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Claire Lacombe

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Portrait of Claire Lacombe

Claire Lacombe (4 August 1765 – 2 May 1826) was a French actress and militant during the French Revolution. In addition to being known as an effective street fighter during the early phases of the Revolution, Lacombe was a founding member of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, a political club of largely working class women. The Society militated for participatory democracy and for policies that would meet the basic needs of urban workers, who suffered from high food prices and food shortages. It was later to be crushed by the Jacobins, along with other working class movements such as the san-culottes and the enragés.

Early life

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Lacombe was born in the provincial town of Pamiers in southwestern France. She became an actress at a young age and appeared in theatrical productions 'somewhere in southern France, probably Marseille[1]'. She arrived in Paris in 1792.[1][2] The actress, in her mid-twenties, was 'self-assured, self-assertive, and self-dramatizing, all useful qualities for making one's mark on the revolutionary scene.'[1]

Revolutionary career

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Lacombe first attracted attention in Revolutionary politics in late July 1792, when she gave a well-received speech to the National Constituent Assembly. In her speech, she pledged to fight for her country 'with the courage of a Roman and with the hatred of tyrants' and promised to help with the extermination of 'Neros and Caligulas'.[1] She also asked to be recruited in the army. At the time, revolutionary France was facing major military threats from the royal houses of Europe. The speech was given the ‘honors of the session’ (a distinction) and was printed by the Assembly.[3]

Capture of the Tuileries Palace, August 10, 1793

Indeed, Lacombe made good on her commitment to fight. She and other women were active in the street combat that was part and parcel of the revolutionary process. In particular, during the insurrection of 10 August 1792, Lacombe fought with the rebels during the storming of the Tuileries Palace, which was protected by the mercenary Swiss Guard. Hundreds of Swiss guardsmen and 400 revolutionaries were killed in the battle. Along with Théroigne de Mericourt and Reine Audi, Lacombe rallied the revolutionary forces, who were under fire. She was shot through the arm but kept on fighting, earning herself the lifelong sobriquet, "Heroine of August Tenth". For her bravery, she was awarded a civic crown (couronne civique) by the victorious fédérés.[1][4]

A drawing of the Cordeliers Club

After acquiring a certain level of recognition due both to her public speaking and her abilities in insurrectionary combat, Lacombe strengthened her position as a political actor. She was a frequent attendee at meetings of the Cordeliers Club, through which she became involved with the most radical elements of the Revolution.

Club patriotique de femmes, gouache by Jean-Baptiste Lesueur, 1791, musée Carnavalet.

In February, 1793, Lacombe and another female revolutionary, Pauline Léon, founded ‘the most famous of women’s clubs,’[5] the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women.[6][7][8] Composed chiefly of working-class women, the Society was aligned with the most militant revolutionaries, the sans-culottes and enragés.[6] They "demanded not just the execution of royalty and the rooting out of the aristocracy, but a social and economic program, ... to restrict ... the speculator, the stock-jobber, the hoarder, and to enact a system of fixed, 'just' prices, controlled markets and supplies.[1]" The Society also functioned as a fighting force, and employed violent tactics to identify and intimidate anti-revolutionaries.[9]

Almost from the outset, the French Revolution, including its most radical elements, encountered difficulties incorporating women's rights into their broader principles of human rights. This debate took place within a societal context in which women of all classes were almost entirely without political or civil rights. For example, women had no right to vote; men had total legal authority over their wives; and female children received a non-existent or inferior education relative to males.[10] When the women from the bourgeoisie asked to be included in the emerging framework of human rights, the reigning institutions (including the Jacobian political movement) were initially quite receptive. Indeed, many bourgeois demands were enacted into law, such as the promulgation in 1792 of a divorce decree; setting the age of legal majority at 21 for both sexes; and establishing the right of women to testify in certain civil suits.[10] But when working class women started to militate by asking for 'disruptive' measures to increase the supply of bread in cities and to prevent price fixing and hoarding, this support evaporated.[1][10]

Despite the deeply entrenched chauvinism of the time, there were a few men among the revolutionaries who supported the fight for women's rights. One of these was Théophile Leclerc, with whom Lacombe lived for a while, until he left her to marry Pauline Léon.[11]

Demise of the Society

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The political scene during the Reign of Terror involved both physical and verbal violence by many elements of the Revolution. The main factions consisted of:

  • the Jacobins and, more specifically, the Montagnards (the dominant political club that controlled the government during the Reign of Terror),
  • the Girondons (a loosely knit club of revolutionaries who were initially Jacobins, but who ultimately opposed what they considered to be the excesses of the Revolution), and
  • what might be considered the 'far left wing' of the Revolution (the enragés, the women of the Society and the sans culottes).

