In September 1791, a tract signed by Olympe de Gouges appeared. Dedicated to Marie Antoinette, to whom she referred as “the first of women”, this document was the Declaration of the Rights of Women and of the Female Citizen. In it Olympe de Gouges advocated women’s emancipation on the basis of the equality of the sexes, a revolution at the very heart of the Revolution, and called on the Republic to consider women as full citizens. Olympe de Gouges, an abolitionist, asserted equality even in death, or rather, she cited the death penalty to denounce the injustices against her sex. Article 10 of her Declaration reads: “No one shall be disturbed for their opinions, however fundamental. Women have the right to mount the scaffold, so they must have the right to mount the rostrum, provided that their interventions do not disturb public order as established by the law.”

Olympe de Gouges joined the Girondins. She continued her fight, which today would be described as feminist, always in pursuit of justice. She was convinced that women should play a role in political debates and, in particular, influence the most important legal decisions. She therefore proposed to the Convention that she assist Malesherbes in his defence of King Louis XVI, in the name of her combat for the abolition of the death penalty. It was to oppose the death penalty that she proposed herself as the lawyer of the citizen Louis Capet. On 16 December 1792, the letter she sent to the National Assembly addressed to members of parliament was read out before the start of the day’s sitting: “Citizen President, the eyes of the universe are riveted on the trial of the last king of the French. I offer to defend Louis. I believe him to be at fault as king, but stripped of this banished title, he ceases to be guilty in the eyes of the Republic. He was weak, he was deceived, he deceived us, he deceived himself. Beheading a king is not enough to kill him.” Her request was rejected on the grounds that a woman could not undertake such a task. But she had posters put up in Paris, “Olympe de Gouges, unofficial representative of Louis Capet”. In addition to the mockery of the members of parliament, she was attacked at her home by sans-culottes who dragged her out of her house and molested her. She only survived that night by virtue of her sense of humour. When a man asked if anyone would pay him 24 sous to slit her throat, having been half-unclothed by the group, she spontaneously replied, “My friend, I’ll give you 30 sous and I ask for your favour.” She was released, obliged only to provide the coin.

Louis XVI was less fortunate and was guillotined on 21 January 1793.

However, Olympe de Gouges would suffer the same fate. It was only a matter of months. She was arrested on 20 July 1793 for having written a federalist manifest of Girondin persuasion, “Les Trois Urnes ou le Salut de la Patrie” (The Three Urns, or the Welfare of the Motherland), and was tried on 2 November. She attempted a final ruse: declaring herself pregnant, in order to gain time. Women were only executed after they had given birth. Fouquier-Tinville refused the plea and Olympe de Gouges was executed the following day. On 3 November 1793, at around 5pm, she mounted the scaffold at the Place de la Concorde. Witnesses reported her striking dignity. Before passing under the national razor, she exclaimed, “Children of the motherland, you will avenge my death!”

Marie Olympe de Gouges, widowed name Aubry, aged 45, prompted this comment a week later in Le Moniteur universel, a Montagnard propaganda paper. The author, without irony, conveys the extent to which the rights of the Female citizen that Olympe de Gouges had so strongly defended are not ready to be heard: “She wanted to be a statesman. It seems that the law has punished this conspirator for having forgotten the virtues that befit her sex.”

Marie Bardiaux-Vaïente