The Death of Madame Roland .

List of Good Authors, November 8, 1793Madame Roland was put to death

Morning of November 8, 1793, Paris, Place de la Révolution.

The weather had turned cold in November, but the biting cold winds had not stopped the Parisians from pouring in from all directions. During this time, it became a habit for them to gather every day in Revolution Square, where one of their favorite entertainments was staged every day:

The guillotine erected high in the square will bring unprecedented excitement and excitement to them with the heads that have rolled down one by one.

On this morning, another group of carriages carrying condemned prisoners drove into the square, and those who stepped out of the carriages would soon be in a different place and say goodbye to their lives.

From the last carriage, an elegant woman in a long white dress stepped out, with long black hair that ran down to her waist.

The portrait was clearly out of step with the atmosphere of the blood carnival that was about to take place, and a group of excited Parisians began to shout at her:

Go to the guillotine! Go to the guillotine! ”

The woman smiled at the grumpy crowd and replied gently

My friends, I'm on my way, and I'll be there in a moment. ”

Some curious onlookers began to inquire about the woman's name, and they learned that her name was Yana Manon.

It's her real name, and she has a name that goes down in history:

Mrs. Roland.

The Place de la Concorde in Paris, France, was originally known as the "Place de la Louis XV", during the "French Revolution" it was called the "Place de la Revolution", and because of the installation of the guillotine, it was called the "Place de la Guillotine".

She was the only child in the family – her parents had a total of eight children, but she was the only one who survived.

Yana's father was an atheist, but his claims were not limited to "God does not exist at all", he believed that the so-called monarch was the ** person, all men were created equal, and there should be no oppression and class.

Yana's mother, on the other hand, was a typical theist, believing that all fate was arranged by God's will, and that everyone had to have their own beliefs.

Although the parents have different concepts, one thing is the same: they both give Yana infinite love.

Yana showed a talent for intelligence at a very young age, being able to read at the age of 4. While other children like to go out and play, she is willing to read a lot of books quietly at home, especially "Greco-Roman Famous People" and admires Plutarch.

With the accumulation of reading and the maturity of her mind, Yana actually inherited some of the characters and concepts of her parents: firm in heart, elegant in appearance, pursuing equality and freedom, but also believing in morality and holiness, and can be pious and humble in the face of ideals, but also willing to die for them.

At the age of 11, Jana was sent by her parents to the convent of the Catholic Congregation Women's Group in Paris, a convent that was inevitable for most young women in France at the time.

At the monastery, Yana quickly moved away from her initial worship of God and shock at the ceremony, staying only for a year before leaving.

During those years, it was not the years at the monastery that had the greatest impact on Yana, but one of the few encounters she had with high society.

On one occasion, she was dressed up and taken by her grandmother to meet a lady with a noble title, only to be met with the condescending arrogance of the other party, which took a deep toll on her self-esteem. She then went to Versailles for a week, where she observed up close how the nobles, who were greased and whitewashed and rode in gilded carriages, spent their time drinking. Yana saw that they maintained decency and elegance with the fame accumulated by their ancestors, but they could not even write a complete sentence herself, and they had to write letters on their behalf.

As a result of these experiences, Jana became obsessed with Rousseau's work, and she began to believe in "natural human rights", and she realized that the country in which she lived was becoming more and more ridiculous, and that this unfair society had to be changed.

But Yana soon found that she didn't have the energy to worry about national affairs for the time being, because the small family she was in had fallen into a predicament: her mother died of illness, and her father immediately fell into an indulgent life, and even brought ** to the house. The originally warm family was shattered in an instant, and Yana began to think about finding a small home of her own.

At this time, Yana had already become a charming lady: slender, outstanding, noble and elegant, so she had no shortage of suitors, many of whom were wealthy businessmen.

Portrait of Madame Roland

Eventually, a gentleman from Amiens managed to win Yana's heart: yes, he was an inspector of manufacturing in Amiens and had a well-to-do family, but more importantly, he had traveled extensively and read a wide range of books, especially on politics.

Yana once regarded the gentleman as her mentor and best friend, but after several of his proposals, she was willing to accept him as her lifelong partner.

In the winter of 1780, 26-year-old Yana walked into the wedding hall wearing a white wedding dress. Her husband's name is Roland de La Pradil, and he is 20 years older than Yana.

