Writer who demanded women’s civil and political rights
She demanded abolition of slavery and the death penalty, and her 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman claimed voting rights and legal equality for women. The Revolutionary Tribunal condemned her to death in 1793.
Born Marie Gouze, she was a French playwright and political writer. She criticized slavery and in her 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen demanded legal equality, public speech and political participation for women. The declaration challenged exclusions in existing declarations; it was not enacted legislation. She opposed revolutionary violence and the power of the Montagnards, and was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal and executed in 1793.
Career timeline
- 1765Married Louis-Yves Aubry, a caterer in Montauban, in a marriage the chronology describes as forced
- 1766Her son Pierre Aubry was born; after her husband's death soon after, she took the name Olympe de Gouges
- 1770Moved to Paris, completed her education, and frequented literary salons
- 1784Published the autobiographical 'Mémoire de Madame de Valmont'
- 1785Her slavery-critical play 'Zamore et Mirza' entered the Comédie française repertoire but was not performed
- 1788Published 'Lettre au peuple', advocating free expression, divorce, sex equality, and abolition of slavery and the death penalty
- 1789Intervened in the revolutionary debates with posters and pamphlets
- 1791Published 'Les Droits de la femme' containing the Declaration of the Rights of Woman; the Legislative Assembly refused to examine it
- 1792After the fall of the monarchy she joined the moderate Girondins, opposed the Terror, and attacked Robespierre
- 1793Imprisoned in July for writings considered counter-revolutionary; the Revolutionary Tribunal condemned her to death in November
Neoclassical painter of the French Revolution
His Death of Marat, depicting his friend Jean-Paul Marat after Charlotte Corday assassinated him on 13 July 1793, became a leading image of the Revolution. After Napoleon's fall the painting long disappeared from public view before its rediscovery.
French painter born in Paris in 1748 and died in Brussels in 1825. He was the preeminent Neoclassical painter of his era, winning fame in the 1780s with The Oath of the Horatii, and an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Robespierre as a member of the Jacobin Club. As a deputy to the National Convention he voted for the execution of Louis XVI, and as a member of the Committee of General Security he took part in the Reign of Terror. After Robespierre's fall he was imprisoned twice in 1794 and 1795, then released. After the Empire was proclaimed in 1804 he became Napoleon's court painter and painted The Coronation of Napoleon. After Napoleon's fall in 1815 he lived in exile in Brussels, where he died. His pupils included Girodet, Gérard, Gros and Ingres.
Career timeline
- 1784Won fame with The Oath of the Horatii
- 1789–1794Supported the Revolution; deputy to the National Convention and member of the Committee of General Security
- 1794–1795Imprisoned twice after Robespierre's fall
- 1804Napoleon's court painter
- 1815–1825Exile in Brussels, where he died
Textile designer and poet, a member of the Commune, who wrote the words of “The Internationale” in hiding after Bloody Week
After the Paris Commune's defeat, he wrote the words of “The Internationale” while hiding in Paris in June 1871. In exile in the United States, he organized solidarity for deported Communards.
Born to a Paris box-maker, he worked as a textile designer and wrote songs and poems from the 1830s, taking part in the June Days of 1848. He founded a designers’ union and joined the International. Elected to the Commune in an April 1871 by-election for the 2nd arrondissement, he wrote “The Internationale” in hiding in June after Bloody Week. Condemned to death in absentia, he fled to the United States and returned under the 1880 amnesty. He died poor in 1887; the next year Pierre De Geyter set “The Internationale” to music and it became the anthem of the world labour movement.
Career timeline
- 1830Composed his first song, “Long Live Liberty.”
- 1848Took part in the 1848 Revolution.
- 1864Helped found the textile designers’ union, which later joined the First International.
- 1871Elected to the Paris Commune, he served on its Public Services Commission and fought during Bloody Week.
- 1880Returned to France after the amnesty.
- 1887Chants révolutionnaires, the first collection to print the words of “The Internationale,” was published.
Realist painter who led the Commune’s Federation of Artists and went into Swiss exile blamed for the Vendôme Column
In the 1871 Paris Commune, Courbet chaired the Federation of Artists and served as a councillor, advocating the opening of museums. After its defeat, he was imprisoned for six months over the Vendôme Column’s destruction; a later order to pay reconstruction costs led him into exile in Switzerland.
