Anne Josephe Theroigne de Mericourt
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
woman who was a figure in the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, was born at Marcourt (from a corruption of which name she took her usual designation), a small town in Luxembourg province in modern Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, on the banks of the Ourthe
Ourthe
The Ourthe is a 165 km long river in the Ardennes in Wallonia . It is a right tributary to the river Meuse. The Ourthe is formed at the confluence of the Ourthe Occidentale and the Ourthe Orientale , west of Houffalize.The source of the Ourthe Occidentale is near Libramont-Chevigny, in the...
. She appears to have been well educated, having been brought up in the convent
Convent
A convent is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, or nuns, or the building used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion...
of Robermont. She was quick-witted, strikingly handsome in appearance and intensely passionate in temper; and she had a vigorous eloquence, which she used with great effect upon the mobs of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
during that short space of her life (1789–1793) which alone is of historical interest.
Early life
She was born as Anne-Josèphe Terwagne in Marcourt, RendeuxRendeux
Rendeux is a Walloon municipality of Belgium located in the province of Luxembourg.On 1 January 2007 the municipality, which covers 68.83 km², had 2,274 inhabitants, giving a population density of 33 inhabitants per km²....
, to Pierre Terwagne (b. 1731) and Anne-Élisabeth Lahaye (1732–1767) and lived in an oak-built house. She got her name from her mother, Anne, and her father's brother's, Joseph Terwagne. Her brothers also inherited Joseph in Pierre-Joseph Terwagne (b. 25 December 1764) and Nicholas-Joseph Terwagne (b. 28 September 1767). After giving birth to her third child, Mme Lahaye died leaving Anne-Josèphe alone with her father and two brothers. At that age, five years, an aunt who lived in Liège took her and sent her to a convent to learn dress-making.
Fact and fiction in the French Revolution
The story of her having been betrayed by a young seigneurLord
Lord is a title with various meanings. It can denote a prince or a feudal superior . The title today is mostly used in connection with the peerage of the United Kingdom or its predecessor countries, although some users of the title do not themselves hold peerages, and use it 'by courtesy'...
, and having in consequence devoted her life to avenge her wrongs upon aristocrats
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
, a story which is told by Lamartine and others, is unfounded, the truth being that she left her home on account of a quarrel with her stepmother. In her career as courtesan
Courtesan
A courtesan was originally a female courtier, which means a person who attends the court of a monarch or other powerful person.In feudal society, the court was the centre of government as well as the residence of the monarch, and social and political life were often completely mixed together...
she visited London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1782 and was back in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1785. After arriving in Paris, at the rue de Tournon, she ran a salon attended by such eminent men as Georges Danton
Georges Danton
Georges Jacques Danton was leading figure in the early stages of the French Revolution and the first President of the Committee of Public Safety. Danton's role in the onset of the Revolution has been disputed; many historians describe him as "the chief force in theoverthrow of the monarchy and the...
, Camille Desmoulins
Camille Desmoulins
Lucie Simplice Camille Benoît Desmoulins was a journalist and politician who played an important role in the French Revolution. He was a childhood friend of Maximilien Robespierre and a close friend and political ally of Georges Danton, who were influential figures in the French Revolution.-Early...
, Mirabeau
Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau
Victor de Riquetti, marquis de Mirabeau was a French economist of the Physiocratic school. He was the father of great Honoré, Comte de Mirabeau and is, in distinction, often referred to as the elder Mirabeau....
, Gilbert Romme
Gilbert Romme
Gilbert Romme was a French politician and mathematician who developed the French Republican Calendar.-Biography:...
and Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès , commonly known as Abbé Sieyès, was a French Roman Catholic abbé and clergyman, one of the chief theorists of the French Revolution, French Consulate, and First French Empire...
. She later went to visit Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
in 1788, where she was a concert singer before returning to Paris in 1789.
On the outbreak of the Revolution, she was surrounded by a coterie of well-known men, chief of whom were Pétion and Desmoulins; but she did not play the role which legend has assigned her. She took no part in the storming of the Bastille
Storming of the Bastille
The storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris on the morning of 14 July 1789. The medieval fortress and prison in Paris known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. While the prison only contained seven inmates at the time of its storming, its fall was the flashpoint...
nor in the days of the 5th and 6 October, when the women of Paris brought King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....
from Versailles
Versailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
. In 1790 she had a political salon and spoke once at the club of the Cordeliers
Cordeliers
The Cordeliers, also known as the Club of the Cordeliers, Cordeliers Club, or Club des Cordeliers and formally as the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , was a populist club during the French Revolution.-History:The club had its origins in the Cordeliers district, a...
.