In addition to the internal tensions caused by these political factions, revolutionary France was facing a serious external threat from the royal houses of Europe and had declared war on Austria. During the Terror, this war was not going well for France, so the main goal of the Jacobins (who controlled the Revolutionary government at the time) was to calm the working class and the radical elements of the movement while they dealt with the external threats and France's dire economic situation caused by the ‘crushing national debt.’[10] For this reason, after pressure from the enragés, the sans-culottes and the Society, the Jacobins actually adopted many of their policies. However, their ultimate goal was to suppress these movements so as to the minimize the threat of further disruption.[1]

Under the Reign of Terror, the enragés were suppressed both by the guillotine and by prohibition. On September 16, 1793, Lacombe, then president of the Society, was publicly denounced by the Jacobins to the Committee of General Security. They accused her of “making counter-revolutionary statements,” and having lived with and aided a “notorious counter-revolutionary, the enragé Leclerc”.[12] Lacombe was arrested by order of the Committee of General Security, but, for unknown reasons, she was quickly released.[10]

She defended herself vigorously to the working class women in her Society and continued her political activities. However, the writing was already on the wall for this group, which was perceived by the Revolutionary government as uncontrollable and no longer politically useful.[1][13] The Society nevertheless continued its activism, carrying petitions to the Convention. These asked for policies that would 'rehabilitate prostitutes through useful work and indoctrination' and called for 'the enforcement of price fixing laws' and sans-culottes policing of warehouses through ‘domiciliary visits’.[1]

Club des femmes patriotes dans une église (Club of Patriotic Women in a church) drawing by Chérieux, 1793, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale de France

This activism would soon be brought to a complete stop. In late October 1793, a violent confrontation took place between Society members and the 'bourgeois' owners of food stalls in Les Halles (the main food market of Paris, which was located right across from the headquarters of the Society in the Saint-Eustache Church). The confrontation resulted in the market women laying charges against the women of the Society, including Claire Lacombe. This gave the Jacobins the excuse they were looking for to get rid not only of Claire Lacombe, but also of all women's political organisations.[1] It took only one day for the Committee of General Security to prepare its report and recommendations on these charges. The report focused on two general questions: 'should women exercise political rights and meddle in (s'immiser) the affairs of government? And should women take part in political societies?'.[1] The report’s negative answer to both of these questions cited several reasons: making the necessary investment in political organization would cause women to ‘sacrifice the more appropriate cares to which Nature assigns them.'[1] Also, women were not thought to have the 'self discipline, dispassion, limitless self-sacrifice' required to exercise political rights.[1] The National Convention adopted these recommendations unanimously on 30 October 1793.[9][14]

End of Lacombe’s political career

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Barred from any political activity, Lacombe attempted to return to her acting career. On April 2, 1794, she was arrested as she prepared to leave for a theater in Dunkirk.[11] Pauline Léon and her husband, Leclerc, were arrested the following day. Lacombe was released from prison on 20 August 1795, by order of the Committee of General Security.[15] She was imprisoned one year longer than Léon and Leclerc because, unlike them, she refused to condemn the Revolutionary government and Robespierre in order to please the Thermidorians during the Themidorian Reaction (when Robespierre’s government gave way to a more moderate group).[3]

After prison, Lacombe abandoned her political activities and took up again her career in acting. Numerous documents attest to the roles she played, mainly in Nantes.[16] Ultimately, her career wound down and she seems to have ended her life in poverty.[1] Suffering from mental health problems, Lacombe was admitted to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital on 19 June 1821,[17] where her profession was recorded as "teacher" ("institutrice"). She died there on 2 May 1826, from a cardiac aneurysm.[18]

