FRENCH REVOLUTION.

£575 · Offered by Peter Harrington

A certificate recording the oath of loyalty to the French Republic made by one Louise Charlotte Olivier. The certificate was issued to Louise Charlotte Olivier by the Comité de la Section, the political body of the sanscoulottes for the Champs-Élysées area. She took the oath two weeks after the "war of cockades" in September and two weeks before Marie-Antoinette was guillotined.Louise herself is untraced, but the oath suggests that she was a committed republican. Women's prominence in French revolutionary politics had risen over the summer of 1793, culminating in the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women successfully petitioning for the right to wear the cockade. The decision resulted in a series of violent street fights in Paris between the radical militant women and their more traditional counterparts, who were often merchant women. On 30 October 1793 the National Convention outlawed "clubs and popular societies of women" (Levy et al., p. 217), but the ferment continued.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.