Some eight years ago I undertook a study of the women of the French Revolution, my object being merely to satisfy myself as to the value of their public services in that period. In the course of my studies I became particularly interested in Madame Roland, and when five years ago I found myself in Paris for an extended period, I decided to use my leisure in making a more careful investigation of her life and times than I had been able to do in America. The result of that study is condensed in th

Since the days when all of the city of Paris, save a few mills, fortresses, and donjon-towers, was to be found on the Île de la Cité, the western end of that island has been the quarter of the gold and silver smiths. Here, in the olden times, when this part of the island was laid out in gardens and paths, the sellers of ornaments and metal vessels arranged their wares on the ground or in rude booths; later when peaked-roofed, latticed-faced buildings filled the space, these same venders opened t

Until she was twenty-one years of age, Manon Phlipon’s life was singularly free from care. Her studies, her letters to Sophie, her hours with her mother, her promenades, filled it full. Suddenly in 1775 its peace was broken by the death of Madame Phlipon. Manon’s veneration and affection for her mother were sincere and passionate, her dependence upon her complete. Her death left the girl groping pitifully. The support and the joy of her life seemed to have been taken from her. But the necessity

The first year of their marriage the Rolands spent in Paris. New regulations were being planned by the government for the national manufactures, and Roland had been summoned to aid in the work. It was an irritating task. His principles of free trade, and free competition, were sadly ignored, even after all the concessions obtainable from the government had been granted, and Madame Roland saw for the first time the irascibility and rigidness of her husband when his opinions were disregarded. They

It was in September of 1784 that the Rolands arrived in Beaujolais. Although Roland’s new position kept him the greater part of the time at Lyons, they settled for the winter some twenty-eight kilometres north, in Villefranche-sur-Saône. It was mainly for economical reasons that they did not go to Lyons. Roland’s mother had a home at Villefranche and they could live with her through the winter. The summers and autumns they meant to spend at Le Clos de la Platière, the family estate about eleven

Monsieur and Madame Roland had both, throughout their lives, been intelligent observers and critics of, as well as, to a degree, sufferers from, the financial and social causes of the French Revolution. They had both sympathized with the preliminary outbreaks of that revolution which, beginning early in the century, had recurred at intervals throughout their lives. They both had thoroughly imbibed the intellectual causes of the movement, those new ideas of Voltaire, Diderot, Helvétius, Abbé Rayn

The Rolands were not long in embroiling themselves in Lyons and in the Beaujolais. Disorganization and disorder were increasing daily there, as in Paris and throughout the country. The aristocracy, clergy, and commercial portions of the community, irritated at the failure of the government to restore tranquillity, and discouraged over the delay of the National Assembly in forcing its way through the difficulties of the situation, grew hard against the Revolution. There was a universal demand for

During the months that the Rolands were in Paris, they were in constant correspondence with Champagneux at Lyons. Their letters, for the most part unpublished, show the state of mind into which French idealists worked themselves in this period. Dissatisfied because the Assembly had not been able to complete the regeneration of France in two years, suspicious of everybody whose views differed from theirs, anxious to show how reconstruction should be conducted and how easy it is to run a governmen

But how could they justify themselves in their determination to bring about a new “shock,” a second revolution? The Revolution was finished. In the twenty-eight months that the Constituent Assembly had been in operation, it had formed a constitution, accepted by Louis XVI. in September, 1791, which had cut from the nation a score of obnoxious and poisonous social, political, and economic growths. This constitution guaranteed, as natural and civil rights, that all citizens should be admissible to

Madame Roland’s plan had carried. Since the beginning of the Revolution she had urged it. In 1789 when she called for “two illustrious heads,” for “the united sections and not the Palais Royal”; throughout 1790 in her demands for “blood, since there is nothing else to whip you and make you go”; in her incessant preaching of civil war; in her remonstrances in 1791 against the seizure of Marat’s sheets, against the arrest of the turbulent, against shutting the doors of the Assembly on those who pr

In the spring and summer of 1791, which the Rolands spent at the Hôtel Britannique, they formed many relations which lasted throughout the Revolution. In this number was a member of the Constitutional Assembly, François-Nicolas-Léonard Buzot, a young man thirty-one years of age, coming from Evreux, in Normandy. Buzot had had the typical Gironde education, had been inspired by the Gironde heroes, and had adopted their theories. Like Manon Phlipon at Paris, Vergniaud at Bordeaux, Barbaroux at Mars

Upon Roland the effect of the atrocities of September, and the consciousness of his own powerlessness, was terrible. His health was undermined; he could not eat; his skin became yellow; he did not sleep; his step was feeble, but his activity was feverish; he worked night and day. Having a chance to become a member of the new legislative body, the Convention to meet September 21st, he sent in his resignation as Minister of the Interior. The resignation raised a cry from the Gironde, and hosts of

It was the morning of the first day of June, 1792, that Madame Roland was taken to the Abbaye. The imprisonment then begun lasted until November 8th, the day of her death. The record we have of her life during these five months is full and intimate. Separated from her child, her husband in flight, her friends persecuted by the Commune, she herself only just off a sick-bed, confined in a prison which had been from the beginning of the Revolution a centre of riot and the floors of whose halls and

The inmates of the Conciergerie were still shivering under the horror of the death of the twenty-one Girondins when Madame Roland appeared among them. Her coming was an event which awakened the liveliest interest. For eight months she had been the most influential woman in France. She was the recognized inspiration of the party which had wrecked the monarchy and established the Republic, which had been conquered by the force it had called to life. To the majority she was but a name. They all kne

Madame Roland was dead, but she had left behind the three beings dearest and closest to her,—her husband, her child, and her lover. Roland fled from Paris, as we have seen, on the night of May 31st. He succeeded in reaching Amiens, where he had lived many years and where he had many friends; but though more than one home was opened to him the surveillance of the Mountain was such that he thought it wise to leave the town. From Amiens he went westward to Rouen, where he easily found shelter. He w

Courrier de Lyon. Le Patriote Français. Moniteur Universel. Le Gardien de la Constitution. L’Ami du Peuple. Journal de la République Française. La Sentinelle. Mercure de France. Le Père Duchèsne....

Correspondance du ministre de l’intérieur Roland avec le Général Lafayette. Lettre au Roi. Lettre de Junius à Roland. Lettre à M. Roland. Lettres sur le ministère de Roland. Rapport relatif au 20 Juin. Adresse au peuple français. Ni Marat ni Roland. Opinion d’Anarcharsis Cloots. 1792. Réponses au Prussien Cloots par Roland, Kersaint, Guadet, et Brissot. L’ex-ministre de l’intérieur au président de la Convention Nationale. Observations de l’ex-ministre Roland sur le rapport fait contre lui par le