After getting married, according to the custom of the time, Yana's title was also changed.

Everyone began to call her "Madame Roland".

Madame Roland was very satisfied with her married life.

Rising in the morning, Madame Roland instructed her servants to preserve the fruit, store the wine, sort the linen, and take care of the home. After taking care of the housework, she would go into her husband's study and participate in his various academic work.

Mr. Rowland's academic and political prestige meant that the family was always visited and discussed, and Mrs. Rowland would put on her make-up in the afternoons, as the family held a dinner party almost every night, and she would participate in various discussions.

In addition, they also have the crystallization of love: daughter Adora.

If it weren't for the sudden change in the country's political situation, Mrs. Roland's family would have lived comfortably and carefree.

On July 13, 1789, with the fall of the Bastille in Paris, a symbol of royal power, a storm finally began - the French Revolution began.

Capture the Bastille

On weekdays, Madame Roland often attends the meetings of the National Assembly, listens to the debates of various points of view, and in the evenings she holds salons as hostess at her residence in Paris.

The main participants in the salon were French liberal businessmen, who all had a common title - "Girondists". At the salon, where everyone spoke freely, there was a fierce exchange of opinions and ideas, but without losing grace, and Madame Roland was the veritable organizer and soul of the salon, she was elegant and noble, calm and decent, and at the same time sharp and thought-provoking.

Madame Rowland's salon "soon became famous in Paris, and became a party in which all the men of insight took pride in taking part, and Madame Rowland also used the salon every night to meet the heroes of all stripes, who enthusiastically expounded their views and opinions on the establishment of the republic, and were sometimes excited about the imminent liberation of France from its backward monarchs."

Among them, Madame Roland paid special attention to a lawyer from the country, who was often dull-faced, long-winded, and sometimes almost rude, but always willing to sit in the corner and listen quietly. Madame Roland noticed the unusually firm heart of the country lawyer, and admired his determination to do whatever it took once he had his goal in mind, so she did him a great favor and asked someone to exonerate him, so that he could avoid a guillotine disaster.

The man's name was Maximilien Robespierre - Madame Roland had changed his fate, and in the near future he would change hers as well.

Robespierre

At a time when the royal power has been swept into the corner of the stage, the Minister of the Interior is already the equivalent of France's number one in a way.

At that time, many people knew that Mr. Roland was just the minister standing in front of the stage, and it was his wife, Mrs. Roland, who could really influence him, who drafted all kinds of documents for her husband, spread ideas in the salon, and gathered all like-minded people with her charm and talent.

King Louis XVI of France had lost power, and people preferred to believe that it was a "prime minister" who was in charge.

At this time, Madame Roland found herself in another vortex outside of politics: she fell in love with Bozo, a Girondist politician who often came to the salon - the latter also unreservedly expressed her admiration for Madame Roland.

This sudden love made Madame Roland miserable, and she could not accept the fact that she would betray her husband in love, so she first confessed all this to her husband, Mr. Roland, in exchange for the expected anger. For this reason, Madame Roland decides to suppress her emotions, but she can control her body, but she cannot command her spirit - she falls into a platonic love.

And the ensuing change in the direction of the political wind also made Mrs. Roland have no time to be confused in her emotional world.

Outside of the Girondins, another mad and ruthless faction is rapidly emerging – a faction that shares many of the same political ideas as the Girondists, but now has a more thorough appeal:

To overthrow all the original strata, we will not hesitate to use rivers of blood to do this.

This sect is the Jacobins.

Before the rise of the Jacobins, the Girondins were actually the most radical of their sect.

But they did not have the necessary means and skills to solve the situation in France at that time

On the external front, in the face of the "anti-French alliance" formed by Prussia, Britain, Austria, and other countries that claimed to defend the "monarchy", the Girondists were exhausted to deal with it, and the war was frequently tight; Internally, in the face of speculative domestic businessmen and skyrocketing prices, the Girondists, who believed in the "liberal economy", refused to come up with a price-capping policy, which caused public resentment to boil and eventually lost the support of the ordinary French burghers, especially the working class.

It was in this context that the Jacobins, who emphasized that "in troubled times should be re-enslaved", came to the stage, they also opposed the constitutional monarchy and advocated a republic, and they also defended the sovereignty of the country against foreign interference, but they were much tougher than the Girondists, and they also had a stronger motivation and propaganda power - whether it was to mobilize the army or the masses.

