Lucile Desmoulins
She was executed eight days after Camille Desmoulins and Georges Danton, accused of conspiring to free her husband and involvement in counter-revolutionary activities.
Lucile Duplessis Desmoulins was born in Paris in 1770, the daughter of Claude-Etienne Laridon-Duplessis, an official of the French Treasury, and Anne-Françoise-Marc Bosdeveix (who went by "Annette").
She had one sister, Adèle Duplessis, born in 1774, who some sources have claimed was briefly engaged to Maximilien Robespierre.
In 1789, she wrote of Marie Antoinette: "Fear the example of queens who, like you, do evil: Some have perished in misery, others have borne their heads to the scaffold.
[4] One of Lucile’s short stories, La Volière, tells of a young girl named Cloé who collected nests of baby birds she found in the woods and raised them in an aviary.
If the birdcatcher has not already trapped them to give them to cruel children, or else the inhuman hunter.... O my poor little birds, I pity you!
Touched by her good heart, she came and said to her, embracing her: “Console yourself, my dear child, do not cry over the fate of your lost birds; all your caresses, all your cares would not have made them happier."
The more I examine them, the more I seek to understand them, the more I see that one should flee from them.”[5] In her work entitled Prière à Dieu, written in 1788, she wrote: “I hate the world.
"[5] An unsent letter to her future husband, written in July 1790, read: "If you love me, run from me; I am a monster.
"[6] During the late 1780s, Lucile developed strong feelings for the revolutionary journalist Camille Desmoulins, who was then a good friend of her mother’s.
Signatories to their marriage included Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, Jacques Pierre Brissot, and Maximilien Robespierre.
In her diary she described attending the trial and sentencing of Louis XVI in January 1793, repeatedly spending all night at the National Convention and, on one occasion, not going to bed until 8 AM.
[10] When the execution of the King was agreed upon, she wrote “Finally we have prevailed.”[10] Lucile strongly supported Camille Desmoulins in writing Le Vieux Cordelier in the winter of 1793 – 1794, which advocated for freedom of the press, clemency, and a cessation of the Reign of Terror.
He must save his country; let him fulfill his mission.”[11] After Camille’s arrest, she wrote a letter to Robespierre, reminding him of his friendship with the family and saying: “Do you believe that the people will gain confidence in you by seeing you immolate your friends?
[13] On 4 April 1794 Lucile Desmoulins was arrested on charges that she had conspired to free her husband (then imprisoned in the Conciergerie while on trial with Georges-Jacques Danton) and for plotting the ruin of the republic.
Lucile Desmoulins has been played in movies by: She is the subject of the fourth movement of composer Kate Soper's piece "Voices from the Killing Jar", 2012.
