Incroyables and merveilleuses

Ornate carriages reappeared on the streets of Paris the day after the execution (28 July 1794) of Maximilien Robespierre, which brought an end to the Jacobin-era Committee of Public Safety and signaled the commencement of the Thermidorian Reaction.

One popular song of the period called on the French people to "share my horror" and to send "these drinkers of human blood" back amongst the monsters from which they had sprung.

[1] Many public balls were bals des victimes at which young aristocrats who had lost loved ones to the guillotine danced in mourning dress or wore black armbands, greeting one another with violent movements of the head as if in decapitation.

[n 2] A ball held at the Hôtel Thellusson on the rue de Provence in the 9th arrondissement of Paris restricted its guest list to the grown children of the guillotined.

They frequently affected a lisp, allegedly to avoid the letter "R" as in revolution, and sometimes a stooped, hunchbacked posture or slouch, as caricatured in numerous cartoons of the time.

[5] In addition to Madame Tallien, famous Merveilleuses included Mademoiselle Lange, Juliette Récamier, and two very popular Créoles: Fortunée Hamelin and Hortense de Beauharnais.

[6] The leading Incroyable, Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras, was one of five directors who ran the Republic of France and gave the period its name.

The fictional nouveau riche social climber Madame Angot, awkwardly wearing ridiculous Greek clothing, parodied the Merveilleuses in many plays of the period.