Austrian imprisonment
The same year she left Paris for Mercourt, whence after a short stay she proceeded to Liege, in which town she was seized by warrantWarrant (law)
Most often, the term warrant refers to a specific type of authorization; a writ issued by a competent officer, usually a judge or magistrate, which permits an otherwise illegal act that would violate individual rights and affords the person executing the writ protection from damages if the act is...
of the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n Government, and conveyed first to Tyrol
Tyrol (state)
Tyrol is a state or Bundesland, located in the west of Austria. It comprises the Austrian part of the historical region of Tyrol.The state is split into two parts–called North Tyrol and East Tyrol–by a -wide strip of land where the state of Salzburg borders directly on the Italian province of...
and thereafter to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, accused of having been engaged in a plot against the life of the queen of France. After an interview, however, with the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II of Austria
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold II , born Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, was Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary and Bohemia from 1790 to 1792, Archduke of Austria and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of Emperor Francis I and his wife, Empress Maria Theresa...
, she was released; and she finally returned to Paris in January 1792, crowned of course with fresh laurels because of her captivity, and resumed her influence. In the clubs of Paris her voice was often heard, and even in the National Assembly
National Assembly
National Assembly is either a legislature, or the lower house of a bicameral legislature in some countries. The best known National Assembly, and the first legislature to be known by this title, was that established during the French Revolution in 1789, known as the Assemblée nationale...
she would violently interrupt the expression of any moderatist views. Together with Sandrine Dejou she demanded women's right to arm themselves and to enlist in the army.
Fury of the Gironde
Known henceforth as la belle Liègeoise, she appeared in public dressed in a riding habit, a plume in her hat, a pistol in her belt and a sword dangling at her side, and excited the mob by violent harangues. Associated with the Girondists and the enemies of Robespierre, she became in fact the Fury of the Gironde. She commanded in person the 3rd corps of the so-called army of the faubourgs on the 20 June 1792, and again won the gratitude of the people. She shares a heavy responsibility for her connexion with the riots of 10 August. A certain contributor to the journal, the Acts of the Apostles, Suleau by name, earned her savage hatred by associating her name, for the sake of the play upon the word, with a deputy named Populus, whom she had never seen. On 10 August, just after she had watched approvingly the massacre of certain of the national guard in the Place VendômePlace Vendôme
Place Vendôme is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. It is the starting point of the Rue de la Paix. Its regular architecture by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and pedimented screens canted across the...
, Suleau was pointed out to her. She sprang at him, dragged him among the infuriated mob, and he was stabbed to death in an instant. She took no part in the September massacres
September Massacres
The September Massacres were a wave of mob violence which overtook Paris in late summer 1792, during the French Revolution. By the time it had subsided, half the prison population of Paris had been executed: some 1,200 trapped prisoners, including many women and young boys...
, and, moderating her conduct, became less popular from 1793.
Descent into madness
At the end of May 1793, the JacobinJacobin Club
The Jacobin Club was the most famous and influential political club in the development of the French Revolution, so-named because of the Dominican convent where they met, located in the Rue St. Jacques , Paris. The club originated as the Club Benthorn, formed at Versailles from a group of Breton...
women seized her, stripped her naked, and flogged her in the public garden of the Tuileries. The following year she became insane. She started to live naked - refusing to wear any garments, in memory of the outrage she had suffered. She was removed to a private house, thence in 1800 to La Salpêtrière
Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital
The Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital is a teaching hospital located in Paris, France. Part of the Assistance publique - Hôpitaux de Paris, it is one of Europe's largest hospitals...
for a month, and thence to a place of confinement called the Petites Maisons, where she remained a raving maniac till 1807. She was then again removed to La Salpêtrière, where she died, never having recovered her reason, on 9 June 1817.
Further reading
- Jackie PigeaudJackie PigeaudJackie Pigeaud is a retired French professor of Latin and historian of medicine. He occupied a chair at the University of Nantes and is a member of the Institut universitaire de France....
(ed.), Théroigne de Méricourt, La Lettre-mélancolie, Lettre adressée en 1801 à Danton (mort en... 1794), transcripte par Jean-Pierre Ghersenzon, Verdier / L’Éther Vague, 2005. - Elisabeth RoudinescoElisabeth RoudinescoÉlisabeth Roudinesco is a French academic historian and psychoanalyst. She is an independent guest researcher at University of Paris VII – Denis Diderot...
, Théroigne de Méricourt,Une femme mélancolique sous la Révolution, Préface d'Elisabeth BadinterÉlisabeth BadinterÉlisabeth Badinter is a French author, feminist, historian, and professor of Philosophy at the École Polytechnique in Paris....
, Albin Michel, Mars 2010.