On July 2

On this day in ...
... 1747 (though this site puts her birth at 1741), a daughter was born to "a family of small means" in Abbeville, Picardie, France. As Rose Bertin (left), she would become "the first celebrated French fashion designer." Following an apprenticeship she opened her own clothing shop on the Rue St. Honoré, where she catered to Versailles nobility and courtesans. Eventually Bertin would furnish millinery and garments -- most notably, extravagantly coiffed wigs -- to the Austria-born princess Marie Antoinette. Although the latter would die by guillotine, a queen deposed by the French Revolution, Bertin survived by moving her business to London for a time. She died in 1813 in Epinay sur Seine. (image credit)

(Prior July 2 posts are here, here, and here.)

On April 27

On this day in ...
... 1848, the Conseil of the provisional government of France issued Décret relatif à l'abolition de l'esclavage dans les colonies et les possessions françaises, which outlawed slavery in all French territories. The decree stated in part:

A l'avenir, même en pays étranger, il est interdit à tout Français de posséder, d'acheter ou de vendre des esclaves, et de participer, soit directement, soit indirectement à tout trafic ou exploitation de ce genre. Toute infraction à ces dispositions entraînera la perte de la qualité de citoyen français.

That is,

In the future, even in foreign countries, every French person is forbidden to possess, to purchase, or to sell slaves, and to participate directly or indirectly in the trafficking or exploitation of slaves. Every infraction of this provision will be subject to loss of French citizenship.

This was not France's 1st go-round on the issue: Slavery had been abolished in 1794, during the French Revolution, but then was reinstated in 1802 by Napoleon. (credit for photo of 1998 commemorative stamp)



(Prior April 27 posts are here, here, and here)

On March 28

On this day in ...
... 1799, Etta Palm d'Aelders died, 56 years after she'd been born in Groningen, a city in the Netherlands. Having lost an infant daughter, and her husband having left her, by the time she was just 25 years old, she moved to France, became a courtesan, spied both for the French and the Dutch, and established her own Paris salon for intellectuals, revolutionaries, and feminists. (book cover credit) She's perhaps best known for Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favor of Men, at the Expense of Women, a speech she gave a year and a half after the storming of the Bastille, on December 30, 1790, at a meeting of the 1st political club to admit women. It included a plea rather modest in that era of French Revolution:

Oh! Gentlemen, if you wish us to be enthusiastic about the happy constitution that gives back men their rights, then begin by being just toward us.

Not long afterward, Palm moved to The Hague. But after French forces invaded the Netherlands, she was arrested and jailed for years. A year after her release, she died from illnesses contracted while in detention.

(Prior March 28 posts are here, here, and here)

Read On! Unlikely Allies

(Read On! ... occasional posts on writing worth reading)

Is she or isn't he?

That conundrum's central to a new diplomatic history of Franco-American relations during the late 18th century revolution by which erstwhile colonists drove Britain out and established the United States of America. As told by our colleague Joel Richard Paul (below left), the tale is rich, and not just for its rich insights into how states form, and how they conform (or not) to international law. The title, Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright, and a Spy Saved the American Revolution (2009), promises much -- and Joel, who's Professor of Law and Associate Dean for International and Graduate Programs at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, delivers on that promise.

► The spy is the s/he of the story: Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Eon, a Captain of the Dragoons who helped King Louis XVI keep confidential some of her/his father's embarrassing state secrets. Successful completion of that task led, by twists and turns, to d'Eon's secret dealings with others -- dealings that laid groundwork by which the French eventually provided the American rebellion money, arms, and troops that were essential to its ultimate success. Without spoiling the ending, suffice it to say that the story of this spy -- known at various times and places as the Chevalier or the Chevalière, d'Eon -- is a rollicking yarn.

Equally captivating are the book's portraits of 2 others whose derring-do set the stage for a diplomatic coup typically attributed to Benjamin Franklin. (Taking implicit issue with articles like the one here, Joel demonstrates that Franklin did not arrive in Paris until after much of the hard work had been done.) The 2 are:

► Silas Deane, a Connecticut merchant sent to Paris even before the Declaration of Independence was signed. Deane was instructed to use trade as cover for his true task of persuading France to aid the Americans.

► Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the writer of Le Barbier de Seville and other comédies, who, with the covert OK of official France, provided munitions to the rebels.

