So too are the Revolutionaries - Madame Roland, who in the five months in prison before her execution wrote, Yalom says, "the work that would become the most famous eyewitness chronicle of the Revolution", to Charlotte Robespierre, who late in life wrote a hagiographic memoir attempting to exonerate and explain her brother.
But as so often it is the humbler stories that are really gripping. I found most powerful, and astonishing here that of Renee Bordereau, whose life was preserved in a "47-page poorly printed pamphlet" (which might so easily have been entirely lost). As Yalom says, in translation, where the French genderised language is lost, you might think this was a male tale:
Arriving near the Loire, I destroyed five of my enemies, and finishing off the day, I broke my sword on the head of the last one... Seeing only one horseman near me, I doubled back to our army. I alone, killed twenty-one that day. I'm not the one who counted them, but those who followed me, and if they hadn't said so, I wouldn't have spoken about it myself.
It sounds like grandiose boasting, yet Yalom reports there are multiple corroborations of the tale, including in two of the other accounts that she records of the extremely vicious "Vendee Insurrection" (which occurred when this isolated, traditional region refused to accept Revolutionary rule).
And this was not some soldier hardened to insensitivity: Bordereau reports the killing of four republicans one day after seeing "one of them had a child of about six months stuck on his bayonet with two chickens." An image that she later repeats as obviously haunting her. She survived the war, Yalom tells us, was imprisoned by Napoleon for six years, and did not gain her liberty until the return of Louis XVIII in 1814, when she was also granted money.
It's a story that begs for a grander telling, a complete book, for Yalom has space for little more than a taster. But for an overview for women in the Revolution, Blood Sisters is a great start - a guide to further reading. And if you want to feel like you've got a decent historic grasp of the Revolution, you certainly can't leave out women's place in it.
Article comments
1 - Catherine Delors
"Charlotte Robespierre, who late in life wrote a hagiographic memoir attempting to exonerate and explain her brother."
I find it odd that the other characters mentioned here are presented in a neutral manner, while, when it comes to Robespierre's sister, we suddenly have so many loaded words in a single sentence: "hagiographic," "attempting to exonerate." Also the "late in life" is interesting. It implies that her account might be less than reliable on that ground. The Duchesse de Tourzel, on the other hand, who wrote her remarkable Memoirs decades after the fact, is not faulted for writing "late in life." On the contrary she is (rightly, in my opinion) credited for being an "acute observer."
I wonder: is the double standard exhibited here that of the author, in which case it calls into question her academic impartiality, or does it only reflect the opinions of the reviewer?
2 - Natalie Bennett
It was the view of the author, who doesn't present Charlotte as a particularly admirable character. (Although she doesn't make anything in particular of the later in life; that was just me contrasting her to Madame Rolande, who didn't survive the Revolution, while Charlotte did. There wasn't meant to be anything negative about it.)
I didn't start reading the book with any particular preconceptions about any of the characters, although obviously I formed some from what I read.
3 - Catherine Delors
Thanks for the clarification, Natalie!
Indeed women made their voices heard then. There were no less than 400 memoirs written about the Revolution, at least half by women. It is a major, and worthwhile endeavour to gather them.