Olympe de Gouges, French patriot, executed 1783

by catpaw | 3 Nov, 2025

Fierce advocate of women’s rights and abolition Olympe de Gouges was executed November 3, 1793 in the dying days of the French Reign of Terror. 

Olympe de Gouges (7 May 1748 – 3 November 1793) was one of the first women to fight for equal rights. She is best remembered for championing women’s rights in her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791) but her profound humanism led her to strongly oppose discrimination, violence and oppression in all its forms.
Olympe de Gouges | Plays & Texts

Olympe de Gouges(1748-1793), Women’s Rights Campaigner
Issued by France in 2020
 

In the spring of 1793, de Gouges publicly called on the Jacobin government to halt its continuous bloodshed and work towards establishing a just society based on equality and respect. She published a sheet that urged the existing government to hold a direct vote to determine the type of government France would establish: a unitary republic, a federalist government, or a constitutional monarchy. Olympe  stressed the continued fighting and mass executions were dooming the principles of the Revolution.

 “Now is the time to establish a decent government whose energy comes from the strength of its laws; now is the time to put a stop to assassinations and the suffering they cause, for merely holding opposing views. Let everyone examine their consciences; let them see the incalculable harm caused by such a long-lasting division…and then everyone can pronounce freely on the government of their choice. The majority must carry the day. It is time for death to rest and for anarchy to return to the underworld.” Les Trois Urnes

Les trois urnes – Olympe’s last publication that led Robspierre and his allies to have her arrested.

The poster sealed her fate and she was arrested July 20, 1793.  The Jacobins ordered her arrest based on a law established by the Revolutionary councils that made it a capital offense to advocate for any form of monarchy.  She languished in jail, denied a lawyer by the tribunal until November 3 when she was finally brought before a judge. She was officially charged with seditious behavior and attempting to reinstate the monarchy and executed that evening. 

Yesterday, at seven o’clock in the evening, a most extraordinary person called Olympe de Gouges who held the imposing title of woman of letters, was taken to the scaffold, while all of Paris, while admiring her beauty, knew that she didn’t even know her alphabet… She approached the scaffold with a calm and serene expression on her face, and forced the guillotine’s furies, which had driven her to this place of torture, to admit that such courage and beauty had never been seen before… That woman… had thrown herself in the Revolution, body and soul. But having quickly perceived how atrocious the system adopted by the Jacobins was, she chose to retrace her steps. She attempted to unmask the villains through the literary productions which she had printed and put up. They never forgave her, and she paid for her carelessness with her head. 
 Mousset, Sophie (2007). Women’s Rights and the French Revolution: A Biography of Olympe de Gouges. New Brunswick (US) & London: Transaction Publishers. p. 99

Publication of decision to send Olympe de Gouges to guillotine within 24 hours of the decision.
From: Bulletin of the Revolutionary Criminal Tribunal, established at the Palais, in Paris, by the law of March 10, 1793, to judge without appeal the conspirators
Publisher: chez Clément (In Paris)
Publication date: 1793
Contributor: Clément, R.-J.-B.. Director of publication
Catalogue record: http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32728618x
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France,

Denied a place in the powerful circles of her day she found her political voice by writing an astonishing number of pamphlets and posters that she freely disseminated around Paris. Her texts chart her battles against injustice and inequality, her belief that solidarity and cooperation should predominate, her hatred of dictatorships and the corrupting influence of power, her profound pacifism, her respect for mankind, her love of nature, and, of course, her desire that women be allowed a worthwhile role in society. She pleaded against slavery and the death penalty, dreamt of a more equal society and proposed intelligent taxation plans to enable wealth to be more fairly divided. She called for a form of welfare state, trial by jury and reasonable divorce laws to protect women and children from penury. Believing in the power of drama to encourage political change she wrote several plays that ingeniously highlight contemporary concerns.

Olympe de Gouges never allowed the prejudices of her time, the disparagement of her critics or the dangers inherent in being outspoken during the Terror to silence her. For having unreservedly expressed her opinions on democracy she was considered, by those in power during the last years of the French Revolution, to be a dangerous agitator. She was guillotined in Paris on the 3rd November 1793. 
Olympe de Gouges | Plays & Texts  Clarissa Palmer’s website dedicated to de Gouges and her writings is one of the best, approachable ones available. Palmer includes a decent bibliography. .

2024 highlighted the venerable Times of India.