Vulgar History - French Revolution： Radicals (part 3)： A Toxic Bisexual Love Story

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is

00:00:16.260 Anne Foster, and this is season seven. It's sort of a mini series in the midst of season

00:00:21.080 seven. Technically, we're talking about various revolutions around the world, but we're doing

00:00:25.460 for several weeks. I think I'd said before seven weeks, it's going to be more. We're

00:00:29.400 looking at specifically women who were involved in the French Revolution on the revolution side

00:00:34.600 of things. Later on this year, we're going to pivot and we're going to look at some women who

00:00:39.580 were involved in the French Revolution on the other side. I was going to say the side that 0.99

00:00:43.620 was more likely to get their heads chopped off, but frankly, as we learned from the story of

00:00:49.020 Olympe de Gouges and also Tyrone de Maricourt, women on the revolution side were also not

00:00:53.500 super safe in that way. Anyway, today we're talking about two in one. It's, I think we've

00:01:01.120 done so many episodes of Vulgar History through the years, and I don't think we've ever done an

00:01:04.500 episode about two people before. And the reason I'm combining them is partially because their

00:01:10.320 stories overlap a lot. And so it would just be kind of strange to talk about one and then the

00:01:15.100 other one in separate episodes. Secondly, because there's not that much known about either of them.

00:01:20.020 So when you put it together, it becomes a nice length episode, but separate, it would have been shorter. And thirdly, because I like to think they were lesbians in a relationship with each other. Now, nothing that I've read indicates that, but it's more of a gut feeling I have.

00:01:37.320 last week i had claire meet on the podcast talking about tyroine de mary corin she's the one who put

00:01:42.240 the idea in my head actually where she mentioned claire lacombe and pauline lay on and kind of

00:01:46.740 these historically very good friends and that's a phrase that comes up there was a

00:01:50.000 a podcast i like listening to a bit ago they've ended but it was a great podcast what lasted

00:01:54.640 called historically very good friends which is looking at people in the situation history where

00:01:58.740 it's just kind of like oh you know they were they were roommates like this person she left all of

00:02:04.760 her estate to this person who she lived with her whole life where it's like herald they're lesbians

00:02:09.620 like pretty obviously Claire and Pauline you know choose your own adventure here but I will present 0.68

00:02:15.760 to you their story and like again there's not enough about either of them for me to comfortably

00:02:21.660 do like an hour-long podcast episode not about their personal lives but we know about they were

00:02:26.480 at this protest on this date here's some of the words from a speech that one of them gave like

00:02:31.300 that sort of thing their personal lives are personal and so I will respect that

00:02:34.760 But in the back of my head, I'm thinking, Harold, they're lesbians, and I hope they were. 0.66

00:02:40.480 And I think some French filmmaker could make a fantastic movie about these two women and the high-key drama of their lives.

00:02:51.140 So we're talking about Claire Lacombe, Pauline Leon.

00:02:56.320 I had to dig around quite a bit to get enough information to make this episode.

00:03:00.040 and I'm excited because special guest appearance, practically the third girl in this story,

00:03:05.940 is my beloved market ladies. We talked about the market ladies in the Olymda Gouge episode.

00:03:12.460 They came up in the Tyrande Maricord episode and I've just gotten only more excited about them and 1.00

00:03:16.880 they're beating people up with their wooden clogs and stabbing people and just like the market ladies 0.98

00:03:22.980 are just my people and I'm excited to get to tell you more about them in this episode which we're

00:03:27.640 going to learn a lot. So the resources I used for this episode, essays from Ernest about Claire

00:03:33.600 Lacombe by C. David Rice from Women in World History, the Wikipedia entries for both Claire

00:03:38.760 and Pauline, also womenineuropeanhistory.wordpress.com about Pauline, an article called

00:03:45.340 Theophile Leclerc, an anti-jacobin terrorist by Morris Slavin. We'll find out later who Theophile

00:03:51.080 leclerc is my main and the most prolific resource the book i was so delighted to find is called

00:03:58.220 liberty the life and times of six women in revolutionary france by lucy moore which i

00:04:03.080 will be talking about as a resource in you know three to four other episodes because she talks

00:04:07.900 about six women and then also an essay by author jerry walton about a woman called reine audu who

00:04:14.960 again we're going to talk about her in a bit so here's a little backstory for you picture it

00:04:20.500 France 1789 so the previous year we're going to be talking a lot about bread in this episode

00:04:28.180 it was a real bread crisis the way that right now uh there's kind of an eggs crisis or you know in

00:04:34.600 2020 there was like a toilet paper crisis like bread was the thing that just everybody wanted

00:04:39.280 because it helps make you feel full it tastes delicious and also I think if you're a poor

00:04:45.180 person it had been historically sort of a way to get some nutrients make you feel full for like a

00:04:50.360 less expensive thing. And there's a bread crisis. What was causing this bread crisis?

00:04:56.160 Grain. The harvest had been destroyed the previous year by late hailstorms and the winter had been

00:05:02.380 the worst for nearly a century. If you were listening to this podcast a bit ago when we

00:05:06.660 were doing American Revolution stuff, that was around when Thomas Jefferson was living in Paris

00:05:11.600 with Sally Hemings. And he was like, let's leave here, both because of the revolution that seems

00:05:17.620 to be coming and also because like we don't like this kind of winter so it was that winter and it

00:05:23.080 just fucked over all the crops like this year i think something happened to strawberries anyway

00:05:28.180 so bread because it was more scarce i feel like this is wild because if i had done this episode 0.82

00:05:35.180 two years ago five years ago i'd just be like oh this is interesting like let's talk about economics

00:05:40.080 but it's like i feel like we're all very intimately aware with supply chain issues right now and so

00:05:45.220 what had happened is just the wheat crop was bad. So there was less bread. So the bread that they

00:05:50.580 were able to make was more expensive. And when bread becomes more expensive, people can't buy

00:05:57.220 it, like people who don't have money. So people were dying of starvation. Like literally the bread

00:06:03.100 shortage was causing the death of so many people because people in France at this time, the poor

00:06:08.400 people were like so poor and bread was their main thing and they were dying. This is also affecting

00:06:14.400 just so you know to seed this idea the market ladies because if they didn't have bread to sell 1.00

00:06:19.980 then they weren't able to make money and then they didn't have as much money to feed their families so

00:06:24.220 it trickled down in a horrible way the bread was affecting everybody so at this point in time just

00:06:32.900 some facts and figures there was a lot more poor people than there were rich people and the rich

00:06:38.700 people were incredibly rich like their version of the one percent they're living lives of luxury 0.97

00:06:43.340 Like if there had been a Blue Origin spaceship, like they would have gone up there and been assholes about it too. But it's also kind of like the rich people never, they almost had no reason to ever interact with the poor people. So it wasn't today. I don't know if it's necessarily that different, but at least with social media and stuff like people, you might come across somebody from a different type of culture or different class from you and kind of get to know them and what their issues are.

00:07:13.340 Like you can just do that from just scrolling through TikTok or whatever.

00:07:17.120 But here it's like the poor people were poor and they never interacted with the rich people.

00:07:22.060 The rich people never interacted with the poor people.

00:07:23.980 They might as well have been like aliens living on different planets.

00:07:26.180 The only time that the really rich people would interact with the poor people is maybe some other servants.

00:07:32.080 So people are dying of bread, but it wasn't like the rich people kind of like, it doesn't affect us, whatever.

00:07:36.620 But there is so many more people in France, so many more not rich people.

00:07:42.360 So for instance, in Paris, there's something like 5,000 nobles. In Paris, in the city had like 550,000 people. Like most of the people, like they wildly outnumbered the nobles. And among these non-nobles are my beloved market ladies.

00:07:59.480 So they spoke poissard, which is the Parisian slang dialect of the markets. 0.89

00:08:06.220 Now, I don't know specifically if this is like Cockney rhyming slang, which I also love.

00:08:11.560 But they spoke poissard, and sometimes they're referred to as the poissards.

00:08:16.460 And that basically means fish seller, fish wife.

00:08:20.500 So they sold fish, but they also sold bread.

00:08:23.700 They also sold fruit, all the things you need to buy in the market on the street.

00:08:27.800 And also people in this kind of category would include like seamstresses and laundresses. They were respected in a way in this culture that is very, very, very sexist. We're going to get into this a lot in this episode. And I was like, as I was researching this, I was just like, wow.

00:08:46.040 You know, I have recorded so many episodes of this podcast about so many cultures and times in world history.

00:08:51.940 And this, to me, unless I'm forgetting something, is like one of the most sexist times and places I've ever read about.

00:08:59.880 But the market ladies were sort of respected because they, by the revolutionaries, not by like the rich people.

00:09:07.500 The revolutionary leaders were men. 0.60

00:09:09.820 And the men who were the revolutionary leaders hated most women. 0.95

00:09:13.520 But they respected the market ladies. 1.00

00:09:16.040 because the market ladies had strong moral fiber apparently and also it's they're a bit like the 1.00

00:09:24.000 canaries in the coal mine like if the market ladies were like things are not going well like 1.00

00:09:28.140 that was that meant that things are gonna get worse and worse and worse like they were kind 1.00

00:09:32.140 of the first line of defense for noticing that like oh something is going wrong in society

00:09:35.600 like these days what I've heard is that women who work in strip clubs like they start noticing like

00:09:41.240 oh people are giving less tips people are coming less often and then like six months later it's

00:09:45.060 like, we're in a recession. Like, those are the markers. So those are the people who notice it

00:09:49.080 first. And anyway, so in this lower class group of people, we meet our first of this episode's

00:09:57.940 main characters, Pauline Leon, who is from this sort of background. So she's born September 28th,

00:10:03.160 1768. Her parents are Pierre-Paul Leon and Mathurine Tellohan. And what did they do? They

00:10:09.220 had a family business. And what was that business? Chocolate makers. Yes. They were

00:10:14.360 chocolatiers. And so I didn't mention chocolatiers as part of the market ladies and they're kind of

00:10:19.880 not. And that's because chocolate making was a luxury business because only rich people could

00:10:25.520 afford to buy chocolate. So they were, in that sense, I think they were sort of better off than

00:10:32.540 people who were selling things that were bought by less rich people. Because when the economy tanks,

00:10:38.620 rich people are generally unaffected and they keep buying all their stuff. But the people who

00:10:44.560 are affected are those people, the poor people, and also the people in the middle who maybe just

00:10:49.020 don't have the money to buy a little treat for themselves or whatever. So being in the chocolate

00:10:53.100 biz was like an okay place to be. And also, also, I just love the idea of just like a French

00:11:00.880 chocolatier, like a chocolate croissant or like Jacques Torres from Nailed It, just like the

00:11:07.220 the beautiful chocolate he makes. So they're running a chocolate business. I should clearly

00:11:12.380 go have some chocolate right now. Anyway, her father, Pierre Paul, was also like a thoughtful

00:11:17.840 guy. He liked reading philosophy and talking about it with his children. And he made sure that his

00:11:24.960 children, including Pauline, could read and write, which was not the norm for a woman in this 1.00