The Jacobins insisted that all laws must be approved by the people, but at the same time they were convinced that only by establishing a ** or even *** above the people could the victory of the revolution be preserved. For this reason, all violence is justified – not only violence, but all kinds of torture and even the physical dismemberment of the enemy are justified in his opinion.

And a concrete embodiment is: beheading.

Paris at this time was plunged into unprecedented blood and madness, which could be killed without trial as long as it was considered royalist or constitutional monarchist - on the road, in an apartment, in prison, anywhere. One of the leading Jacobins, Marat (yes, the one who was stabbed to death in the bathtub), called for the beheading of his enemies in the publication Friends of the People, which he edited almost alone, and gave a specific target: 270,000.

This painting depicts the French "September**" in 1792, when the Prussian army intervened in Paris, and it was rumored that the foreign ** team would release political prisoners in prison, including members of the royal family, after entering Paris. At the time, Marat called for "killing all the prisoners in the prison before the foreign invaders enter!" As a result, a large number of political and criminal prisoners in Paris prisons were ** without trial, many prisoners were even mutilated, and a large number of female prisoners suffered all kinds of humiliation and ** before they died, including royal princesses. About 1,200 people died in this **.

It was true that the monarchy should be gone in Madame Roland's mind, but the republic was by no means what she had imagined, she wrote in a letter to a friend

We are all under the knife of Robespierre and Marat, and you know my love for the revolution, and now I am ashamed of it. The demon has defiled the revolution, and the revolution is ugly. ”

On January 21, 1793, King Louis XVI of France was guillotined. Although the death sentence of the king was supported by the majority of the Girondins, Madame Roland had reservations, believing that the execution of the king would unite the monarchies of Europe against the French republic**.

In April 1793, Robespierre, who had become the leader of the Jacobins, publicly accused the Girondists of being enemies within the Republic, saying that they had "betrayed the revolution".

Even those who don't care much about politics can sense that the Jacobins are going to do something against the Girondins.

On May 31, an unsurprising uprising broke out, and the Jacobins, armed with a surging and angry public opinion, searched for the Girondists throughout Paris, all 22 of the Girondists' leading figures.

At the most critical moment, Mrs. Roland arranged her husband's escape, but she chose to stay at home and wait quietly.

At dawn, a group of armed men pushed open the door to Mrs. Roland's room and presented an arrest warrant for her.

Madame Roland calmly listened as they read the arrest warrants, and then asked to write a letter to a friend. The officer in charge agreed to her request, but after she had finished writing, he said he had to know the contents of the letter.

Madame Roland then calmly tore the letter into pieces and threw it into the fire, and kissed her daughter, Odora, who had not yet woken up, on the cheek.

She knew in her heart that it was the last kiss for her daughter.

Mrs. Roland was thrown into a solitary cell in Abeyi Prison.

The first thing she did when she entered the cell was to request a small table with a white tablecloth. She placed the small tablecloth by the window and asked for several books to read, one of which was Protarc's Biographies of Famous Greco-Roman Figures, her childhood beloved.

According to the ** rules, the prison paid prisoners a daily allowance worth about 20 pence (the gold louis was the main currency in France at the time), and Madame Roland set aside half of it for the jailers to pay for the various furniture, and the other half for food. The prison authorities agreed that the prisoners could buy more delicious food at their own expense, but Mrs. Roland was determined to eat only the most basic coarse tea and light rice at the standard of 10 pence.

She used the money she had saved to buy books and flowers, and the rest was distributed among the more pitiful inmates in the prison.

During this time, some Jacobin ** had come to visit Madame Roland in prison, but their main purpose was to get out of her mouth the whereabouts of her husband, Madame Roland replied:

Gentlemen, of course I know where my husband is, and I don't bother to lie to you. I also know my own power, and I assure you that no earthly power can persuade me to betray my husband. ”

After Mrs. Roland had been held for four months, the authorities suddenly told her that she had been acquitted. Madame Roland couldn't believe her ears for a moment. She hurried back to the street where she lived in a horse-drawn carriage to see her daughter, but when she put her hand on the handle of the house to open the door, she was ** again - the authorities just decided that the last arrest was not in accordance with the legal process, and this time it was more justified to change the name.