Born to prosperous farmers in Ornans in the Jura, he launched Realism with A Burial at Ornans and The Stone Breakers and was close to Proudhon; in 1870 he refused the Legion of Honour. As president of the Commune’s Federation of Artists in 1871 he demanded self-government for museums and an end to censorship, and after winning a by-election in the 6th arrondissement he sided with the minority against the Commune's Committee of Public Safety. For proposing to remove the Vendôme Column he was sentenced to six months after Bloody Week; ordered in 1873 to pay for its rebuilding, he fled to Switzerland and died at La Tour-de-Peilz.
Career timeline
- 1849–1851In works such as The Stonebreakers and A Burial at Ornans, he painted everyday scenes in a large-scale realist style that challenged Paris Salon conventions.
- 1870He publicly refused the Legion of Honour, declaring his independence from government authority.
- 1871As president of the Federation of Artists during the Paris Commune, he worked to open museums and organize an exhibition, and served as a councillor.
- 1873After being ordered to pay 323,000 francs toward rebuilding the Vendôme Column, he left for Switzerland and settled in La Tour-de-Peilz.
The voice of Action Française, the polemicist who pushed a scandal from the page into the street day after day
Through January 1934 his columns called out the implicated deputies one by one, and on the morning of 6 February the paper urged its readers to come to the Chamber that evening. At the front of the columns that filled the square that night were the Camelots du Roi, the action squads of Action Française
The son of the novelist Alphonse Daudet, a medical student turned polemicist, who founded the daily Action Française with Maurras and set its tone. He sat as a deputy for Paris from 1919 to 1924, and his method of personal attack and denunciation left its mark on a generation of French political language. After losing a libel case brought over his claim that the police had killed his son Philippe in 1923, he fled to Belgium in 1927 and returned under an amnesty in 1930. In January 1934 he printed the names of the politicians touched by the Stavisky affair day after day, building the picture of a 'republic of thieves' that carried the paper's readers to the square on 6 February.
Career timeline
- 1867–1890Born in Paris, son of Alphonse Daudet; studies medicine
- 1900–1908Turns royalist and joins Action Française
- 1908–1942Co-founder and leading writer of the daily Action Française
- 1919–1924Deputy for Paris
- 1923–1927The lawsuits over his son Philippe's death; convicted of libel and flees to Belgium
- 1930Returns under an amnesty
- 1934.01–02The press offensive over the Stavisky affair that produced the demonstration of 6 February
- 1942Dies at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
Co-founder of Négritude, pioneering critic of colonialism
"My turn to state an equation: colonization = 'thingification.'" In Discourse on Colonialism (1950) he argued that Europeans had already applied to colonized peoples the methods they later condemned as Nazism, and that Nazism was the natural conclusion of a civilization that justified colonization.
Born in Basse-Pointe, Martinique, the son of a tax inspector, he studied in Paris, where with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas he launched the Négritude movement; the journal L'Étudiant noir (founded 1934–1935) first used the term in its present sense in May–June 1935. Frantz Fanon was his student. Elected with Communist Party support in 1945, he was mayor of Fort-de-France for 56 years and deputy for 47, and in 1946 secured the law making Martinique a French département. He broke with the PCF in his Lettre à Maurice Thorez (24 October 1956), citing the Khrushchev report and the repressive policy in the Maghreb; English-language accounts instead attribute the break to the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution. He founded the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais in 1958 and left politics in 2001.
Career timeline
- 1935Co-founded L'Étudiant noir in Paris; coined the term 'négritude'
- 1939Published Cahier d'un retour au pays natal
- 1941Co-founded Tropiques review with Suzanne Roussi
- 1945Elected PCF deputy to National Assembly and mayor of Fort-de-France
- 1946Secured law departmentalizing Martinique as part of France
- 1950Published Discours sur le colonialisme
- 1956Resigned from PCF via Lettre à Maurice Thorez over Soviet suppression of Hungary
- 1958Founded Parti Progressiste Martiniquais (PPM)
- 1983–1988President of the Regional Council of Martinique
- 1993Retired from National Assembly after 47 years
- 2001Retired as mayor of Fort-de-France after 56 years