00:11:31.580 situation. She hadn't received much formal education, but her father had sort of like

00:11:35.120 talk to her about what was going on in philosophy and stuff. He died when she was 16. And so she

00:11:40.800 stepped up to help her mother run the chocolate biz and also to help raise her five younger

00:11:45.340 siblings. And this is, she did this kind of in exchange for room and board, even though it's

00:11:49.600 her family, because it's like, everybody's hustling here. And so she's just like, this is

00:11:53.900 her life. She didn't get married at this point yet. When the revolution breaks out, she is 31

00:11:58.880 years old, unmarried, basically roommates with her mom, running the chocolate biz, raising these

00:12:03.680 siblings, the revolution broke out. And kind of in terms of who are the women revolutionaries, 0.91

00:12:10.100 they were women like Pauline and her mom, because people who had young children, 0.96

00:12:16.720 mothers of young children would stay home with the children. So the women who were like taken 0.82

00:12:20.020 to the streets in these protests were unmarried, like Pauline, or older women who are widows,

00:12:24.680 like her mom, Mathurin. And the way that because society was so divided between men and women,

00:12:36.500 and it's, I guess we've read about, or we've talked about some cultures like that. The one

00:12:41.460 that comes to mind is like Joseon era, like olden days Korea, where it's just kind of like men and

00:12:47.380 women were kept separate all the time. Like they just didn't interact with each other. That's just

00:12:52.020 what the culture was like. So even when the French Revolution broke out, there was like

00:12:55.720 men's protests and there was women's protests. And the women revolutionaries hung out with each

00:13:01.860 other and the men hung out with each other. There wasn't like co-ed protests. So she was part of

00:13:08.940 this like women's protest situation. And she was psyched when Pauline, when the revolution kicked

00:13:16.640 off in 1789 she's just like fuck yes like this this bullshit like this the society we live in 1.00

00:13:22.820 like things have to change there's not bread like the market ladies are upset like this is 0.99

00:13:28.160 let's go girls basically we're gonna go through actually i should mention on my patreon page i

00:13:35.600 have for free a bingo card of just kind of names and places and events that are gonna come up again

00:13:41.300 and again in these episodes and so you can get your bingo code there go to patreon.com

00:13:46.200 slash Anne Foster writer. You have to sign up to be a member, but that's free. Get your bingo

00:13:50.120 card and play along because you're going to cross off the square right now, which is the Bastille.

00:13:54.640 So the Bastille was a prison. It was the symbol of the royal family in Paris at this time,

00:14:02.660 because the royal family lived off in Versailles. The Bastille was sort of like a royal run prison.

00:14:08.600 And so just kind of like the fall of the Bastille, like the revolutionaries breaking in

00:14:13.040 and freeing the prisoners. There's only like seven prisoners because the building was like

00:14:17.060 condemned. They're going to stop being done as a prison pretty soon anyway. But symbolically,

00:14:21.760 it meant like we're attacking the royal family because we're taking the Bastille. So we don't

00:14:27.000 know if Pauline was physically there at the fall of the Bastille when the prison was taken and the

00:14:32.260 prisoners were liberated. But afterwards, well, actually I will say many women were there. So

00:14:38.100 that was one of the co-ed riots. And later she said she felt the liveliest enthusiasm when the

00:14:45.480 Bastille symbol of royal despotism fell. And like after the Bastille fell, it was just kind of like

00:14:50.960 people just took to the streets. It was not yet a purge scenario. Just so you know, like they're

00:14:57.040 not yet running around like they, Pauline, her mom, but also everybody. Like it's not just like

00:15:02.640 blood running in the streets, like rivers of people being killed. It's just more of like

00:15:07.480 a excited party riot atmosphere. And so Pauline and her mom, because I guess the siblings were

00:15:14.640 older now and, well, she's 31. The siblings are probably in their 20s as well. They don't need

00:15:18.420 taking after. Pauline and her mom were on the streets from morning till evening,

00:15:22.800 inciting citizens against the partisans of tyranny, urging them to despise aristocrats,

00:15:28.420 barricading streets, and inciting the cowardly to leave their homes to come to the aid

00:15:31.880 of the country in danger. So they're just on the streets, just encouraging everybody else to like

00:15:36.980 come join this mob it's a good time and so when she's talking about the danger about France being

00:15:43.820 in danger she doesn't mean there wasn't a war yet France was not at war with other countries

00:15:48.900 at the moment what she meant was the danger of counter-revolutionaries so the danger was like

00:15:53.460 so it's a civil war situation it's like revolutionaries versus counter-revolutionaries

00:15:57.600 and she was the number one hater of a person we've talked about on this podcast the Marquis

00:16:04.480 de lafayette so marquis de lafayette was one year older than her and he had he was this french guy

00:16:11.060 who like snuck over to america and he became a hero of the american revolution then he came back

00:16:14.860 to france he's still quite young like they're both in the early 30s he had been made the commander

00:16:19.460 of the national guard and he was like overall a popular person but this was an impossible job for

00:16:25.540 anybody to do we talked about this a bit in the marquis de lafayette episode but it was hard to

00:16:30.300 be in charge of the national guard and please both the royalists like the people supporting

00:16:35.200 the royal family and also the revolutionary type people and pauline just did not trust him

00:16:40.600 she just thought like he's on the side of the king and the queen he's not on our side like this guy

00:16:45.360 is shifty and she just like she was like i said her the number one hater and like she was it's

00:16:51.340 like if lafayette has no haters it's because she's dead like she hated lafayette because he was an

00:16:57.440 aristocrat and aristocrats to her could not be trusted so remember the bread crisis so bread

00:17:04.580 bread everybody there's not enough bread people are starving and the starving poor people who

00:17:09.460 i want to say i'm going to extrapolate from my own experience but when i get very hungry i get

00:17:16.760 hangry and i think these were mobs of hangry people they were hungry and angry and also they

00:17:24.060 were living in this really shitty situation. And so they connected the fact that they couldn't get

00:17:29.380 bread to what was going on with the revolution. Like bear in mind, the market ladies are just 1.00

00:17:33.080 like, where's our bread? We need bread to sell. We need bread to eat. All we care about market 1.00

00:17:38.100 ladies is bread. And the people like Pauline are like the revolution, like let's, you know,

00:17:43.980 down with the despots, whatever. And so the market ladies are like, do these things go together? 0.83

00:17:49.080 Like at some point these things were sort of connected. So the starving, hangry people 0.99

00:17:52.900 started to think like, wait, maybe this is connected. Maybe it's the king's fault we

00:17:56.960 don't have bread. Not just the bad crops last year, but maybe it's the king's fault.

00:18:01.280 Rumors are spreading. And it's like, we see now today all the time how easy it is for rumors to

00:18:05.440 spread. But back then, if everyone's hangry, and there's no bread, and you're kind of trying to

00:18:11.740 make connections to make this make sense how shitty your life is. So at some point, the market

00:18:16.500 ladies made this connection that the king is withholding bread. The king has a stockpile of

00:18:21.720 bread at Versailles that he's not giving to us, the poor people, because he's trying to crush the

00:18:26.720 spirit of revolt. He's trying to make us hangry so we'll stop being revolutionaries. He is hiding

00:18:33.300 the bread from us. And then Lafayette was, as part of his job with the National Guard, he was

00:18:38.960 responsible for making sure the bread got the way to the market. So he was held personally

00:18:43.500 responsible as well for this bread crisis. Cannot understate how important this bread crisis is.

00:18:49.640 so at dawn on the morning of october 5th a young woman began and this wasn't just a spontaneous

00:18:56.840 thing that happened people were planning this before but this was the day they decided to do

00:19:00.800 it this is the women's march that which we've talked about before so the way that it started

00:19:06.400 is a young market woman began beating a drum on the street in central paris i don't know if she

00:19:11.600 was like yelling out just like the king has our bread let's go get our bread from the king down

00:19:15.680 with the king i don't know what she was saying maybe she's singing songs but so this is like

00:19:19.380 early morning, you know, the market stuff gets going early. By 7 a.m., 2,000 women had joined 0.78

00:19:24.160 her. And they broke into, they were in this town square and there's a building nearby, the Hotel

00:19:30.060 de Ville, which they broke into basically trashing it. And they're just like, fuck all this. We're 0.99

00:19:35.300 going to go to Versailles. We're going to get the king to give us some goddamn bread. We're going to 1.00

00:19:39.460 get bread from the king. And I said that this was not just like a random thing that broke out. This

00:19:44.220 was organized. And one of the organizers of this was named Louise Renée Audu, aka Renne Audu. And

00:19:51.860 Renne is a French word that means queen because she was the queen of the market ladies. Just

00:19:59.720 imagine what it would take to be considered the queen of the market ladies. We're going to get 1.00

00:20:03.700 into what they're like more in this episode, but just know that the market ladies would kill you. 1.00

00:20:08.600 They would smash you over the head with their wooden clog if you looked at them funny. Like 1.00

00:20:12.600 the market ladies carry knives with them. The market ladies are not to be fucked with. And if 1.00

00:20:16.780 you're the queen of the market ladies, that just means like, I can't even like how terrifying she

00:20:22.540 must've been. Hilariously, one of the sources I was looking at was suggesting that maybe she was

00:20:27.820 voted queen. Well, she wasn't voted queen of the market ladies. She's just considered queen of the

00:20:31.620 market ladies. But somebody suggested it was because she was so beautiful. Like, I'm sorry,

00:20:35.340 I don't think it's a beauty pageant of like to be queen of the market ladies. I think if anything,

00:20:40.060 it's like a hunger game scenario. Like who among the market ladies is the most deadly? And this is 1.00

00:20:46.220 who won? Ren Aoudou. So she, her role this day, the day of the women's march was, she was out

00:20:53.380 there in the square making speeches, like encouraging more women to join them. And she

00:20:57.880 was basically like, we're going to go to Versailles to ask the king where there isn't more bread in

00:21:01.900 Paris. We're all hangry. Let's go ladies. Like it's real Shania, let's go girls. Shania Twain

00:21:09.140 type moment. So whereas the market lady's main grievance was, of course, stop hiding the bread, 1.00

00:21:15.040 give us the secret bread you're hiding. But they also came up with other demands. Like they wanted 1.00

00:21:20.160 an assurance that bread would be plentiful and cheap, like not just like give us the stockpile

00:21:25.000 of bread, but like we want bread on an ongoing basis. And secondly, they wanted Louis XVI and

00:21:31.520 his family in the royal court to reside in Paris instead of in Versailles so that the king would

00:21:35.680 be nearer to the people so the women's march like they just as they walked it's like in the episode

00:21:43.080 of vulgar history where we talked about bodica in great britain when it was under roman rule and 0.74

00:21:49.040 she just was walking and people just kept joining her army it was a similar thing like women just 0.96

00:21:53.160 kept joining the women's march they were not wearing pussy hats they were carrying pitchforks 1.00

00:21:59.840 and broomsticks, as well as pikes, swords, and muskets. And women were joining the march 0.96

00:22:05.220 on purpose because they wanted to, but also any women who they passed was forced to join the

00:22:11.180 march as well. So even some like, you know, clean faced, well-fed, higher class women were suddenly 0.87

00:22:16.780 just like, what's going on? Why am I in a march? And it's just like, oh my God, that woman's putting 0.63

00:22:19.820 a dagger at me. Like, I guess I'll join this march now. So the march had grown to like 6,000 0.67

00:22:25.260 women. It's like 14 kilometers to walk to Versailles. Do the conversion for that if you're 1.00

00:22:29.620 American. It's quite a far distance. They left at 7 a.m. They got there at around 5 p.m. And

00:22:36.840 once they got there, so 15 people, including Ren Aoudou, were chosen to go and speak with the king

00:22:42.760 to give their demands. And so allegedly, when they went to speak with him, he was on his best

00:22:47.500 behavior, super nice and charming. And although most of the delegation was satisfied with his

00:22:52.100 promise. He was like, yes, I'll get you bread. Like here's some flour or whatever. Ren Adu was

00:22:57.440 not satisfied with what he had to say. And when she went outside, the rest of the marchers were

00:23:02.200 also not won over. I have to say, I can be easily won over by people, by salesmen, people like that.

