Event Details:

GenCen Colloquia - Dr. Ronen Steinberg

After the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, hundreds of widows of men who had been guillotined sent petitions to the authorities in Paris, demanding the restitution of the property that had been confiscated from their husbands and, in many cases, posthumous exoneration. One of them was Emilie Prax, the widow of Charles Blanquet-Rouville from Toulouse. Her case was unusual is that it went on for several years, well after the National Convention had adopted a general law on restitution. As late as 1797, the case of Emilie Prax was still being discussed in the highest echelons of the Republic. Following her effort to exonerate her late husband, and to get the property back, affords a rare glimpse into the role that women played in dealing with the legacies of the Terror. The violence of 1793-4 was by and large a masculine affair, but, as I will try to show, the struggle for redress was very much the business of women.