tage. During the previous decades immediately preceding the
outbreak of the Revolution, many of them had taken part in the great
intellectual struggle that then raged throughout French society. They
flocked in swarms to the great scientific discussions, attended
political and scientific meetings, and did their share in preparing the
Revolution, where theory was to crystalize into fact. Most historians
have noted only the excesses of the Revolution,--and as always happens
when the object is to cast stones at the people and arouse horror
against them--have enormously exaggerated these to the end of all the
more readily extenuating the shameful transgressions of the ruling
class. As a rule, these historians have belittled the heroism and
greatness of soul, displayed also by many women in both camps. So long
as the vanquishers remain the historians of the vanquished, it will ever
be thus.

In October, 1789, a number of women petitioned the National Assembly
"that equality be restored between man and woman, work and occupation be
given them free, places be left for them that their faculties were fit
for."

When in 1793 the Convention proclaimed "_le droit de l'homme_" (the
Rights of Man), the more far-seeing women perceived that these were only
the rights of males. Olympe de Gouges, Louise Lecombe and others
paralleled these "Rights of Man" with 17 articles on the "Rights of
Woman," which, on the 28th Brumaire (November 20, 1793) they defended
before the Commune of Paris upon the principle: "If woman has the right
to mount the scaffold, she must also have the right to mount the
tribune." Their demands remained unheeded. When, subsequently, upon the
march of monarchic Europe against the Republic, the Convention declared
the "Fatherland in danger," and called upon all men, able to carry arms,
to defend the Fatherland and the Republic, inspired Parisian women
offered to do what twenty years later inspired Prussian women likewise
did against the domination of Napoleon,--defend the Fatherland, arms in
hand. The radical Chaumette rose against those Parisian women and
addressed them, asking: "Since when is it allowed to women to renounce
their sex and become men? Since when is it usage for them to abandon the
sacred cares of their households, the cradles of their children, and to
appear at public places, to speak from the tribunes, to step in the
files of the troops,--in short, to fill duties that Nature has devolved
upon man alo