Public Opinion

1788

13 December: Pre-Revolutionary Political Tensions

This extract covers the first two paragraphs of the first surviving Letter from the duchess's notebook series. We are in the period known as the...

1789

10 February: Pre-Revolutionary Violence

Although many of the Letters focus on Paris, they also show that the duchess made considerable efforts to stay informed about events elsewhere in the...

9 May: The Opening of the Estates General

The Estates General was the national representative body called by Louis XVI to solve the state’s financial problems. It was set up with ornate...

14 October: A King Imprisoned? The October Days

On 5-6 October 1789, a Parisian crowd led by thousands of women marched out to demonstrate at Versailles and forced the royal family to relocate to...

1790

31 July: Celebrating the Revolution on the Duchess's Moreuil Estate

The first anniversity of the Storming of the Bastille was celebrated on an epic scale in Paris. Out in Moreuil the duchess and the relations she had...

1791

30 June: Capture at Varennes: The Humiliation of a King

Here the duchess sifts through the wreckage of the royal family's thwarted attempt to escape Paris in June 1791. Before leaving on what would become...

1792

25 May: Revolutionary France Faces Military Disaster

After much triumphalist rhetoric in Parisian political circles ahead of France's declaration of war against Austria on 20 April 1792, the harsh...

15 December: The Criminality of Revolutionary France

The deposed king Louis XVI is going on trial for crimes against the Revolution and the duchess regards this as further evidence of Revolutionary...

1793

21 January: The Execution of Louis XVI

The deposed king's trial before the nation's elected representatives in the National Convention began on 11 December 1792. A guilty verdict was never...

31 July: Revolutionary Justice in the summer of 1793

The duchess offers news and personal reflections on recent developments in the French Revolution (as seen from her home in the heart of the capital)...