00:23:10.760 That's why it's going to have people in my life who are very cynical and very distrusting because

00:23:18.020 I feel like the other people in this delegation were like, oh, wow, he said nice things. That's

00:23:21.980 good. That's fine. That would be me. Ren Odu was just like, no, no, no, no, no. This is not enough.

00:23:27.700 So after they had this talk with the king, she and some others attempted to force their way into

00:23:32.600 the palace during which time she was wounded. Eventually, like everyone ended up sleeping over

00:23:39.000 because it was nighttime and everyone's tired. So the women marchers were just sleeping like on the 1.00

00:23:43.720 ground in the stables. Ren Odu allegedly slept on the carriage of a cannon. And then just before 0.99

00:23:49.320 dawn a group of men and women broke into the palace compound two soldiers were killed and

00:23:54.340 their heads were paraded around on pikes i don't have heads on pikes on the bingo card but i feel

00:23:59.900 like this is going to come up every single episode lafayette who was there um at versailles

00:24:05.880 he he woke up and he's just like oh what can we do like pr crisis like what's her name molly

00:24:12.380 mcpherson what should we do and so he brought marie marie antonette with him onto this balcony

00:24:17.720 and kissed her hand. And somehow this calmed everybody down. And they were like, we have bread.

00:24:22.400 It's all cool now. And so the royal family agreed to come to Paris. They were escorted by, I want to

00:24:29.400 say, 60,000 people. Like they were brought back to Paris and they were going to live at the palace

00:24:34.980 of Tuileries. Tuileries also on a bingo card. And upon the return, Rin Adu faced a judicial inquiry

00:24:43.840 for her role in this situation that she had helped organize and was the face of. She was charged with 0.92

00:24:51.380 having announced her intention of going to Versailles. She was charged with having helped

00:24:55.100 to massacre the king's bodyguards and with having taken part in other disorderly scenes. So she was

00:25:00.040 just kind of like the person blamed, even though there was like so many people all doing the same

00:25:03.880 thing. Guess why? Because France hated women. She was found guilty and imprisoned. Her lawyer,

00:25:10.380 chenau is his name c-h-e-n-a-u he was like okay like she's clearly going to be found guilty but

00:25:17.520 at least i can turn her into like a legend and icon and that's what he did at the trial he gave

00:25:23.460 a speech comparing her to the second coming of joan of arc and so she remained in prison for

00:25:27.820 the time being we'll hear from rain i'll do again later because back to the actual main characters

00:25:34.500 of this episode, Pauline. So we don't know if Pauline was like actually part of the Women's

00:25:41.760 March, but what else would she have been doing unless the chocolate biz was really busy that day? 0.82

00:25:46.740 Anyway, she later criticized Lafayette's behavior. Him coming out on the balcony with Marie Antoinette

00:25:51.280 confirmed her mistrust of him. She saw him as a traitor. She hated him even more for what he did 0.64

00:25:55.640 there. The Women's March in general gave her and all of the market ladies a new sort of self-confidence,

00:26:01.660 just a realization of the power that they had like how many of them there were and how they 0.97

00:26:06.320 could actually make things happen so basically the revolution is revolutionizing people are

00:26:12.860 rioting there's a lot of men in rooms having meetings and signing documents with each other

00:26:17.760 it was that part all gives me flashbacks to the most boring parts of the mary queen of scott's

00:26:21.960 story so i'm going to skip over all that as much as possible 18 months later a group of widows and

00:26:28.060 single women probably including pauline leon addressed the popular revolutionary assembly the

00:26:32.720 cordeliers cordeliers club to urge i don't know they're just kind of like making a statement

00:26:38.980 saying like here's what i want here's our demands the cordeliers club met at the bottom of the

00:26:43.780 street where pauline and her mother lived and so she often attended meetings there so it was just

00:26:48.620 notable that they the widows and single women addressed the club because again this is like a

00:26:52.960 profoundly sexist society. Women making political statements was not common. It's not usual. That's 0.79

00:27:00.400 how we know that it happened. One month after that, Pauline went to the National Assembly,

00:27:05.780 which is kind of like, I don't know, the House of Commons. It's kind of the place where the ruling

00:27:11.380 body of France at the time met. It's just a bunch of man politicians and people could go there and

00:27:18.920 say their piece, basically. So she went to the National Assembly, presenting a petition with

00:27:23.040 over 300 signatures. And this was what the people had signed the paper for and what she was speaking

00:27:27.940 about, where she was saying, basically, let women have weapons. She was saying in the event of a

00:27:33.500 foreign war, like if France went to war with some other nearby country, the men would go off to

00:27:39.440 fight and the women would be left defenseless at home. So women should be allowed to have weapons, 0.94

00:27:43.940 she said here's a quote from her your predecessors deposited the constitution as much in our hands 0.95

00:27:49.940 as in yours oh how to save it if we have no arms to defend it from the attacks of its enemies 0.75

00:27:54.400 she demanded the honor of sharing their men's exhaustion and glorious labors and making and 0.98

00:28:00.220 of making tyrants see that women also have blood to shed for the service of france in danger so 0.97

00:28:07.240 I think that women weren't allowed to have weapons, even though at the Women's March, 1.00

00:28:13.740 they had pikes and whatever. I think it was part of like only citizens could have weapons and

00:28:18.200 women were not considered citizens. I think that's the crux of the issue. Feminism corner,

00:28:24.500 just to sort of explain what flavor of feminism we're talking about in this story. 1.00

00:28:29.540 So in her speeches and other women of this time who were advocating for more women's rights,

00:28:36.480 they were they still were like we want women's rights but not in a way that would like challenge

00:28:41.540 the foundational basis of our sexist society so she was she like in her thing that i just read 0.82

00:28:47.160 she was saying like women should have weapons so that we can defend our beautiful country that we

00:28:50.680 love while our men are off at war like she's not saying we should have them for ourselves but like 0.98

00:28:55.760 we should have them because of patriotism like the way that france gender roles were at this time as 0.64

00:29:02.640 far as I can understand is that women had to, were thought that they needed to be passive in 1.00

00:29:09.360 terms of politics. And that was for the greater good of society. So Pauline is like, I'm committed 1.00

00:29:15.260 to the revolutionary cause, but don't mistake that for me being interested in politics. I

00:29:19.600 appreciate that women should never do that. We should all be home, you know, breastfeeding our 1.00

00:29:24.780 children or whatever. So she was saying that she's not fighting for rights for herself or for women,

00:29:30.000 but for all French men. But in general, political women were mistrusted by the guy who's the head

00:29:36.600 of the National Assembly. I don't know if he's technically the head at this point, but he

00:29:40.040 spiritually is. He's another square on your bingo sheet, which is Robespierre, which is like,

00:29:47.340 you can't see me. This is an audio podcast, but I'm like clutching my head like I have a migraine

00:29:52.920 because I'm so angry that I have to read about Robespierre. If you remember, if you listen to

00:30:01.700 the Mary Queen of Scots season that I did a year or two ago, John Knox was just like, I couldn't,

00:30:10.060 I couldn't deal with him. I just hated him so much in his in-so live podcast recordings. And

00:30:16.100 he was just sort of like always in the background, just fucking shit up. Robespierre gives me that 1.00

00:30:20.880 same vibe, except he's also in charge. He's not just this sort of like creepy Rasputin,

00:30:26.140 like telling people what to do. He's actually in charge and he's literally the worst. And I'm so 0.60

00:30:30.780 angry. I have to read about him. Every time he shows up, just know he's going to do something

00:30:35.700 really shitty. And some woman who we enjoy is going to end up dead. Anyway, political women 0.99

00:30:40.880 were mistrusted by almost all of the men leading both sides of the revolution. And at this point

00:30:47.100 in the revolution, there's the two sides. There's the Girondins who were a bit more like centrist.

00:30:52.360 They were like, we can have the king and the queen, but we should also have like an elected

00:30:55.820 assembly. We should be kind of like England. Let's do that. And then we have the Jacobins

00:31:00.720 who were kind of like death to the king. There shouldn't even be a king. It should just be us.

00:31:06.900 Hell yeah. And those are the two sides. And almost everybody on both sides didn't want

00:31:13.060 women involved in anyway. And this is partially because France had a history of powerful women 1.00

00:31:19.260 behind the scenes. So these are women who've talked about like Catherine de Medici back in

00:31:23.780 the day, but also just the thought that there's like centuries of in France that were powerful

00:31:30.980 mistresses or wives were kind of telling Pete the King what to do. And so these guys like

00:31:36.400 group fear etc were suspicious because of powerful wives and mistresses wielding power from behind

00:31:43.500 the scenes was part of kind of like the what they call the ancien regime like the old the old ways

00:31:48.820 of france what they wanted to break away from they wanted to have like a new france and in

00:31:53.920 the ancien regime women had influence and they didn't want women to have any influence because 0.77

00:32:00.340 they thought that that kept the men from being objective. So cleansing France of corruption 0.87

00:32:06.060 meant stopping all women from playing any kind of public role. And you know who they pointed to 0.99

00:32:11.900 to explain why they thought this way? Goddamn Rousseau. Fucking Rousseau. He's the John Knox 0.99

00:32:18.800 figure in all of this. He's the one doing the live podcast recordings. He's like the Jordan Peterson

00:32:23.820 of his time, Rousseau. Everyone was such a fan of Rousseau and his philosophy. So as per Rousseau,

00:32:31.900 a society dominated by women was fundamentally painted. So any political woman was inherently 0.96

00:32:38.260 depraved and unnatural. And so to all of these guys, but also women, because in this situation 1.00

00:32:44.960 in France, not unlike today in a lot of ways, men hated women, but also women hated women. 1.00

00:32:51.340 And the best and quickest and easiest way to discount a political woman was to say that she was a whore, to make up lurid stories about how she's just like this trashy bitch. And this is what they did to Elim de Gouges. This is what they did to Tyrone de Maricor. This is what they did to Marie Antoinette. This is what we do these days to whoever, you know, like Amber Heard, Blake Lively, Kamala Harris, like just people where it's like, if a woman, if you don't like them, then it's just like, oh, but she's like, 1.00

00:33:21.320 like a trashy slut so let's just all hate her that's what they were doing then um saying that 0.95

00:33:27.460 a woman was was using her sexuality was a way to quickly get everyone to hate them and to kind of 1.00

00:33:34.540 discount what they were saying so as per russo women were encouraged to embrace quote naturalism 0.81

00:33:41.620 which meant um dressing more plain dressing more like one might say handsmaid's tale style

00:33:50.600 So if you picture Marie Antoinette and her fancy like embroidered gowns and like the big hoop skirts and the silk fabrics and like the stays, which is kind of like what you might think of as a corset, but just kind of like all that stuff, the fancy hairstyles and stuff.

