Marie Gouze, known as Olympe de Gouges

Born

7 May 1748

Died

3 November 1793

A playwright and political writer from Montauban, Olympe de Gouges argued for women’s political and civil rights in her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen of 1791 and opposed colonial slavery in several plays and pamphlets. Politically associated with the Girondins, she was arrested after attempting to publish Les Trois Urnes, which proposed consulting the primary assemblies on the choice between a unitary republic, a federal republic and constitutional monarchy. The prosecution presented the work as an attack on popular sovereignty and as tending towards the restoration of monarchy or another form of government prohibited by law. She was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined on 3 November 1793.

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7 May 1748Birth of Olympe de Gouges See them in the timeline →