
the prospect of the French Revolution is also moving and appalling: in every sense a tragedy”. -
William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, 2nd Edition, Oxford, 2002, pp xiii 425
‘In political and ideological terms the Revolution was no doubt of crucial importance, but
humanity was not transformed thereby. Most of the population continued to be subject to the
age-old constraints of their environment. At the end of all the political upheavals of the Revolution
and Empire little had changed in the daily life of most Frenchmen.’ - (Roger Price, An Economic
History of Modern France, 1730-1914 (London, 1975), p. xi.)
‘whoever won the Revolution, they lost’. - (Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French
Revolution, Cambridge, 1964, p. 170)
‘Towards the end of December 1791 citizen Levacher, having asked citizens Lami and Huchy, his
friends, to sup, at the end of the meal picked a quarrel with his wife and swore at her as was his
wont, and punched her several times on the arms, which obliged her to change place; the citizen
Levacher continued to swear at her, calling her sacrée garce, sacrée putain, sacrée matine, and
punched her several times on the breast, and seized her by the throat and punched her several
more times in the stomach and on the breast, even armed himself with a knife with which he was
about to strike her, saying that she would have to perish or he would ... but the citizens Lami and
Huchy stopped him.’ - (Roderick Phillips, ‘Women and Family Breakdown in Eighteenth- Century
France’, Social History 2 (1976), p. 210)
‘You generations that will succeed us, more blessed than we, having learnt from our mistakes and
become wise by our follies, it will doubtless be enough to have charted for you the main reefs. O
my children, we shall leave you only roses to pick; your fathers will have had nothing but the
thorns. ... For too long we have allowed women to leave their homes to be present at the
deliberations of the legislators, at the debates of the popular societies. You will recall their true,
their unique vocation, and not permit them to deviate from it any more. They will continue to
adorn the national feasts, but they will no longer interfere in public affairs. ... The motherland will
be neither a vixen nor a stepmother. You will see in her only a good mother of her family. You will
love her, you will adore her. ... Every citizen must love the Republic as his mistress.’ - Les
Revolutions de Paris, 25 Pluviose - 10 Ventose Year II (`3-18 February 1794)
‘Our sex has produced only one monster [Marie-Antoinette], while for four years we have been
betrayed, assassinated, by monsters without number of the masculine sex. Our rights are those of
the people and, if we are oppressed, we will know how to provide resistance to oppression.’ -
Claire Lacombe addressing ‘Monsieur Robespierre’ in the Convention, 1793
“In the lower classes, women are regarded as good only for spinning, sewing and keeping house.
In the upper classes they re supposed to be good only for sining, dancing, making music, playing
Document Summary
In 1790, the french revolution had achieved its goal. It had defeated despotism and it had defeated privilege. A return to the old regime was simply out of the question. The revolutionaries [subsequently] drove very large numbers of women and men to a profound revulsion against them and all their works when they stripped away the markers that gave their lives meaning". (donald sutherland, the french revolution and empire: the quest for a civic order (oxford, 2003), pp. We are simple women but not made of weaker stu than our grandmothers of 93. Let us not cause their memories to blush for us, but be up and doing, as they would be were they living now. " - from a women"s club during the paris commune, 1871, stewart edwards, the. Communards of paris, 1871 (london, 1973), p. 110. Already by 1802 a million french citizens lay dead; a million more would perish under napoleon, and untold more abroad.