00:34:05.940 So the big trend in France at this time was naturalism for women. So if you follow a trickle

00:34:12.720 down effect of this, if the women in France were not having their hairstyle, they were not getting

00:34:17.500 their blowouts, they were not wearing silk, they were not getting stuff embroidered. The people who

00:34:21.300 are affected by this is the silk industry, people who work in the stays industry, people who work

00:34:26.600 in the hairstyling industry, even the laundry industry, because it became sort of like for men

00:34:31.220 and women, for everybody in France at this time, it was kind of like, don't wash your clothes or

00:34:34.700 yourself that's how you show you're a patriot the lace making industry like all these industries

00:34:40.940 which were heavily most of the people in them were women so suddenly they were you know they're 0.70

00:34:46.380 already hangry there's no bread and now suddenly people aren't ordering their silk or their stays

00:34:50.800 like luckily people still ordering chocolate so pauline is still doing okay but these are things

00:34:55.800 that are going on the city of i think it was leon which was kind of like the silk mecca it was like

00:35:02.220 the place where so much of the silk production happened because people stopped buying the as

00:35:06.360 much fancy silk like they like the whole city like everyone was just suddenly bankrupt and

00:35:11.780 hangry because they weren't able to sell their products so of the two sides of the revolution 0.95

00:35:20.360 the girondins who are a bit more like let's have a king but also have like politicians they were 0.99

00:35:27.080 like, we'll let women help us towards revolutionary goals. That's cool. The Jacobins were like, 0.99

00:35:35.620 not even that. Like women stay home, breastfeed your children, dress in a burlap sack. Thank you 1.00

00:35:43.360 so much. That's what you can do for your country. And yet Pauline was, she wanted more than that

00:35:50.740 for women. She wanted to be much more involved in the revolution itself. And on May 13th, 1793,

00:35:56.020 Pauline registered the first ever revolutionary society solely for women. Remember I told you 0.90

00:36:02.020 there's kind of like men revolutionaries and women revolutionaries. So there's a lot of clubs

00:36:06.700 for men revolutionaries and sometimes women like Tyrone de Maricor or Olym de Gouges would like

00:36:11.780 attend their meetings, but you know, they weren't really super welcome and they couldn't

00:36:16.520 really have a say. So this is where Pauline was like, what we need is like an all girl 1.00

00:36:20.460 Revolutionary Society. And so she did. It was called the Société des Républicains 0.99

00:36:26.540 Revolutionaires. And it was formed by Pauline and her new best friend, Claire Lacombe. Let's

00:36:33.440 talk about her. So Claire Lacombe was like a few years younger than Pauline. She was in her like 0.96

00:36:40.060 mid-late 20s at the time that they started, when they met each other and started this

00:36:43.680 girls club. So Claire was born in poverty in the provincial town of Pommiers in southwestern

00:36:49.200 France, August 4th, 1765. If you notice, I always like to say dates. That's because I know a lot of

00:36:54.820 you out there are horoscope girlies. And I feel like that gives you information knowing these

00:36:59.400 dates. So we don't know anything about Claire's childhood. We know that as a teenager, she became

00:37:05.920 an actress in a repertory company. And we've talked a bit on previous episodes. We did an

00:37:11.120 episode, if you haven't heard it, the episode I did a couple of years ago about an actress named

00:37:16.440 Rochelle. No last name. Like it's spelled like Rachel, R-A-C-H-E-L. Just look up the episode

00:37:21.300 of Vogue Her History about Rochelle and you can learn a lot about what it was like to be a French

00:37:25.060 actress. The era just slightly after this one, but a lot of it connects. So she was an actress,

00:37:31.660 Claire Lacombe. She's AKA Rosa Lacombe. Sometimes people called her that. Cute name. I don't know

00:37:37.260 if that's her stage name or what. Apparently to be successful as an actress, you need to have like 0.88

00:37:43.460 a strong stage presence. You need to be quite striking looking. And apparently she was both

00:37:47.360 of those things. As we talked about in the Rochelle episode, to be a stage performer at

00:37:52.140 this time meant you were doing these specific plays that had specific hand gestures. So it's

00:37:57.700 a very sort of exaggerated style of acting. And apparently she did just fine at it. She wasn't

00:38:04.520 like a star, but she was making a career for herself. Like she was a working actress and kind

00:38:09.220 of not in Paris, but in like other parts of France. So by her early twenties, she was an

00:38:15.200 accomplished performer. She performed in Lyon. She performed in Marseille and she was part of

00:38:20.260 an acting company that just moved from town to town, sometimes went into castles and the country

00:38:23.820 houses or aristocrats. So she would have kind of seen what it was like for the really wealthy

00:38:28.640 people to be living. Meanwhile, she was like living in filthy hotels, like rooms and taverns 0.96

00:38:35.200 and just kind of like getting by. But as she's traveling around France and spending time in

00:38:40.240 these places, like she would have seen the rich people and she's performing for them,

00:38:43.940 but then she's spending time in these taverns and whatever. And she would have heard people

00:38:47.380 talking about like, oh, you know, there's like revolution is in the air, like maybe stuff in

00:38:51.300 France is going to change. And so she heard that the playwright Beaumarchais had staged the marriage

00:38:57.140 of Figaro, which was very subversive. I think it's subversive because something about the story

00:39:01.660 involves, I think, an aristocrat falling in love with a servant. And that was just like,

00:39:06.740 harm in my pills, like to all of France to see a play where something like that happened.

00:39:10.380 She heard that he'd become the darling of the city for putting on this play.

00:39:13.480 And she was just like, I need to go to Paris. It sounds like cool things are happening in Paris.

00:39:16.380 She was like the opposite of Lauren Conrad from the Hills. She's just like, I'm going to be the

00:39:20.660 girl who went to Paris. She saved up her money from acting and made her way to Paris in July 1792.

00:39:26.420 which if i mean she arrived in the middle of all of it like she wasn't just like oh wow what's this

00:39:33.220 the women's march this is like two years after the women's march three years after the women's

00:39:36.600 march like things are like again i'm not gonna say purge level but things are like pretty chaotic

00:39:42.960 there so she arrived to a city at war in revolution and in trouble so this was at this point three

00:39:49.880 years since the fall of the best deal which was being celebrated on july 14th in widespread street

00:39:54.820 parties. She joined the street parties. She was just like, fuck yeah, I'm in Paris. This is

00:39:58.300 amazing. And while she was there, she saw all the hangry, poor people. She saw how people were being 1.00

00:40:03.640 oppressed and mistreated. She took a room in a cheap hotel and she liked her on the Mericourt

00:40:09.720 when we talked about it last week. She just started doing her unofficial bachelor's degree

00:40:14.240 in political studies by just attending all these sessions of meetings of people talking about

00:40:19.300 politics and philosophy and everything. So she went to sessions of the legislative assembly.

00:40:24.820 And meanwhile, like she had this cheap room, but she had to pay for it. So she made a living

00:40:28.220 as an actor by acting in patriotic tableaus of the time, which I think just like street theater,

00:40:35.620 like she knew all the arm gestures of being an actress. So she could just kind of like step

00:40:38.920 into those roles, which again is very Rochelle coded. She sewed her dress in the colors of the

00:40:43.880 tricolor red, white, and blue flag of the revolution, which we're going to talk about a

00:40:49.040 lot, but the red, white, and blue flag of the revolution. People also, when you think about

00:40:52.860 the French Revolution, you know, people have these sort of like fabric boutonnieres. They're

00:40:57.160 called cockades. It's sort of like you take ribbon and it's like red and white and blue

00:41:00.860 in kind of a sunburst shape and you would wear them. When you were wearing one of those buttons,

00:41:05.760 people knew you were like part of the revolution. Anyway, so Claire, like she got her feet under

00:41:10.120 her. She's just like figuring things out to the point where she felt confident enough to address

00:41:13.740 the National Assembly in 1792. This is where she and Pauline might have discovered their soulmates

00:41:19.980 because she also fucking hated Lafayette. If Lafayette had no haters, it's because she 1.00

00:41:25.460 and Pauline were both dead. They hated Lafayette. So she went to the National Assembly, demanded

00:41:30.260 the removal of Lafayette from the head of the National Guard. And in her speech, she also

00:41:33.940 explained, like, I am an unemployed actress, so I don't have very much money to donate to the cause,

00:41:39.100 but I will pay it homage with my person. This is a quote from her. Born with the courage of a Roman

00:41:45.120 and with the hatred of tyrants, I would consider myself fortunate to contribute to their destruction. 0.98

00:41:49.980 She's just like, I will self-immolate myself if it would kill one aristocrat, basically. 1.00

00:41:56.160 But then also because of the weird fucked up feminism of it all. 0.99

00:41:59.420 She's like, I'm a single woman, so I can do all this stuff. 1.00

00:42:01.800 But all the mothers should stay home and not abandon their children. 1.00

00:42:05.820 Because breastfeeding your children is the most important thing in the world.

00:42:08.520 But I'm a single woman, so I can do it. 1.00

00:42:09.900 But other women shouldn't do the same as me. 0.99

00:42:12.280 It's such a weird tightrope they have to walk about this. 0.83

00:42:14.300 anyway i don't know when or where or in what context but at this time beginning at this time

00:42:22.140 claire lacombe pauline leon they were a duo they were a pair they were always together the thing

00:42:30.520 where i'm just trying to explain their whole thing is if you like og taylor swift fans will remember

00:42:39.680 when she was, she became really close to Karlie Kloss, the actress and model.

00:42:46.120 And they were just like, never not together. Like they were always together. They did like

00:42:50.300 Vogue editorials together. They were just like always besties. They're always together.

