Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme

There was, indeed, a long list of suitors for the hand of the impulsive maiden; but owing to her views as to a husband and her restless, unsettled state of mind, she could not decide upon any one of them. To her mother, when urged to accept one, she said: "I should not like a husband to order me about, for he would teach me only to resist him; but neither do I wish to rule my husband. Either I am much mistaken, or those creatures, six feet high, with beard on their chins, seldom fail to make us feel that they are stronger; now, if the good man should suddenly bethink himself to remind me of his strength he would provoke me, and if he submitted to me he would make me feel ashamed of my power." For such a woman marriage was certainly a difficult problem. Finally, Roland de la Platières came within her circle; and although somewhat adverse to him at first, after a number of his visits she wrote: "I have been much charmed by the solidity of his judgment and his cultured and interesting conversation." Just such a man appealed to her nature and was in harmony with her views. After months of monotonous life in the convent to which she had retired, she at last consented to become the wife of Roland, not from expectations of any fortune, but purely from a sense of devoting herself to the happiness of an honorable man, to making his life sweeter.

Roland, scrupulously conscientious, painstaking, and observing, had won the position of inspector of manufactures, which took him away on foreign travels part of the time. He had acquired a thorough knowledge of manufacturing and the principles of political economy. The first years of their life were spent in each other's society exclusively, as he was insanely jealous of her; she rarely left his side, and they studied the same works, copied and revised his manuscripts, and corrected his proofs. In this she was indispensable to him. But her activity did not stop with literary work; she managed her husband's household, and for miles around her home the peasants soon learned to know her through her charitable deeds. She was the village doctor, often going for miles to attend the poor in distress. With her own hands she prepared dainty dishes with which to tempt her husband's appetite. Thus, her best years were spent upon things for which much less ability would have sufficed. She watched with breathless interest the installation of Necker and the dismissal of Turgot, the convocation of the notables, the struggles for financial recovery, and, finally, the calling of a States-General, which had not been in session since 1614. During the first stormy years, 1789-1790, she wrote burning missives to her friend Bosc, at Paris, which appeared anonymously in the Patriote Français, edited by Brissot, the future Girondist leader. Soon came the commission of Roland as the first citizen of the city of Lyons, which had a debt of forty million francs, to acquaint the National Assembly with its affairs.

When, in 1791, Mme. Roland arrived at Paris—for she accompanied her husband—she had already become an ardent Republican. She immediately threw herself into the whirlwind of popular enthusiasm. Her house became the centre of an advanced political group, which met there four times a week to discuss state questions. There Danton, Robespierre, Pétion, Condorcet, Buzot, and others were seen. She ably aided her husband in all his work as commissioner to the National Assembly. She was indefatigable in penning stirring letters and petitions to the Jacobin societies in the different departments. A staunch friend of Robespierre, she did much to protect him in his first efforts in public. On returning home, after her husband had completed his mission, she was no longer the same quiet, contented, submissive woman; she longed for activity in the midst of excitement.

With the meeting of the Legislative Assembly, in 1791, the group of men sent up from the Gironde immediately became the leaders, and when Mme. Roland returned to Paris she became the centre of this circle, exhorting and stimulating, advising and ordering. Through her friend Brissot, who was all-powerful in the Assembly, about February, 1792, as leader of the Girondists, who were looking for men not yet practically involved in politics, but qualified by experience for political life, her husband was made minister of the interior, and in March, 1792, he and his wife entered upon their duties. She was a keen reader of human nature, at first glance giving her husband a penetrating and generally truthful judgment of men. Being able to comprehend the temperaments of the ministers, she managed them with inimitable tact. Although all the Girondist ministers were supposed friends, she readily saw how difficult it would be for a small group of men with the same principles to act in concert. Seeing the political machine in motion at close range, she lost some of her enthusiasm for revolutionary leaders; above all, she recognized the need of a great leader. As wife of the minister, installed in the ministerial residence with no other woman present, she gave two dinners weekly to her husband's colleagues, to the members of the Assembly, and to political friends.