Mrs. Roland was put in a worse prison this time, and the conditions got worse and worse after several rounds, and the last prison where she was held was cold and damp, with no windows or even beds, and it was a kind cellmate who slipped a mattress into the crack in the door. Without a quilt, Mrs. Roland spent night after night shivering on the mattress.

On one occasion, a friend of Madame Roland's in the convent came to visit her. The close friend offered to be a widow with no concern in the world, and was willing to swap with her to go to the guillotine on her behalf, but Madame Roland tearfully rejected her offer.

Madame Roland once wrote to Robespierre once in prison, but in it she made it clear that she was not asking for mercy, but to remind him that the power of such incitement to the people would eventually turn against her.

Unexpectedly, Robespierre did not respond.

Madame Roland was interrogated several times, but her attitude remained as firm as she wrote in her famous defence:

She stated that she was just a wife and not an accomplice to the conspirators. But even so, she misses the Girondists, because they are all loyal supporters of the freedom of the republic, and what they want is to preserve the constitution rather than destroy it. If someone breaks the law and pronounces a sentence, then she wants to be the last victim of partisan rage.

At this time, Madame Roland had no hope of survival.

She was well aware that the Jacobins had already guillotined the 22 Girondists, the best friends of Madame Roland. On the eve of the execution, the group drank and bingeed all night long, even touching each other's heads and jokingly. On the way to the execution ground, they sang the "La Marseillaise".

She also knew very well that the Jacobins could not let themselves go.

Her calmness and strength were enough to prompt them to push her to the guillotine.

November 8, 1793, gloomy morning.

Madame Roland's last moment came.

Before leaving the cell door, Madame Roland made up and dressed up carefully, and changed into a long white dress. She smiled and said goodbye to the other cell's weeping prisoners, calmly boarding the last carriage.

Before arriving at the guillotine, Madame Roland begged the officer escorting her to give her a piece of paper and a pen, and she wanted to write a few words, but this request was denied.

The guillotine in Revolution Square once again resounded with the bloody sound of guillotines rising and falling, and the prisoners were pulled off the carriage one by one and sent to the high platform, where the guillotines fell, and the heads fell into the basket one by one—each head hitting the ground would cause the onlookers to cheer and cheer.

Revolution Square during the French Revolution

Mrs. Roland made a request to the escorting officer:

I want to ask you to do me a favor, not for myself, and let this old man behind me go to the guillotine first. ”

Then she turned to the old man and said:

Guillotine before me, for seeing me bleed will make you suffer twice death. ”

This request was initially rejected by the officer, but in the end he agreed to it.

The guillotine fell, the head hit the ground, the headless body was tossed aside, and the guillotine had been vacated.

Madame Roland knew it was her turn.

With a calm expression, she lifted her skirt slightly, and walked briskly onto the guillotine.

Standing on the high guillotine, Madame Rowland looked around, glanced meaningfully at the eagerly awaited Parisians, and then turned to the huge clay statue of Liberty not far away.

She bowed deeply to the giant statue and uttered the words that have been handed down to this day:

o liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!

Freedom! How many sins are done in the name of you! ）”

With that, she put her head on the stand.

The cold light flashed, and the head fell to the ground.

Madame Roland is dead, but the story still has an end.

One of Madame Roland's maids and a manservant went to the Jacobin Revolutionary Court and asked to be sent to the guillotine of the same mistress.

The Revolutionary Court was taken aback by such a request and found it incredible, and directly declared the maid insane and expelled her, however, they fulfilled the man's request.

On the fourth day after Madame Roland's death, a group of peasants found the body of an old man in the chest with a sword from his cane under a tree in the wilderness, and he was Mr. Roland, who, upon hearing of Madame Roland's death, left his hiding place and friends, wandered aimlessly through the wilderness, and finally committed suicide.

On the chest of Mr. Roland's coat, his last words are pinned with a pin:

Whoever you are, if you find a human remains, respect it, because it is the remains of a virtuous person. After hearing about my wife's death, I could not live another day in this world tainted by sin. ”

Half a year later, another body was found deep in the mountains of the Bordeaux region.

The carcass had been torn apart from wild dogs almost beyond recognition. It was judged that this was the body of the gentleman Bozo, whom Madame Roland had loved.

It's also suicide. End of this article).