00:42:54.620 And then at some point they stopped being always together. And people look back at that and think

00:42:58.980 like, oh, were they in a romantic relationship that they didn't disclose? Or was this just like

00:43:03.260 a really intense platonic friendship? Or like, what was up? Like they were together all the time

00:43:07.280 and then they weren't anymore and then you're looking for easter eggs and taylor swift songs

00:43:10.720 what does it mean so just the same sort of thing with claire and pauline they were just together

00:43:15.980 all the time and we don't know what kind of relationship that was but i do know that they 1.00

00:43:22.280 got along really well and i personally hope they were lesbians so they're just like in lockstep

00:43:30.000 they're just like oh my god you're like me i'm like you like let's be together forever so august

00:43:35.340 10th, 1792. There was an assault on Tuileries Palace. Remember, that's where the royal family

00:43:40.520 moved to after the women's march. Tuileries also on your bingo card. And Claire was among the

00:43:48.180 leaders of this assault, along with Tyrone de Maricourt. And guess who? Coming back in this

00:43:53.260 episode, Reine O'Doo, the queen of the market ladies. Like, if you see those three coming for 1.00

00:43:59.580 you, Claire Lacombe, Tyrone de Maricourt, and Reyn Avdu, like, just run. Like, you will be murdered 0.86

00:44:06.260 by them. So they were among, like, of course, a large crowd, but they were towards the front of

00:44:11.780 the crowd. So they forced their way past the Swiss guards who were guarding the royal family, killing

00:44:17.300 most of them. And then they pursued the king into the legislative assembly. Like, they literally

00:44:21.420 chased him down the hallway. The legislators were in the legislative assembly at the time, I guess,

00:44:27.320 And they were just like terrified by the mob. And so they voted to suspend the monarchy and place the king under arrest. During this, quote, melee, I would say, purge-like riot, Claire Lacombe was shot through the arm, but was fine. This does not stop her. Shot through the arm is quite a thing to say. Maybe it grazed her arm. I don't know. She did not lose a limb.

00:44:52.180 The next day, she was proclaimed the heroine of August 10th and given a civic crown, along with Tyrone de Mericourt.

00:44:59.300 Two days later, she spoke to the Legislative Assembly, offering her civic crown to the delegates.

00:45:03.580 She praised them for their courage, wisdom, and patriotism.

00:45:06.840 And now for a quick advertising break.

00:45:09.960 The war is over and both sides lost.

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00:47:52.180 And we're back.

00:47:53.820 And so that was August 1792.

00:47:55.760 The following May is when Claire and Pauline

00:47:58.620 found the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women.

00:48:02.620 And when it started, Pauline was named president

00:48:04.980 and Claire was named the secretary.

00:48:06.960 But this was like such a sort of democratic-minded organization.

00:48:11.940 they had a new election every meeting for a new president and new secretary so that no one would

00:48:17.560 get like two in charge or something so by this point like toiletries was august 1792 that they

00:48:25.400 put in the paperwork to start their club may 1793 so this is like several several months during

00:48:30.060 which time claire and pauline became well known as orators and revolutionaries maybe claire like

00:48:36.760 helped pauline with some like you know elocution or some like actress tips to like make your 1.00

00:48:41.160 speech is better. And maybe Pauline like introduced Claire to like chocolate, you know, like they were 0.99

00:48:46.140 just having a nice time and they just spoke all over the place. They spoke at huge crowds and

00:48:50.520 assemblies and popular societies. And I do want to mention that Pauline's mom, Matharine, was also

00:48:56.240 all up in this. Like her mom was there too. And I want to mention that specifically because Claire

00:49:02.000 Pauline, her mom, like Tyrone de Maricourt, Olympe de Gouges, like there was not that many women

00:49:09.840 revolutionaries who were this famous the reason why i'm doing whatever this is gonna being seven

00:49:15.580 or eight weeks it's like that's how many there were there's not more women revolutionaries to

00:49:19.800 discuss um the rest were all men like the revolutionaries were almost all men the

00:49:24.560 leadership were were all men and it's kind of like not unlike now you know there's so many

00:49:31.840 radicals on the streets i was talking about like paris had like 500 000 people and then of those

00:49:36.200 there's like 10 women who are revolutionaries but in terms of the men who are revolutionaries

00:49:41.540 it's like a small group of people and the people leading it is an even smaller group of people so

00:49:46.200 like led by robespierre so paris's radicalization it's not just like sometimes it's mistaken as

00:49:54.180 like the people of france came together to be like let's go to the king and do this together

00:49:58.820 it's like no it's like robespierre and like two other guys who were just kind of like manipulating

00:50:03.760 the people who were already upset about bread and stuff to kind of side with them.

00:50:08.320 So it's like a small group of male activists kind of running everything, but kind of pretending

00:50:14.720 like it's the voice of the people. So there were some people who didn't agree with what

00:50:22.440 Robespierre and others were doing, not because they were like sexist assholes, but because 0.99

00:50:27.160 they were not taking it far enough. And the people who wanted to go even further with it 0.98

00:50:31.040 were called the enrages, which is a French word that basically means the angry. They wanted an

00:50:36.920 even more extreme social change. And Pauline and Claire were just like, fuck yeah, we're like the 0.98

00:50:42.020 lady enrages now too. So, oh, I also want to mention at their like ladies club during the 0.99

00:50:49.760 session. So when they chose a new president, I'm sorry, they didn't change every month. They changed

00:50:53.680 every, it's not every meeting they changed president. It's every month they changed president.

00:50:58.180 So during this session, whoever the president was, who was a woman, would wear a red Phrygian cap. 0.75

00:51:04.220 So the Phrygian cap are these like red Smurf hats that men wore in the French Revolution. 0.71

00:51:10.240 And if you look up the, what was it, 2024 Paris Olympics, the mascot was Phrygian, which was like a little red animated cartoon Phrygian hat. 0.85

00:51:22.400 So wearing the red Phrygian hat at these ladies club meetings was gender shenanigans because 0.65

00:51:28.740 these hats were men's hats. 1.00

00:51:31.080 These were masculine hats. 0.79

00:51:33.080 The sans-culottes men who, reminder, the sans-culottes men, I object to their name because it always

00:51:40.780 makes me think that they are not wearing, that they are nude from the waist down, which

00:51:45.100 is not the case.

00:51:46.400 What they're saying is we are sans-culottes.

00:51:48.400 We don't wear culottes.

00:51:49.740 We wear trousers.

00:51:51.520 They were these kind of like loose fitting trousers with like red and white stripes on them to be like the patriotic flag.

00:51:58.900 But it just sounds like, sounds like you shouldn't call yourself sans culotte.

00:52:03.480 It just sounds like you're not wearing any pants.

00:52:06.500 You should say like we are trouser wearers.

00:52:09.340 Like here's what we are wearing.

00:52:10.860 Like if I had a party and I said, hey guys, it's a party, don't wear pants.

00:52:15.440 Like what would everyone show up in?

00:52:17.620 It's like, but if I said I have a party, everyone wear a skirt, then you'd know. 0.99

00:52:21.520 anyway um sans culottes were these smurf hats and so the ladies revolutionary society was wearing

00:52:29.560 the smurf hat and then that's kind of like oh my god what are they up to like uh they're

00:52:33.240 threatening gender roles etc like even the revolution had sort of like a mascot there 0.97

00:52:38.580 was like this statue of this like sexy lady who is liberty where it's like women are allowed but 0.86

00:52:43.040 only in like sexy statue forms who don't talk but even this like woman's statue wasn't wearing one 1.00

00:52:47.740 of these hats she had the hat was draped over a pike like not on her head but claire and pauline 1.00

00:52:53.180 are just like yeah we're gonna wear these hats like fuck you like let's just break down gender 1.00

00:52:57.600 norms we're two lesbians and we're gonna like run this revolution so this is where their society 0.99

00:53:05.180 turns into what i think of as kind of like french revolution karens because the two of them and the 1.00

00:53:10.880 other women from their society just started like walking in the streets just like getting it up in

00:53:14.260 other people's business they were just looking for counter-revolutionaries pauline and claire 1.00

00:53:18.980 even though women like technically weren't supposed to weapons they had daggers and pistols 0.99

00:53:22.940 they wore their cockades um and they just sort of like walked around just like getting up in 1.00

00:53:28.780 everyone's face being like oh where's your cockade like why are you with a revolution or not just 0.74

00:53:32.640 kind of like ladies come down but they at this point they kind of overtook the market ladies 0.98

00:53:39.420 as the biggest bullies in town, but they saw themselves as agents of liberty hunting down 0.99

00:53:44.420 the nation's internal enemies. One of these enemies was Theroyne de Maricourt, who we talked

00:53:51.040 about last week. So Theroyne de Maricourt was with the Girondins, which to remind you in the

00:53:56.100 pantheon of like people in groups in the French Revolution, the Girondins are kind of like the

00:54:00.740 most chill. They were the ones who were like, we can have the king and the queen, but like also

00:54:04.760 politicians. And the Jacobins, that's like Robespierre, who's just kind of like, there

00:54:09.880 shouldn't be a king. And then we have the Enroges who are just like, fucking burn it all down. 0.99

00:54:14.960 Tyrone de Maricourt is with his Girondins. And so a group of the Revolutionary Cairns were out 0.99

00:54:20.980 patrolling the Tuileries Gardens on May 15th to make sure that everybody attending meetings today

00:54:25.840 was wearing their cockade and getting up in everyone's business. And they had been hoping

00:54:29.800 to run into Tyrone for a while just because she was like a famous Girondin. Anyway, they

00:54:34.600 found her they ran into her and this is where they like whipped her famously we talked about 0.87

00:54:39.440 that in the taroyne episode they like pulled her skirt over her head like revealing you know here's

00:54:45.340 like a sans culotte moment anyway it was vicious taroyne was like permanently injured from this 0.58

00:54:50.920 and she was only able to escape when jean paul murat who was uh he was a jacobin he's the one

00:55:01.380 who's killed by charlotte corday we'll talk about him next week he took pity and escorted her away

00:55:06.260 so this whole thing that they were doing claire and pauline and their group like roving the streets

00:55:12.760 just like whipping people who they thought were like against the revolution robespierre was like

00:55:19.580 he didn't tell them to do it but he was like didn't mind they were doing it because they

00:55:23.980 were technically helping get rid of his political opponents then there was a whole thing that 0.97

00:55:29.160 happened so some radicals were telling the national convention to expel the girondins like they weren't

00:55:36.620 extreme enough or whatever and claire and pauline's group were like reporting for duty we're here we're

00:55:41.760 wearing our red hats probably um and they prevented the girondin deputies from escaping

00:55:46.380 claire and pauline's group were armed with poniards which are apparently lightweight

00:55:51.080 thrusting knives so they were sort of like robespierre's like lady army like making sure

00:55:56.900 the Girondins were kicked out. So afterwards, this group was praised for contributing to this

00:56:01.800 coup. A new constitution was adopted on June 24th, 1793, still denying women political rights. But

00:56:09.680 because Claire and Pauline's group had helped out that day with their thrusting knives,

00:56:14.160 they were allowed to march in the official celebration parade for their part in ousting

00:56:17.680 the Girondins. And then Charlotte Corday murdered Murat, which we'll talk about again in detail

00:56:25.380 next week probably but basically marat was a jacobin leader charlotte was a girondin so a 0.62

00:56:32.780 girondin killed a jacobin and robespierre was like this is great a lady girondin killed this

00:56:38.500 like beloved figure like this is great this is great for me robespierre because it means that 0.99

00:56:43.160 i can show that like women shouldn't be involved in politics look at women be crazy bitches um and 0.96

00:56:48.960 so he started to work to get girondins even further removed but also to remove women 0.99

00:56:54.620 or to make people even more grossed up by the idea of women being involved in politics. 0.78

00:56:59.940 So Murat had this like big public funeral. Claire and Pauline's group carried his bathtub. So

00:57:05.480 Murat, again, we're talking about this next week, but he was stabbed to death in his bathtub,

00:57:09.540 which is like a famous image. So Claire and Pauline's group got the honor of carrying the

00:57:15.360 bathtub in the funeral procession. And afterwards they continued to parade it and his bloodstained

00:57:20.800 shirt through the streets. And 10 days later, Robespierre took his place for the first time

00:57:26.160 on the Committee of Public Safety, ushering in a new era, which was no longer about revolution

00:57:32.620 and reform, but about the terror, aka the purge era. So market ladies update. Guess what? Bread

00:57:41.720 still expensive. So the market ladies, so like they had been complaining about bread being 1.00

00:57:46.960 expensive since 1789 it is now 1793 three or four 1793 and market ladies are like why is bread still

00:57:54.760 expensive like we thought it was maybe to do with this revolution but maybe it's not they were like

00:57:59.520 what did this revolution even achieved one of the market ladies said like during the old days

00:58:03.460 there's one king but now there's like 30 or 40 things are like in fact not better at one point

00:58:09.840 the market ladies they're also mad about the price of soap so they did this whole thing where they 0.97

00:58:14.440 just like seized a boatload of soap in the Seine and distributed against themselves. Like they 1.00

00:58:18.000 were mad about bread prices, they were mad about high prices. And they were starting to realize

00:58:21.760 that like the revolution wasn't going to solve this problem. And that people like Robespierre

00:58:26.320 had been sort of falsely conflating bread prices with revolution just to get them on his side.

