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Stanislas Maillard describes the Women’s March to Versailles (5 October 1789)

Stanislas Maillard was a national guardsman known for having taken a leading role in the attack on the Bastille. In 1790 he testified before a commission established by the court in Paris to investigate the events of October 1789.

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A Woman’s Cahier

This grievance was signed by a certain Madame B*** B*** whose identity is unknown. The provenance appears to be Normandy. Another version of this text, located and republished in the late nineteenth century, is signed by Marie, veuve de Vuigneras, also from Normandy.

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Madame de Beaumer, Editorial, Journal des Dames (March 1762)

Madame de Beaumer (d. 1766) was the first of three women editors of the Journal des Dames, a newspaper founded in Paris in 1759 to encourage women to write seriously.

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Military Suppression of Prairial

The Prairial insurrection of Year III (May 1795) would prove to be among the last major episodes of popular activism during the Revolution, due in part to the Convention’s forceful use of National Guard units, leading to the arrest of many activists and the execution of several popular leaders.

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Women’s Activities during the Prairial Uprising

Popular radical activity continued throughout the period of the Terror (see Chapter 7) and did not end with 9 Thermidor.

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Robespierre, "On Political Morality"

In this speech to the Convention, delivered on 5 February 1794, Robespierre offered a justification of the Terror.

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The Maximum

In September 1793 the Convention furthered its role as the guarantor of the basic right to subsistence of all citizens by instituting price maximums on all essential consumer goods, especially foodstuffs, and on wages paid in the production of those goods.

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The Law of Suspects

This law, passed on 17 September 1793, authorized the creation of revolutionary tribunals to try those suspected of treason against the Republic and to punish those convicted with death.

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Decree against Profiteers

In July 1793, faced with a restive populace angered by continuing shortages of food in Paris, the Convention followed the lead of the sections in blaming the high price of bread on "profiteers" in the countryside, who were taking advantage of their fellow citizens by charging abnormally high pric

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The Clergy as a Target: A Political Problem

Camille Desmoulins, an influential populist writer, here attacks the distinction between "active" and "passive" citizenry based on personal wealth, by pointing out that Christ himself would have been relegated to "passive" citizenry.