These character studies not only enrich understanding of the times, but also serve as an important reminder that happenstance and idiosyncrasy often affect the course of history.

Also significant are the many passages in Unlikely Allies that provoke thought on issues still current in international affairs. For example:

► The long reluctance of the French sovereign to aid independence abroad, lest the rebel spirit be roused at home (as, indeed, it soon was, in a Revolution that cost Louis XVI his head);

► The duplicity and intrigue that underlie much of the information that's branded "intelligence";

► The consequences of a terrorist attack committed upon the initiative of an anti-British pyromaniac; and

► The French Foreign Minister's refusal of an invitation to join Spain in attacking Portugal, about which Joel writes:

A preemptive war would 'soil oneself with a notorious injustice, which would be invincibly repugnant to the feelings and principles of the two monarchs.' ... The argument for preemptive war was as tempting as it was dangerous. A wise leader would never commit his country to a foreign war in the name of preemption when no imminent threat existed.

(pp. 113-14) The passage resounds with echoes of post-9/11 debates about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a fact that underscores the contemporary significance of this superb historical account.

On December 1

On this day in ...
... 1761, Marie Grosholtz was born in Strasbourg, France. Eventually she made her way to Versailles, where she was the art tutor of a sister of King Louis XVI. When the French Revolution broke out she was imprisoned as a royalist. But another trade she'd learned -- wax sculpture -- helped her survive:

According to her memoirs, during the Reign of Terror she had the gruesome responsibility of making death masks from head -- frequently those of her friends -- freshly severed by the guillotine.

Following an unsuccessul marriage Marie -- known thereafter as Madame Marie Tussaud -- fled to England with her children and her wax models. There she established Madame Tussauds Museum, to this day a depository of waxen images of celebrities, politicians, and scoundrels, in London and 8 other cities around the world. (credit for photo of wax statue of Tussaud)

(Prior December 1 posts are here and here.)

On August 13

On this day in ...
… 1762, Anne Josephe Théroigne de Méricourt (right), French revolutionary and feminist, was born in Marcourt, Luxembourg province, in modern Belgium. (image credit) She called for equality with men with an eloquence that was vigrous even for the National Assembly of the day. She demanded that women be permitted to arm themselves and to enlist in the army:

Fellow women citizens, why should we not enter into rivalry with the men? . . . And we too would wish to earn a civic crown and court the honor of dying for a liberty which is dearer perhaps to us than it is to them, since the effects of despotism weigh still more heavily upon our heads than upon theirs. . . . let us open a list of French Amazons; and let all who truly love their Fatherland write their names there.

... 1905, Norwegians voted overwhelmingly -- 368,208 to 184 -- in favor of dissolving the union of Norway and Sweden. This followed by a couple months a similar action in Sweden's legislature (prior post), and dissolution took effect later in the year.

(Prior August 13 posts are here and here.)

On July 14

On this day in ...
… 1789 (220 years ago today), citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille to release the seven prisoners and limited amounts of ammunition and weapons from inside it. (left, The Storming of the Bastille by Jean-Pierre Houël; image credit) These French acted in response to food shortages, the exorbitant spending of King Louis XVI and the royal family, and the unequal system of taxation, which rested heavily on the bourgeoisie. The Bastille, though nearly empty, was still a potent symbol of royal tyranny. The fall of the Bastille was a catalyst of the French Revolution, and it subsequently became an icon of the French Republic. The anniversary of this event, usually called Bastille Day in English, is celebrated annually in France as La Fête Nationale.
… 1858, Emmeline Pankhurst, political activist and leader of the British suffrage movement (previous posts), was born in Manchester, England. In 1903, Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel (prior post) founded the Women's Social and Political Union. The group became known for its militant brand of feminism, its members smashing windows and assaulting police officers to draw attention to the suffragist movement. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other members were sentenced to repeated prison sentences, during which they staged hunger strikes. In 1912 she said,

We are here, not because we are lawbreakers; we are here in our efforts to become lawmakers.

Just a few weeks before Emmeline Pankhurst’s death in 1928, Britain granted women the same voting rights as men. (photo of Pankhurst being arrested in 1914; credit)

(Prior July 14 posts are here and here.)