00:58:30.980 At this point as well, Claire and Pauline's organization made a move. Like they had been

00:58:37.060 sort of like, we're like Robespierre's lady soldiers. And now they're just kind of like, 0.65

00:58:40.440 Robespierre is not even extreme enough for us. We were the lady on Roger's and Robespierre is a

00:58:47.420 coward. So the men and Roger's, the angry, were led by a man called Jacques Roux, a.k.a. the red

00:58:55.460 priest. And he had been the guy who, he was a priest. And when Louis XVI was executed, that

00:59:04.920 happened a few months before all of this. We just didn't get into it in this week's episode. We'll

00:59:08.420 talk about it later. Jacques Roux, the red priest, had been the one who walked Louis XVI up to the

00:59:14.480 scaffold to the guillotine to have his head cut off. The Enmerger's whole thing was they would 0.96

00:59:18.580 not stop revolutionizing until true equality had been established. And they were also the only 0.67

00:59:25.240 revolutionary group that valued women contributing to political life. So like, no wonder our lesbian 1.00

00:59:30.500 heroes, that's who they sided with. So along with Jacques Roux, the red priest, another Enmerger 1.00

00:59:36.000 leader was a 22-year-old man named Théophile Leclerc, who, let's talk about him because he

00:59:43.640 becomes important to this story. And his name just really makes me think of, I'm just picturing

00:59:48.960 Timothee Chalamet. His name is Théophile Leclerc, but it might as well be Timothee Chalamet. Like

00:59:55.040 that's who we're all picturing, right? Timothee Chalamet was born in 1771 at La Cote near the

01:00:02.040 small town of Montbrisson near Lyon, the youngest of five children of a civil engineer named

01:00:08.020 Gregoire and a commoner named Antoinette. So he was, he's younger. He's like at least 10 years

01:00:13.920 younger than Claire and Pauline. He was like 18 when the revolution broke out and he tried to

01:00:18.460 join the national guard, but they're like, babe, like you're Timothee Chalamet, like you're too

01:00:22.580 skinny, you're too young, you can't join. So instead he went to Martinique in the Caribbean

01:00:27.380 and was a soldier there. He had a short kind of bananas army career that evolved at age 20. He

01:00:33.980 defended his companions in front of the National Assembly to save their life. Turns out he's a good

01:00:38.840 public speaker. And so he became a popular revolutionary speaker. In fact, he spoke so

01:00:44.820 vehemently against the Girondins that he was kicked out of the Jacobin club. Like the Jacobins 0.99

01:00:51.100 kicked him out for being too extreme is like where this little twink is coming from. So he

01:00:57.320 was not from Paris, but he was in Paris now. And he's like, where am I going to stay? I don't know.

01:01:00.960 And he started staying with Claire Lacombe. Did he become her lover? A lot of people thought so.

01:01:06.240 And later she confirmed that he did. But this does not stop my hypothesis of Claire and Pauline

01:01:11.460 being lesbians, because I think they feel this might be a thruple situation. 0.52

01:01:17.780 Anyway, so after the assassination of Marat, Timothee Chalamet started his own newspaper 1.00

01:01:24.660 called The Friend of the People, which was actually the title of Marat's old newspaper.

01:01:28.980 And this newspaper became widely read and he was saying he's like really extreme views in it.

01:01:33.400 And this made Robespierre even more mad with him, Timothee Chalamet, and also just with the

01:01:38.100 Enroges in general. So his like little, little Timothee Chalamet energy, like his energy just 0.99

01:01:45.440 really reinvigorated Pauline and Claire's Ladies Revolutionary Society. The anniversary of the

01:01:52.120 storming of the Tuileries was coming up. Everyone was still mad about bread prices, which were

01:01:57.000 getting, guess what, even higher. This whole time, the market ladies, like from the Women's March 0.99

01:02:02.100 till now, bread has only become more expensive, which is like relatable. Anyway, so Claire and

01:02:10.100 Pauline's group decided to send a petition to the convention demanding that all women should be

01:02:14.480 required to wear the tricolor cockade and this is like like my girls why is this why is this

01:02:25.560 your focus like forcing everybody to wear the cockade it's like okay but do you mean you want

01:02:33.740 them to wear the cockade because then they'll be seen as citizens and then maybe women will get

01:02:38.320 rights but i don't think it is i think it's more just kind of like french revolution karen they

01:02:42.460 just want it's like do you remember that thing where this is like ages ago it was like oh if

01:02:50.640 like white women if you're like a good person then like wear a safety pin and then people know you're 0.64

01:02:56.760 a good person or that thing about like white women like wear a blue bracelet and that means 0.66

01:03:01.160 you didn't vote for Trump or whatever it's like these gestures of things it's like why are we

01:03:07.320 focusing on that I don't know you know what they're doing the best they could for some reason 0.89

01:03:10.380 this matter to them anyway meanwhile well they were just trying to force the market ladies because

01:03:17.260 that's who is not wearing a cockade is the market ladies spoiler um don't go against the market

01:03:23.160 ladies anyway robespierre and his pals the incels were working to they're just like we don't like 0.95

01:03:31.120 women having a voice politically so women should be wives and mothers that is their highest calling 0.80

01:03:39.500 So they launched some sort of PR campaign, being like, women of France, what you should be doing is breastfeeding your children, who are the future Republicans of France.

01:03:51.500 Being a wife is the most important job of all, or whatever.

01:03:54.460 Pauline and Claire, who I want to mention, neither of whom has children, were just still all in on this cockades situation, which led to, in September 1793, the War of the Cockades.

01:04:06.760 So again, those are these like ribbon pins, little wreaths that you wear.

01:04:10.720 So since July 1792, men had been required to wear a cockade.

01:04:14.420 So it's not like they're coming out of nowhere with this.

01:04:17.060 They were just saying like, women should also be required to wear cockades.

01:04:21.660 And this is where they just got into like Refinusha or Karen vibes.

01:04:25.540 Again, they were stuck here in the city. 0.99

01:04:27.100 When they saw a woman who was now wearing a cockade, 1.00

01:04:29.420 they would, even though they weren't required, 0.99

01:04:30.800 they would just like attack them, they would whip them.

01:04:33.080 And they'd also recently moved their HQ. So they had moved their headquarters because the Ladies 1.00

01:04:39.260 Society had started off meeting, I want to say like in Tuileries, but near where the Jacobin

01:04:45.560 Club was. But when they were like, Jacobins are not extreme enough for us, they moved to a different

01:04:49.740 rental space, which was down near the market, which the market ladies were like, 0.81

01:04:56.880 this is our turf like this is market ladies area you're moving your like political club 1.00

01:05:03.340 into your area you're like beating us up to wear cockades like all we want is bread price fixing 1.00

01:05:10.740 like it was on like this was now like market ladies versus claire and pauline and the lady

01:05:17.500 revolutionaries it was this is a a rivalry for the ages truly so claire and pauline were going

01:05:25.820 around like revolutionary Karens threatening anyone not wearing a cockade that they would 0.99

01:05:30.180 whip them like they had to ruin the merry court market women were like we will murder you if you 1.00

01:05:36.220 keep harassing us and our customers and besides how are we going to buy cockades we don't have 1.00

01:05:41.160 any money because of the bread prices motherfuckers so things are not going great meanwhile so ropes 0.97

01:05:50.140 Pierre is still trying to just like get the women's group to like chill out and be quiet 0.98

01:05:55.260 and like go home and breastfeed babies or whatever but Claire and Pauline were becoming even more

01:06:00.300 outspoken so they're still calling Robespierre a coward they were becoming so outspoken that

01:06:04.880 other members of the ladies group were like like you're going a bit too far and at this point Claire

01:06:10.780 the other women in the society confronted her they're like well what about your relationship

01:06:14.520 with Timothee Chalamet because what does that mean because remember like France is like obsessed 0.90

01:06:18.880 with women having moral ethical characters and not being sluts so like well claire well timothy 0.84

01:06:26.340 chalamet has been staying with you like isn't he your lover and isn't he sort of like aristocratic 0.98

01:06:31.140 adjacent like his name is timothy chalamet and claire's like no no no we're not lovers totally

01:06:35.960 fine like ladies come down and robespierre and the jacobins just kept trashing the women's

01:06:42.240 republican revolutionary society like just like trashing them just saying like they're all so 0.79

01:06:46.560 shitty and like claire and her relationship with timothy chalamet was really um taking the brunt 0.60

01:06:51.740 of all of it because you couldn't you can say anything against pauline leon because she was

01:06:55.960 just this like chocolate maker in her early 30s living with her mom like there just wasn't something

01:07:01.960 they could draw on if there had been they would have smeared her as well so at this point um at

01:07:07.260 one of the meetings i don't know the legislative assembly or whatever it's called the a guy who

01:07:11.780 was like their sometimes ally called francois chabot he attacked claire claiming she had

01:07:16.820 attempted to secure freedom for certain counter-revolutionaries like that she had 0.86

01:07:20.720 betrayed her principles claire denied the charge and then her female friends burst into the hall 0.99

01:07:26.880 i guess to defend her anyway there are shouts of down with a new corday some called for her arrest 0.99

01:07:32.000 like they thought that she was like the new charlotte corday she was just it was a real 1.00

01:07:36.240 it was a real like lively situation of just sort of like this woman who just kind of everyone was

01:07:42.900 just piling on and it's like did she do something shitty like that wasn't even the issue anymore it's 0.84

01:07:48.960 just like people just needed a woman to be really mad about so claire at this point was prevented

01:07:55.400 from speaking in her own defense and she was taken to the tuileries to be questioned by the committee

01:07:59.800 of public safety after two hours she was let out but when she got home the commissioners had put

01:08:04.220 like seals on her belongings and on the doors. So she couldn't even get into her home.