Her husband, the French Quaker of the Revolution, in all his simplicity of dress and honesty, was being constantly duped by the apparent good nature and sincerity of the king, against whom his wife was constantly warning him. It was she who, convinced of the king's duplicity and the need of a safeguard for the country, originated the plan of a federate camp of twenty thousand men to protect Paris when war had been declared against Austria. It was she who wrote a letter to the king in the name of the council, but sent in Roland's own name, imploring him not to arouse the mistrust of the nation by constantly betraying his suspicion of it, but to show his love by adopting measures for the welfare and safety of the country. The effect of this letter, which became historical, was the fall of the ministers. After their recall, her husband became more and more powerful. The political circulars which were published by his paper, The Sentinel, were composed by her. Then came the horrible massacres and executions by the hundreds, which inspired Mme. Roland with hatred for Danton, a feeling she communicated to the whole Girondist party. She desired above everything to see punished the perpetrators of the September massacres. In this plan the Girondists failed. Robespierre, Danton, and Marat were victorious, and Mme. Roland and her party fell.

When all parties and the whole populace vied with each other in welcoming back the victorious General Dumouriez, there seemed to be a possibility of a reconciliation between Danton and Mme. Roland, for when the general went to dine with her he presented her with a bouquet of magnificent oleanders. This dinner, on October 14th, auguring good fortune to all, was the last success of Mme. Roland. She had been pushed to the very front of the Revolution. She coöperated in composing and promulgating the numerous writings of her husband by which public opinion was to be instructed. But she retained her implacable hatred for Danton, who, when her husband, ready to resign, was pressed to remain in office, cried out in the convention: "Why not invite Mme. Roland to the ministry, too! everyone knows that Roland is not alone in the office!" At this period her husband made the fatal mistake of appropriating a chest of important state papers and examining them himself instead of calling together a commission. As is known, the papers turned out to be fatal to Louis XVI. Libels and denunciations were pronounced against Roland, but his wife, called before the convention, not only succeeded in turning aside all accusations, but was voted the honors of the sitting.

At the time of the trial of the king, the power and influence of the Girondists were waning; then the Rolands became the butt of many violent and unreasonable outbursts. With the resignation of Roland on January 22, 1792, the day of the execution of the king, the fate of the Girondists was sealed. This time the minister was not asked to reconsider; in fact, his exposure of the pilfering then going on among the officials made him one of the most unpopular men in Paris. Upon their return to private life, Mme. Roland was accused of forming the plot to destroy the republic. When an armed force arrived one morning at half-past five o'clock to arrest her husband, she resisted them, herself going to the convention to expose the iniquity of such a proceeding. Failing in this, she returned to her husband, to find him safe with a friend. Being again arrested, she met the ordeal with her accustomed courage; and when the officers offered to pull down the blinds of the carriage, to shield her from the gaze of the unfriendly public, she said: "No, gentlemen! innocence, however oppressed, should not assume the attitude of guilt. I fear the eyes of no one, and do not wish to escape even those of my enemies." "You have much more character than many men," they replied; "you can calmly await justice," "Justice!" she cried; "if it existed, I should not be in your power! I would go to the scaffold as calmly as if sent by iniquitous men. I fear only guilt, and despise injustice and death!"

She has been deeply criticised for her letters written to her friend Buzot while she was in prison; yet it should be remembered that there was not the slightest chance of their meeting again, and, besides, the letters reveal the terrible struggle through which she had passed. While in prison, her beauty, grace, and fearlessness won and humanized nearly all who came under her spell. She was once unexpectedly set at liberty, but only to be sentenced to the lowest of prisons—Sainte-Pélagie. There, in the space of about one month, her memoirs, now among the French classics, were written. At the Conciergerie, where the lowest criminals and the filthiest paupers were crowded into cells with the highest of the nobility, and where the cowardly Mme. du Barry spent her last hours, Mme. Roland, by her quiet dignity and patient serenity, commanded silence and respect, and calmness and peace replaced angry and pitiful wrangling. The prisoners clung to her, crying and kissing her hand, while she spoke words of advice and consolation to the doomed women, who "looked upon her as a beneficent divinity." Her conduct under these circumstances alone is sufficient to keep alive her memory. In the last days, she clung to and upheld most passionately her principles of liberty and moderation, and in her conversation with Beugnot it was evident that she had been the real inspiration in the Girondist party for all that was best and most uplifting.

The charge against her when before the bar of judgment of Fouquier-Tinville, the terrible prosecutor, consisted in her relation to the Girondists who had been condemned to death as traitors to the republic. She met her death heroically, as became a woman who had lived bravely. At the very last moment of her life, she offered consolation to fellow victims. Her death was that of the greatest heroine of the Revolution, the climax of a life the one ambition of which had been to save her country and to shed her blood for it. As she rode through the city in her pure white raiment, serenely radiant in her own innocence, she was the embodiment of all that was highest and purest in the Revolution—one of the best and greatest women known to French history. She stands out as a representative of the French Republic.