Liberty2006

"At the heart of Paris's intellectual movement, Germaine de Stael was a figure like no other. Passionate, fiercely intelligent and as consumed by love affairs as she was by politics, she helped to write the 1791 Constitution at the salon in which she entertained the great thinkers of the age. At the other end of the social scale, her working-class counterparts patrolled the streets of Paris with pistols in their belts. Theroigne de Mericourt was an unhappy courtesan when she fell in love with revolutionary ideals. Denied a political role because of her sex, she nevertheless campaigned tirelessly until a mob beating left her broken in both mind and body. Later came the glittering merveilleuses, whose glamour, beauty, and propensity for revealing outfits propelled them to the top of...