01:08:08.520 The Jacquemans voted that the women's society had to expel her. Although everyone kind of like had 0.65

01:08:14.860 like a nice rest. And the next day they're like, okay, you can get in your home. It's cool.

01:08:18.780 Everything's fine. And she was just like, you will never shut me up. She spoke to the society,

01:08:22.660 the women's society. And she was just kind of like being like, what the fuck? Like, 1.00

01:08:26.940 we're just like the revolutionary ladies. We wear our red hats. This is what she said. 0.87

01:08:30.680 all the ills that are befalling Paris are attributed to us these monsters who are only 0.91

01:08:35.000 who are strong only when they oppress the weak and she's right like things were really shitty

01:08:41.700 in Paris and it was mostly Robespierre's fault combined with the bad harvest of 1788 and the

01:08:48.660 lack of bread but there were like Robespierre was like well no one can blame me because then 0.94

01:08:53.660 I'll get in trouble so let's just blame this woman over here who's like wearing a hat and 0.99

01:08:58.020 gender shenanigans just to sort of like distract people from the fact that he was actually the 1.00

01:09:02.720 problem, which again is not at all like anything we're seeing in contemporary society, except it's

01:09:08.720 exactly what we're seeing in contemporary society. All of the countries like the US and the UK and

01:09:16.100 places who are just like hyper fixated on like trans people and what are the rights of who can 0.81

01:09:23.320 play sports it's like that's the cockades of it all really it's like there's so many more actual 0.97

01:09:29.900 problems that are being caused by shitty governments but the shitty governments are 0.98

01:09:35.320 like don't pay attention to that like look over there like trans people like it's just the same 1.00

01:09:40.540 thing over and over again and i feel for claire when she's just like fuck all this noise so but 0.95

01:09:48.600 she did not stop claire within days she petitioned the convention to demand so people who were like 0.96

01:09:56.140 rich people who were fleeing france at this point were called emigres and they would if a rich person

01:10:01.860 left france and went to like england or germany or whatever they they're considered emigres like

01:10:06.860 if you fled then you would have you'd be cut off from all your money so if you're thinking like

01:10:11.340 why don't more of these rich people flee we'll talk about that more in later episodes but

01:10:14.980 basically it's like if you fled you would have to start over with nothing and maybe you're somebody

01:10:19.620 who doesn't have any skills like you don't so it's like better to stay in France where maybe

01:10:24.240 things will get better than to leave where you don't know what your life is going to be like 0.60

01:10:27.700 sort of thing so anyway people who had left the emigres some of them men left but their wives

01:10:34.280 were still in France and so Claire petitioned to have those wives arrested and she also and this

01:10:40.280 is a very interesting part of claire's whole vibe if she wanted to um work towards the rehabilitation

01:10:46.720 of sex workers this was always something that was important to her and i like the stuff i read and

01:10:53.060 just other things i read and my personal feelings are like that actresses and sex workers were so

01:11:00.120 overlaid with each other at this time like a lot of actresses were also courtesans a lot of

01:11:05.900 courtesans also to acting like it's kind of one big community and she was like let's help the 1.00

01:11:10.860 sex workers and she wasn't like let's legitimize like let's legalize sex work she was because the 0.98

01:11:16.120 whole country is just like women have to be so moral and breastfeeding the next generation so 0.83

01:11:20.800 she's like let's rehabilitate them which is more than anyone else is doing for them anyway she did 1.00

01:11:26.380 in fact convince the convention to pass a law requiring women to wear the cockade the market 1.00

01:11:32.440 women were like fuck this because they didn't give a shit about politics they were just like 0.99

01:11:38.100 we just want to make money um buy bread not die of starvation and again it's a lot like today 1.00

01:11:45.420 where there's people who are like well i didn't vote in the election because those things don't

01:11:48.320 really affect me like people who are so busy just going paycheck to paycheck just trying to survive

01:11:54.020 it's like yeah i can see why who's the political leader does not feel like it matters to that

01:12:00.940 person where it's just kind of like everyone is always crushing you down anyway so like the so

01:12:08.880 the cockade rule was passed but claire and pauline were still like you know what because the whole

01:12:13.340 thing with the homerges is just like never stop and they're like great we've like the cockade is 0.83

01:12:17.840 now legal now let's force women to wear the red smurf hat too like claire claire like my sweet 0.99

01:12:24.720 little baby like adorable little lesbian like this is not gonna go well so everybody freaked 0.97

01:12:31.540 out about this the red hat like people were panicked about the like because remember the red 0.94

01:12:35.720 smurf hat was like a man's hat so then it's like gender shenanigans like this is gonna lead to more 0.99

01:12:40.160 street violence like which it would because claire and pauline were probably going around whipping 1.00

01:12:43.620 people not wearing a hat i guess and the market ladies were just like like we don't want to wear 1.00

01:12:48.720 a cockade we don't want to wear a hat don't tell us what to wear like we just want bread so you 1.00

01:12:54.540 know how they're meeting the meeting place of the Women's Revolutionary Society. It was like in the

01:12:58.460 market ladies area. So at the end of October, at one of the meetings, some market ladies stormed 0.64

01:13:06.360 a meeting of the ladies society. They were yelling down with red bonnets, down with Jacobin women, 0.99

01:13:12.080 down with Jacobin women and cockades. They're all scoundrels who have brought misfortune upon 1.00

01:13:16.040 France. And the market ladies beat everybody up. Like people are left unconscious. There was a man 1.00

01:13:22.880 there for some reason and he tried to intervene like a market lady was beating someone to death

01:13:27.300 with her wooden clog and this man was like hey ladies come down and then the market lady stabbed

01:13:31.940 him like it was and then the fight went on the streets and then it's just kind of like to be

01:13:37.480 fair a lot of people were being stabbed on the streets at this time so it's just like what's one

01:13:41.480 more but anyway it just kind of shows like if only there had been a way that claire and pauline could

01:13:46.120 have been on the market lady's sides like if you could harness the market ladies for your cause

01:13:51.120 like the women's march like all everyone had kind of teamed up together that went well

01:13:56.280 all told but this is just like women versus women and it's just like robespierre turning

01:14:03.560 women against women and just makes me sad so robespierre of course he's just like haha the

01:14:08.780 women are fighting this is an excuse to disempower this group for good so the market ladies went to 0.54

01:14:15.680 the national convention to be like let us wear what we want don't make us wear hats don't make 0.98

01:14:19.620 or cockades several other speakers in the convention denounced the women's society and

01:14:24.160 then the women's club was banned not only that but all women's clubs and all women's popular

01:14:29.680 societies were all banned women were no longer permitted to organize in clubs they could be

01:14:35.520 tolerated as spectators silent and modest in the patriotic societies but they could no longer go 0.95

01:14:41.060 searching for news outside of their homes there they will wait and receive it from the mouths of

01:14:45.420 their fathers or their children or from their brothers or husbands. So just women were just 1.00

01:14:49.840 cut off from political life entirely. Claire and Pauline tried to challenge this law, but 1.00

01:14:55.300 I mean, no. Rose Pierre had been wanting to do this for a while, and why would he change his

01:15:01.980 mind? November 17th, the revolutionary women made their last stand. They appeared in front of the 0.98

01:15:07.160 General Council of Paris in their red caps. And then this part kind of mystifies me and reminds

01:15:12.740 me those kind of like fake stories on Reddit where people like explain a thing they did and

01:15:16.660 they're like, and then everyone applauded. It's kind of that. But I'll tell you what apparently

01:15:20.780 happened, which is that the president of the council, not the ladies group, the male president

01:15:26.300 of the general council of Paris gave a moving speech telling them to go like be natural,

01:15:32.460 breastfeed your children, like women should be at home and not into politics. And maybe the fact 0.97

01:15:37.260 that like all of society really deeply believe that somehow is why somehow this guy's speech 0.97

01:15:43.020 i don't know his name i don't care made all the women in the society remove the red hats

01:15:47.680 and then put on normal hats did they have normal hats with them also why i don't know and the

01:15:54.140 women were just kind of like okay we'll go off to wives and mothers i guess seems like a pretty

01:15:57.860 insane thing to happen but that is apparently what happened um the society was legally i can't 0.99

01:16:03.040 picture Claire doing that. Anyway, the society was disbanded. And then there was also a fight

01:16:09.340 where, I don't know if it was that day, but like around this time as well, where Pauline in front

01:16:16.680 of the rest of the revolutionary society was challenging Claire. She was like, Claire,

01:16:19.980 have you been fucking Timothee Chalamet? And Claire was like, okay, yes, fine. I have been, 0.99

01:16:25.100 yes. So that was sort of like a fracture in their relationship. Now, some people might say,

01:16:29.420 was this a fracture because Pauline had feelings for Timothee Chalamet? Or was this a fracture

01:16:33.820 because Pauline had feelings for Claire and realized that Claire had been sleeping with

01:16:37.080 Timothee Chalamet? Had they been a thruple at all? You tell me, write some fanfiction.

01:16:42.300 All I can tell you is that two days after the society disbanded, when the ladies took off

01:16:46.080 their hats, Timothee Chalamet got married to Pauline Leon. Like, did not see that coming.

01:16:56.460 And then Claire decided to leave Paris and resume her career as an actress. She's just like, there's nothing here for me. The revolution is just like a bunch of incels. Like my best friend slash lesbian partner just married this like twink, Timothee Chalamet. Like, of course she left. Claire's not even from there.

01:17:19.020 But before she could leave, she was caught by surprise and arrested on April 2nd, 1794, as were Pauline and Timothee Chalamet.

01:17:28.940 So, while they were imprisoned, Pauline Leon wrote a statement, which has survived.

01:17:35.020 In the statement, she highlighted her personal involvement in the revolution and how she recruited many others to the revolutionary cause.

01:17:42.300 She mentioned in this, of course, just like how much she hated Lafayette.

01:17:45.720 and she confirmed a rumor that she once broke into a man's home to throw a bust of lafayette

01:17:51.380 out the window which is like again like number one hater she wrote highly of the sans-culotte

01:17:58.140 movement and how she appreciated them and her statement concluded with her just saying that

01:18:03.480 she and her husband timothy chalamet were innocent and did nothing to merit and arrest the reason why

01:18:08.520 they had been arrested the two of them is that um timothy chalamet had been writing that newspaper 0.92

01:18:14.000 But remember, there was like, Rose Pierre sucks. 0.94

01:18:16.200 So I think that's why. 0.95

01:18:16.980 And Pauline had been helping with that.

01:18:18.460 Anyway, they were released after three months.

01:18:21.580 Mostly because on August 21st, Rose Pierre died. 0.98

01:18:25.880 And like so many shitty incel, political, shitty, tyrannical government movements, 0.96

01:18:31.340 it takes the death of the person in charge for it all to collapse 0.98

01:18:34.580 because it was all just a cult of personality.