On November 8

On this day in ...
... 1793 (215 years ago today), the government of the French Revolution opened the Louvre. The massive structure in the centre of Paris had been a home for the royal family, and its lavish art collection, for centuries. On this day the palace became a public art museum. Today le Musée du Louvre (left) is 1 of the world's best. And with its neoancient pyramid, its Egyptian ruins, and its classical treasures, its 1 of this IntLawGrrl's favorites.
... 1900, Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to parents of Scottish-Irish-French ancestry. "The family included many soldiers -- members of the family had fought in the American Revolution, Irish uprisings and rebellions and the Civil War." In her early 20s Mitchell, "a headstrong flapper" (right), started working for $25 a week at an Atlanta newspaper. She quit working on account of injuries, and began working on the novel that would make her famous: Gone With the Wind, published in 1936, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1937, and source of the 1939 movie of the same name. (An IntLawGrrls post about 1 star of the film is here.) Mitchell died at age 49, having been struck by a car on Peachtree Street in the city of ther birth.

On November 3

On this day in ...

... 1958 (50 years ago today), the UNESCO Palace, headquarters of the U.N. Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization, opened in Paris. Among those commemorating the inauguration was Tunisia, which issued the postage stamp at left.

... 1793 (215 years ago today), during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, Olympe de Gouges (right) perished beneath the guillotine. IntLawGrrls has posted before on this revolutionary, abolitionist, feminist writer, who is the transnational foremother of our own Hélène Ruiz Fabri.

On October 16

On this day in ...
... 1793 (215 years ago today), the Austrian-born, 37-year-old, former Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, was guillotined in the midst of the French Revolution. Marie (right) had been imprisoned for more than a year; her husband, the deposed Louis XVI, had been executed 10 months earlier. The former queen's execution followed by 2 days her trial for a variety of charges, among them treason and sexual abuse of her son, who had been heir to the throne.
... 1998 (10 years ago today), British authorities acting upon an international warrant issued by Spain arrested former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who was in Britain for medical treatment. The arrest touched off years of litigation, which ended with Pinochet's return to Chile -- where he found himself the subject of criminal and civil suits, arising out of the brutality of his regime, until his death in 2006. (image credit)

On September 5

On this day in ...
... 1793 (215 years ago today), Maximilien Robespierre (right) launched the period of the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror when he "declare[d] Terror 'the order of the day.'" The declaration touched off nearly 2 years in which political enemies -- an estimated 18,500-40,000 persons -- were killed. Robespierre himself would perish beneath the guillotine days after the end of La Terreur. (image credit)
... 1978 (30 years ago today), Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter began what would be nearly 2 weeks of negotiations on framework for Middle East peace at the U.S. President's Maryland retreat, Camp David. The Camp David Accords were released at the conclusion of the meeting, on September 17. A collection of historial materials related to the negotiations may be found here. (credit for photo of Begin playing chess with U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski during Camp David negotiations)

On July 13

On this day in ...

... 1908 (100 years ago today), the 4th modern Olympic Games opened in London, to which they'd been moved due to financial problems in the original host city, Rome. In the course of the Games British archery champions Charlotte Dod (left) and William Dod became the 1st brother and sister medalists. An athlete who also excelled in tennis, golf, and field hockey, she was 1 of 37 women Olympic competitors that year.

... 1793 (215 years ago today), French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday, who sympathized with the royalist opposition. Among the many depictions of the assassination is that at right, painted by Paul Jacques Aimé Baudry in 1860, during the 2d Empire, when Corday was seen as a heroine. (credit)

On this day

On April 6, ...

... 2001, an Algerian who'd been living in Canada, Ahmed Ressam, was convicted twice in 1 day, in France and in the United States. The former conviction, delivered in absentia, related to charges of belonging to a "support network" of terrorists. The latter, returned by a jury in Los Angeles, California, related to charges of trying to bring explosives into the United States shortly before the country was set to celebrate New Year's 2000, marked (albeit, perhaps, inaccurately) as the dawn of a new millennium. On March 25, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in an appeal of the latter conviction and sentence; newly installed Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey argued on behalf of the United States. The case of United States v. Ressam is now under advisement.

... 1793 (215 years ago today), French revolutionaries established the Committee of Public Safety, an event that helped to touch off the bloody, yearlong period known as the Reign of Terror and symbolized by the weapon of execution, the guillotine (right).