Assessment

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According to some modern analyses, the suppression of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women was due to men’s fear of losing their control over the productive — and reproductive — labors of the female sex.[13] For example, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette (an enragé who was the president of the Paris Commune from 1789 until 1795) asserted men's rights to have women care for the family, and claimed that domestic duties were the only civic duties women had. He further cautioned women by reminding them of the recently executed Madame Roland and Olympe de Gouges, describing such politically active women as "haughty", "denatured" and "shameless".[19][20]

Although it was preceded by centuries of philosophical discussion, the Revolution’s grappling with women’s issues was particularly wide ranging and concrete,[5] covering such diverse issues as marriage, divorce, inheritance, voting rights, childhood education, prostitution, and women in labor markets and the military. Given its socio-political context, feminism during the French Revolution was so avant-garde that its success would have been much more surprising than its failure.[3] Despite this relative failure (some progress was made on a few issues), the intense debate about feminist issues during the Revolution – initiated and nourished by militants such as Claire Lacombe – laid the groundwork for subsequent progress on women’s rights.[3]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o George, Margaret (1976). "The "World Historical Defeat" of the Republicaines-Revolutionnaires". Science & Society. 40 (4): 410–437. ISSN 0036-8237.
  2. ^ Kelly, p. 89.
  3. ^ a b c d Devance, Louis (1977). "Le Feminisme Pendant La Revolution Francaise". Annales historiques de la Révolution française. 49 (229): 341–376. ISSN 0003-4436.
  4. ^ Godineau, p. 111.
  5. ^ a b Abray, Jane (1975). "Feminism in the French Revolution". The American Historical Review. 80 (1): 43–62. doi:10.2307/1859051. ISSN 0002-8762.
  6. ^ a b Fremont-Barnes, p. 385.
  7. ^ Kelly, p. 102–103.
  8. ^ Sokolnikova, pp. 145ff.
  9. ^ a b Doyle, p. 420.
  10. ^ a b c d e Racz, Elizabeth (1952). "The Women's Rights Movement in the French Revolution". Science & Society. 16 (2): 151–174. ISSN 0036-8237.
  11. ^ a b Uglow, Jennifer S.; Hinton, Frances; Hendry, Maggy, eds. (1999). The Northeastern Dictionary of Women's Biography. Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press. p. 309. ISBN 9781555534219. Retrieved 21 September 2013.
  12. ^ Godineau, Dominique (1998). The Women of Paris and Their French Revolution. Translated by Katherine Streip. University of California Press.
  13. ^ a b Hufton, Olwen (1989). "Women in Revolution". French Politics and Society. 7 (3): 65–81. ISSN 0882-1267.
  14. ^ Zerilli, Linda (1982). "Motionless Idols & Virtuous Mothers: Women, Art, and Politics in France 1789-1848". Berkeley Journal of Sociology. 27: 89–126. ISSN 0067-5830.
  15. ^ Léopold Lacour, Les origines du féminisme contemporain: Olympe de Gouges, Théroigne de Méricourt, Rose Lacombe, Paris: Plon, 1900, pp. 413-414.
  16. ^ Augris, Christelle (2024-06-05). "Claire Lacombe". Des Ecrits et de l'Histoire (in French). Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  17. ^ Archives de l'APHP, « Registre des entrées et des sorties de l'Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, 1820-1821 », p. 228
  18. ^ Archives de l'hôpital de la Salpêtrière, « Registre des décès juillet 1825-juin 1828 », p. 68.
  19. ^ Chaumette, Speech at City Hall Denouncing Women’s Political Activism (17 November 1793), 1793-11-17, retrieved 2025-07-04
  20. ^ Patou-Mathis, Marylène (2022). De onzichtbaarheid van de vrouw van de prehistorie tot nu. Amsterdam: Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep. p. 164.
Bibliography

Further reading

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  • Larue-Langlois, Françoys (2005). Claire Lacombe: citoyenne révolutionnaire (in French). Paris: Punctum. ISBN 2-35116-002-9.
  • Pellosso, Marcel (2013). Rose Claire Lacombe (in French). Edilivre-Aparis.
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