01:18:36.580 Anyway, we'll talk in later episodes about the death of Rose Pierre. 1.00

01:18:41.140 Good riddance, this fucking guy. 0.99

01:18:43.220 Anyway, he died, and then it's like the people he had sent to jail were kind of all freed 1.00

01:18:46.380 because they're like, you're only in jail because he kind of didn't like you.

01:18:49.040 He's dead, so like, be free.

01:18:51.240 But Claire was not released at this time.

01:18:54.300 After her release from prison,

01:18:56.420 Pauline really removed herself from the political scene,

01:18:59.520 focusing her efforts on her household and her occupation as a schoolteacher. 0.93

01:19:03.220 I'm not sure how she went from chocolate business to school teaching, 0.94

01:19:06.920 but I guess one of her siblings maybe took over the chocolate business.

01:19:10.120 Anyway, she and Timothee Chalamet, they stopped publishing the newspaper and just kind of like

01:19:14.640 settled down to just be like a little couple just living their lives, not being constantly

01:19:20.240 threatened with murder. Good. Kind of like the ending of the Hunger Games vibes.

01:19:26.620 And then, so Claire, still in jail though. So Robesier was killed. And then his followers,

01:19:34.880 the Robespierrists, were overthrown in August 1794 as well. Claire, still in jail at that time,

01:19:40.700 she wrote from prison to the victors, speaking to her services of the nation, I guess, hoping that

01:19:45.480 they would, like, congratulate her or maybe free her, but they did not. They, in fact, ignored her

01:19:49.720 letter. Finally, in the autumn of 1795, after 16 months in prison, Claire was freed, and no one

01:19:57.140 knows what happened to her next. She just walked out and off of the pages of history. Did she keep

01:20:04.340 acting? Did she, I don't know. Did she travel? Like, we do not know what happened to Claire.

01:20:12.660 And what happened to everybody else, just so you know, at around that same time when

01:20:17.020 Robespierre was killed. So Ren Aoudou, the queen of the market ladies, she was like in and out

01:20:23.620 of prison for a while. Ultimately, she went insane and she died in a hospital for lunatics

01:20:29.800 in 1794 as well timothy chalamet lived until 1820 18 years after that pauline died age 70

01:20:39.840 at home in bourbon vende she died on october 5th 1838 and that is the saga claire lacombe

01:20:48.480 pauline leon in kind of the next phase of the french revolution and the women of the french

01:20:55.480 revolution. So I told their story as one episode. And so I'm going to score them

01:21:01.660 jointly as one person. So there are some other categories we haven't looked at in a while.

01:21:06.820 There's the Lady Jane Seymour Memorial Award for Outstanding Supporting Performance. And that's

01:21:11.040 for someone in a story who's just like helpful. And like, I don't think there's anyone like

01:21:16.500 Claire and Pauline were kind of this for each other, but where they're both the heroines,

01:21:20.480 I can't really give them the award. The Jeweled Tortoise Award is for legendary friend behavior

01:21:24.280 for someone who really was there for somebody and maybe they were for each other as well but

01:21:28.180 no one else really was like timothy chalamet wasn't so when we're scoring claire and pauline

01:21:36.020 jointly the first category is the scandalousness which is how scandalous were they seen by people

01:21:42.640 at the time and i feel like any woman who wasn't at home breastfeeding her babies was seen as pretty

01:21:49.880 scandalous by robespierre but these two were even seen as scandalous by like the market ladies like

01:21:54.940 they were there was not a lot of women revolutionaries they started a revolutionary 0.90

01:22:00.440 society like i think i think they were seen as extremely scandalous and robespierre tried to

01:22:07.560 make up all the stuff about like the sex scandals and whatever to try to make people hate them but

01:22:12.420 like what what people found scandalous was just their women speaking their mind 0.99

01:22:16.020 um and also kind of being an asshole like with the whole revolution karen 1.00

01:22:20.000 cockade quest i'm gonna give these gals i'm gonna give them a nine for scandaliciousness 0.98

01:22:26.840 the next category is scheminess which is just like coming up with plans and i don't know how

01:22:32.000 much they were doing that they were coming up with speeches proposals that they took to to

01:22:39.060 various governing bodies they weren't really coming like the market ladies market ladies 1.00

01:22:44.760 they score high for scheminess because they will just like beat you with a shoe but also the market 0.95

01:22:49.320 ladies organize a women's march and and all these things i think claire and pauline were like they 0.95

01:22:56.660 weren't not coming up with plans like they started their whole women's political organization

01:23:01.140 but i think that's a huge number for them i'm gonna give them a five for scheminess their

01:23:08.820 significance i will say that the reason why i'm covering both of them is because just in reading

01:23:13.540 about Olympe de Gouges, Theron de Maricourt, like Pauline and Claire's names just kept coming up.

01:23:18.700 It's kind of like Olympe, Theron de Maricourt, Claire, Pauline, and one other person we're

01:23:22.980 going to talk about in a couple of weeks. It's like, those are the gals, like those were the

01:23:26.740 women of the revolution. So it's notable for that. I think it's notable the significance of 0.86

01:23:32.720 making the women's political club, doing everything they could. There's just a lot of

01:23:39.580 people doing a lot of things. I don't know about their significance, although I will say

01:23:43.180 that there is a movie called One Nation, One King that I haven't watched. It's from 2018.

01:23:48.020 It's a movie about the French Revolution and Pauline Leon is in it. So she's significant

01:23:52.180 enough to be, to be in it. So I'm going to say, I'm just going to say like a five for

01:23:57.280 significance as well. Like they were certainly significant because there's so few women 1.00

01:24:01.220 revolutionaries at the time, but there's so much chaos going on. I don't know how much their actions

01:24:06.500 contributed to history. The final category is the sexism bonus, which is just like how much

01:24:13.980 could these people have accomplished without the patriarchy getting in their way? And I don't have

01:24:18.720 to think very hard because that's a 10 because the society they were living in was bullshit. 0.99

01:24:23.920 Like how much more could they have accomplished if they didn't have to spend all their time 0.96

01:24:28.200 fighting for just like the most basic things? If like, if France in this time wasn't a place

01:24:33.360 that hated women, or women hated women, or everyone hated women, like if they didn't have

01:24:38.020 to spend their time defending themselves, if they had been accepted by the other revolutionaries,

01:24:44.260 I mean, that's a straight up 10. So let's see. So that's a 20. That's a 29. And I feel like

01:24:50.480 that's exactly where the other revolutionary women are too. I am right. Yeah. So 29 is

01:24:57.820 Olympe de Gouges, 29.

01:24:59.260 Theroyne de Maricourt, 29.

01:25:01.480 Claire Lacombe and Pauline Leon, 29.

01:25:03.920 That's just...

01:25:04.860 I like that they're all hanging out there together.

01:25:06.900 Although I will say that during the French Revolution,

01:25:09.580 they were not hanging out with each other.

01:25:12.100 They were...

01:25:13.680 There's different...

01:25:14.780 Well, especially like Theroyne de Maricourt was like with the Girondins.

01:25:18.480 Like they weren't hanging out with each other.

01:25:21.780 Anyway, that is the scoring.

01:25:24.000 Next week, as I've said several times,

01:25:26.020 I'm going to be talking about Charlotte Corday. So just to kind of fill in that whole side of

01:25:33.820 things, because she is, I think, one, maybe the most famous woman from the French Revolution,

01:25:40.020 and her story is interesting, and it'll help flesh out a lot of the other stuff that we've

01:25:44.640 been talking about. So stay tuned next week for that. In the meantime, I want to say,

01:25:49.580 this was mentioned to me by a listener. I've talked a lot recently on the podcast about the

01:25:54.260 canadian election and i do want to mention that there is an australian election that is coming up

01:26:00.780 it is on may 3rd so i'm not sure what day this is when you're listening to this australia because

01:26:06.540 i know australia is a day ahead of me in canada but like so many other elections that are going 0.97

01:26:11.300 on right now there are some shitty robes pierre like shitty incel shitty men who are running on 0.97

01:26:19.240 fascist reasons and it's really important for people who are not into that to vote for literally 0.95

01:26:24.440 anybody else so if you're in australia i hope i hope this election goes okay i hope that you're

01:26:30.380 all able to vote i think australia from i was told is that they have a preferential ballot

01:26:34.820 where you put like this is my first choice second choice third choice fourth choice

01:26:38.020 so i think it might be harder for like the shitty incel robes here types to like 0.50

01:26:43.140 manipulate those numbers but my fingers are crossed for you australia 0.87

01:26:46.820 and voting is so important and i wish that this season of vulgar history wasn't so tragically

01:26:55.900 pertinent to contemporary political life um so you can keep up with me in this podcast um i have a

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01:27:26.440 The next one of those, actually, I'm trying to think, I'm looking at my calendar. I think the

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01:27:37.640 You can also follow my writing at Substack where I'm vulgarhistory.substack.com. I post an essay

01:27:43.340 every two weeks there about women from history you can also get i mentioned a few times the

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01:28:26.580 back catalog of vulgar peace theater where i talk about costume dramas with alice and epstein and

01:28:31.300 lana wood johnson hopefully we'll be getting back into that soon i think this movie one nation one

01:28:35.580 king would be good to watch well i'm excited to watch it because so many people have been reading 0.69

01:28:38.880 about it right now there's also episodes there so this asshole um you can listen to those for

01:28:43.960 if you don't have a six dollar or more per month on my patreon and like no there's gonna be a so 0.96

01:28:50.500 this asshole russo and so this asshole robespierre coming soon because i started that side podcast 0.83

01:28:57.020 when i just get so mad about a man i have to read about when i'm reading some woman's story and these 0.98

01:29:01.540 guys keep interrupting everybody's story and i hate them so much and also if you join my patreon

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01:29:10.060 where we recently were talking about the similarities the kind of interesting freaky

01:29:15.820 similarities between the jacobins and the girondins and the french revolution and some of the current

01:29:21.220 alliances on the season of survivor so just so you know um i will also mention our brand partner

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01:29:46.780 changed their logo to kind of celebrate that it's been a few more years in business. It looks

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01:30:02.100 rome ancient greece ancient egypt as well as they have the new so i was gonna say zodiacal

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01:30:14.280 inspired by a 17th century alchemical manuscript so you can get these talismans all of what i love

01:30:20.540 about the pieces of jewelry from common era is the owner slash designer tori always really

01:30:25.060 thinks about kind of the facets of the person who she's putting on it or the design and kind of what

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01:30:34.260 always get 15% off your order from Common Era by going to commonera.com slash vulgar or using code

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01:30:51.860 done a design that says Tits Out Brigade on it before. Hopefully next week, I'll have more to

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01:31:30.920 where i am at vulgar history pod i also post on blue sky and on threads and i mean what i usually

01:31:38.700 say at the end of my episodes or what i have for a long time is pants on tits out and i think it's 0.84

01:31:43.380 funny that this season we have the sans culottes it's like culottes off pants on cockades if you 0.97

01:31:50.460 want to. Red hats, you do you. Vulgar History is researched, written, and hosted by Anne Foster.

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Vulgar History - April 30, 2025

French Revolution： Radicals (part 3)： A Toxic Bisexual Love Story

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