It was a year before these incidents that Madame Roland opened a salon in Paris, whither her husband had been sent as the deputy from Lyons to the constituent assembly. Her salon had nothing in common with those frequented by people seeking recreation in conversation and belle esprit. Generally there were no women present except the hostess. But her salon was the rendezvous of such fiery spirits as Mirabeau, Brissot, Vergniaud, Robespierre and others, interested in the great movement, which was soon to reach its climax. It was in this salon that Madame Roland impressed her enthusiasm for a republic upon those men who likewise strove for progress and liberty. Here also she conceived the plan of a journal, entitled "The Republican," which, however, was suppressed after its second issue. Here she penned that famous letter to the king, which, as it remained unanswered, was read aloud by her husband, the king's appointed Minister of the Interior, in full council and in the kings presence. Containing many terrible truths as to the royal refusal to sanction the decrees of the national assembly and as to the kings position in the state, this letter initiated the dethronement of the king and the abolition of royalty.—
It was in these troubled times, also, that another remarkable woman attracted great attention by matching the "Declaration of the rights of man" with a "Declaration des Droits de la Femme," a declaration of the rights of women. In this document she preached for the first time not only the principle of equality of both sexes but she also demanded the right of women to vote and to hold public offices. This document was published just at the time when the equality of both sexes before the law and the guillotine had become a recognized fact, when not only the head of the king but also that of the queen Marie Antoinette had rolled into the dust. Pointing to these events Olympe de Gouges closed her manifesto with the flaming words: "When women have the right to ascend the scaffold then they must have the right to mount the platform of the orator!"
When Olympe de Gouges wrote these lines, she hardly anticipated her own fate. Provoking in some way the anger of Robespierre, this rabid tyrant did send her also to the guillotine.—
Théroigne de Méricourt likewise fell a victim of the furious hostility, which in 1793 arose between the two leading parties, the Girondists and the Montagnards, the latter party led by those most extreme autocrats as Marat, Danton and Robespierre. When Théroigne, being aware that her own party, the Gironde, was in peril at the hands of these blood-thirsty men, one day urged the mob to moderate their courses, she was seized, stripped naked and flogged in the public
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