Theroigne de Mericourt
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Anne-Josèphe Théroigne de Méricourt (born Anne-Josèphe Terwagne; 13 August 1762–1817), a French woman who was a striking figure in the French Revolution, was born at Marcourt (from a corruption of which name she took her usual designation), a small town in Luxembourg province in modern Belgium, on the banks of the Ourthe. She appears to have been well educated, having been brought up in the convent of Robermont. She was quick-witted, strikingly handsome in appearance and intensely passionate in temper; and she had a vigorous eloquence, which she used with great effect upon the mobs of Paris during that short space of her life (1789-1793) which alone is of historical interest.
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Early life
She was born as Anne-Josèphe Terwagne in Marcourt, Rendeux, to Pierre Terwagne (b. 1731) and Anne-Élisabeth Lahaye (1732-1767) and lived in an oak-built house. She got her name from her mother, Anne, and her father's brother's, Joseph Terwagne. Her brothers also inherited Joseph in Pierre-Joseph Terwagne (b. 25 December 1764) and Nicholas-Joseph Terwagne (b. 28 September 1767). After giving birth to her third child, Mme Lahaye died leaving Anne-Josèphe alone with her father and two brothers. At that age, five years, an aunt who lived in Liège took her and sent her to a convent to learn dress-making.
Fact and fiction in the French Revolution
The story of her having been betrayed by a young seigneur, and having in consequence devoted her life to avenge her wrongs upon aristocrats, a story which is told by Lamartine and others, is unfounded, the truth being that she left her home on account of a quarrel with her stepmother. In her career as courtesan she visited London in 1782 and was back in Paris in 1785. After arriving in Paris, at the rue de Tournon, she ran a salon attended by such high class men as Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Mirabeau, Gilbert Romme and Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès. She later went to visit Genoa in 1788, where she was a concert singer before returning to Paris in 1789.
On the outbreak of the Revolution, she was surrounded by a coterie of well-known men, chief of whom were Pétion and Desmoulins; but she did not play the role which legend has assigned her. She took no part in the storming of the Bastille nor in the days of the 5th and 6th of October, when the women of Paris brought King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from Versailles. In 1790 she had a political salon and spoke once at the club of the Cordeliers.
Austrian imprisonment
The same year she left Paris for Mercourt, whence after a short stay she proceeded to Liege, in which town she was seized by warrant of the Austrian Government, and conveyed first to Tyrol and thereafter to Vienna, accused of having been engaged in a plot against the life of the queen of France. After an interview, however, with the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II of Austria, she was released; and she returned to Paris in January 1792, crowned of course with fresh laurels because of her captivity, and resumed her influence. In the clubs of Paris her voice was often heard, and even in the National Assembly she would violently interrupt the expression of any moderatist views. Together with Sandrine Dejou she demanded women's right to arm themselves and to enlist in the army.
Fury of the Gironde
Known henceforth as la belle Liègeoise, she appeared in public dressed in a riding habit, a plume in her hat, a pistol in her belt and a sword dangling at her side, and excited the mob by violent harangues. Associated with the Girondists and the enemies of Robespierre, she became in fact the Fury of the Gironde. She commanded in person the 3rd corps of the so-called army of the faubourgs on the 20 June 1792, and again won the gratitude of the people. She shares a heavy responsibility for her connexion with the riots of 10 August. A certain contributor to the journal, the Acts of the Apostles, Suleau by name, earned her savage hatred by associating her name, for the sake of the play upon the word, with a deputy named Populus, whom she had never seen. On the 10th of August, just after she had watched approvingly the massacre of certain of the national guard in the Place Vendôme, Suleau was pointed out to her. She sprang at him, dragged him among the infuriated mob, and he was stabbed to death in an instant. She took no part in the massacres of September, and, moderating her conduct, became less popular from 1793.
Descent into madness
At the end of May 1793, the Jacobin women seized her, stripped her naked, and flogged her in the public garden of the Tuileries. The following year she became insane, a fate not surprising when one considers her career. She started to live naked - refusing to wear any garments, in memory of the outrage she had suffered. She was removed to a private house, thence in 1800 to La Salpêtrière for a month, and thence to a place of confinement called the Petites Maisons, where she remained a raving maniac till 1807. She was then again removed to La Salpêtrière, where she died, never having recovered her reason, on 9 June 1817.
References
- M. Pellet, Etude historique et biographique sur Theroigne de Mericourt (1886)
- L. Lacour, Les Origines dufiminisme contemporain. Trois femmes de Ia Revolution (Paris, 1900);
- Vicomte de Reiset, La Vraie Throigne de Mricourt (Paris, 1903)
- E. and J. de Goncourt, Portraits intimes du XVIII. siècle (2 vols., 1857-58)
- Throigne de Mericourt, a play by M. Paul Hervieu, produced at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt in 1902.
Further Reading
- Jackie Pigeaud (ed.), Théroigne de Méricourt, La Lettre-mélancolie, Lettre adressée en 1801 à Danton (mort en... 1794), transcripte par Jean-Pierre Ghersenzon, Verdier / L’Éther Vague, 2005.
