Female+Key+Players

Charlotte Corday
 * Born- July 27, 1768
 * Died- July 17, 1793 (age 24)
 * Executed by guilotine



On July 13, the assassination of Jean-Paul took place. In 1874, Charlotte was given the posthumous nickname l'ange de l'assassinat (the Angel of Assassination).

At her trial Corday said, "I killed one man to save 100,000." For days after the murder of Jean-Paul Marat, Charlotte Corday was executed under the guillotine and her corpse was disposed of in the Madeleine Cemetey. Soon after her decapitation, a man named Legros lifted her head from the basket and slapped in on the cheek. After that Jacobin leaders had her body autopsied to see if she was a virgin, it was believed that she was sharing her bed and also the assassanation plans. In fact their was great dissapointment when found that Charlotte was found to be virgo intacta (a virgin).



Claire Lacombe Claire Lacombe, aslo known as "Red Rosa," was born on August 4, 1765 in the town of Pamiers in southwestern France. She became an actress at a young age but was not an outstanding success in theater, and was not entierly happy with her life. The company she worked for moved constantly from town to town, even visiting castles and the country houses of aristocrats. This was the main cause in her choice to quit the company and become a revolutionary in 1792. On August 10, 1792 Claire was fitting during the storming of the Tuileries. While fighting she was shot in the arm but of course kept fighting. For that she earned the title, the "Heroine of August Tenth." Thats not all she earned for her bravery, she was also awarded a civic crown. In the year of 1793 Claire and another female revolutionary, Pauline Leon, organized the club the "Republican Revolutionary Society." Soon after Claire met a few revolutionary men who fought for womens rights. Theophile Leclerc was one of these men, he also lived with her for a while until he left her to marry Pauline Leon. Towards the end of that year she started losing her friends very quickly. In 1794 a chain of events put a strain on Claire and her chance of any political activity. In April she considered returning to theater, ane the night she was supposed to leave she got arrested. For over a year she was moved from prison to prison. She was then released in 1795. Once again she went back to theater, but three months later she quit. In the year of 1798 Claire Lacombe disappeared without a trace.





Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette was born on November 2, 1755, in Vienna Austria. The next day she was baptised Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna. Her parents were Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa, rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. Her grandparents were the King of Portugal and his Wife. She was the 15th child and also the youngest. In the beginning of 1765 the betrothal to Louis XVI started.

 She was then married to the French dauphin (crown prince) in 1770. In May of 1774, Louis XV died and then Louis XVI ascended the throne and Marie became Queen. After seven years of marriage, Marie gave birth to their first of four children, a daughter named Marie-Therese Charlotte.

When it came to the French she was very unpopular because she was became a symbol of everything they hated. She liked to gamble. For entertainment Marie liked to spend hours gambling with cards. One year she she lost the equivalent of $1.5 million. She even refussed to wear tight-fitted clothing and introduced a loose cotton dress for women. Elderly thought that her clothing were undergarments and were very scandalous. She started to show signs of falling out of love with Louis and referred to Louis as "the Poor Man" and sometimes even set the clock forward an hour to get rid of his presence. As a result of this hatred she was executed by the guillotine on October 16, 1793.

Olyme De Gouges

Marie Gouze was born into a petit bourgeois family in 1748 in montauban, in southwestern France. Her father was a butcher and her mother was the daughter of a cloth merchant. She believed, however, that she was the illegitimate daughter of Jean-Jacques Le-franc., Marquis de poignant and his rejection of her claims upon him may have influenced her passionate defense of the rights of illegal mate materials.. She became involved in almost any matter she believed to involve injustice. She opposed the execution of Louis XVI of France, partly out of opposition to capital punishment and partly because she preferred a relatively tame and living king to the possibility of a rebel regency in exile. This earned her the ire of many hard-line republicans, even into the next generation—such as the comment by the nineteenth century historian Jules Michelet. a fierce apologist for the Revolution, who wrote, "She allowed herself to act and write about more than one affair that her weak head did not understand." Michelet was also part of a generation of men who opposed any political participation by women. He disliked de Gouges for this reason. In 1791 sophie had married nicolas de condorcet, phiolsopher and mathematician and she became as prominent hostess who was indifferent to class origins of her acquaintances. olympe was one of the few public figures to denounced him of this action.this act of moral courage was to cost her her life. she was killed by the guillotined.

Empress Josephine

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">Josephine, crowned Empress of France in 1804, was a complex lady living in complex circumstances. Born in 1763, of the poverty stricken but titled Tascher family in the French Isle of Martinique, she was raised far from Paris and the courtly schools for girls of distinction. Although she was very sweet tempered and kind, her stance and mannerisms evoked life in plantation America rather than the noble social circles of Paris. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">In spite of her noble family heritage, her first marriage to Alexandre de Beauharnais in 1779 undoubtedly suffered because of her husband's repulsion of her "provincial ways." <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">Eventually finding herself abandoned with two children, and without family assistance, she lived for a while in a convent with other outcast ladies of high birth. This friendly contact exposed her to the social graces of the day, where she absorbed the rigid guidlines of behavior like a sponge in water. When the French Revolution broke out, she and her husband were reunited in prison in 1794. He went to the guillotine; she came out of it alive, but barely so. Her prison experience was concentration camp like, during which she endured unimaginable hardships as well as faced the daily possibility of public execution. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">She met Napoleon during this time. He was looking for a woman of wealth and position. She became attracted to him as he began rising in rank and reputation within the new French government. Napoleon fell in love with her most passionately, and it was not long before they were married. At the time of marriage, she, however, was neither in love with him, nor ready to relinquish her sharpened survival techniques to a second husband of unknown future. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">Almost immediately after her marriage, she continued with her adulterous behavior, making money and maintaining her social connections. Napoleon, on the other hand, came from a large family with strong familial loyalties. When his family met her, there was an immediate clash of life styles.in 1814, Josephine caught an infection and quickly died. Her adult life had been almost completely without peace or lasting security. The one source of happiness, her children, was a legacy she was to leave Napoleon. Her son, Eugene served Napoleon faithfully like a son, and her daughter, Hortense, married into the Bonaparte family herself.