Le tribunal revolutionarie 法國大革命 フランス革命

The French Revolution was a period of political and societal change in France which began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the Coup of 18 Brumaire on 9 November 1799. Many of the revolution's ideas are considered fundamental principles of liberal democracy, and its values remain central to modern French political discourse.

The causes of the revolution were a combination of social, political, and economic factors which the ancien régime ("old regime") proved unable to manage. A financial crisis and widespread social distress led to the convocation of the Estates General in May 1789, its first meeting since 1614. The representatives of the Third Estate broke away and re-constituted themselves as a National Assembly in June. The Storming of the Bastille in Paris on 14 July was followed by radical measures by the Assembly, among them the abolition of feudalism, state control over the Catholic Church, and a declaration of rights. The next three years were dominated by a struggle for political control. King Louis XVI's attempted flight to Varennes in June 1791 further discredited the monarchy, and military defeats after the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in April 1792 led to an armed insurrection on 10 August 1792. The monarchy was replaced by the French First Republic in September, and Louis XVI was executed in January 1793.

After another revolt in June 1793, the constitution was suspended, and political power passed from the National Convention to the Committee of Public Safety, dominated by radical Jacobins led by Maximilien Robespierre. About 16,000 people were sentenced by the Revolutionary Tribunal and executed in the Reign of Terror, which ended in July 1794 with the Thermidorian Reaction. Weakened by external threats and internal opposition, the Committee of Public Safety was replaced in November 1795 by the Directory. Its instability ended in the coup of 18 Brumaire and the establishment of the Consulate, with Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul.

The title for this series by my Italian friends Angelo and Margherita is actually called

Le tribunal revolutionarie

Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville et Olympe de Gouges [1793] in Venice

Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville (10 June 1746 – 7 May 1795), also called Fouquier-Tinville and nicknamed posthumously the Provider of the Guillotine was a French lawyer and accusateur public of the Revolutionary Tribunal during the French Revolution and Reign of Terror.

From March 1793 he served as the "public prosecutor" in Paris, demanding the execution of numerous accused individuals, including famous ones, like Marie-Antoinette, Danton or Robespierre and overseeing the sentencing of over two thousand of them to the guillotine. In April 1794, it was decreed to centralise the investigation of court records and to bring all the political suspects in France to the Revolutionary Tribunal to Paris. Following the events of the 10th Thermidor, he was arrested early August.

He was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal as one of the major figures responsible for the excesses and injustices that marked the period of the Reign of Terror. During his trial, he defended himself by stating, "It is not I who ought to be facing the tribunal, but the chiefs whose orders I have executed. I had only acted in the spirit of the laws passed by a Convention invested with all powers." Generally, his defense involved shifting the blame for the executions onto the Committee of Public Safety, especially on Maximilien de Robespierre.

Despite this defense, he was sentenced to death, alongside the judges and some jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal, among other charges, for abusing his authority and neglecting proper legal procedures during trials. He was guillotined in Paris on 7 May 1795, and became the last individual to be executed by the Revolutionary Tribunal before its abolition.

These are his final words, which he wrote before his execution:

I have nothing to reproach myself with; I have always complied with the laws, I have never been a creature of Robespierre or Saint-Just; on the contrary, I have been on the verge of being arrested four times. I die for my country and without reproach. I am satisfied: later, my innocence will be recognized.

His precise role in the Reign of Terror is still a subject of debate; modern historians suggest that it is more valuable to view his role as part of a group of officials and various terrorist actors rather than solely as the sole instigator of the Judicial Terror.

Olympe de Gouges (born Marie Gouze; 7 May 1748 – 3 November 1793) was a French playwright and political activist. She is best known for her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen and other writings on women's rights and abolitionism.

Born in southwestern France, de Gouges began her prolific career as a playwright in Paris in the 1780s. A passionate advocate of human rights, she was one of France's earliest public opponents of slavery. Her plays and pamphlets spanned a wide variety of issues including divorce and marriage, children's rights, unemployment and social security. In addition to her being a playwright and political activist, she was also a small time actress prior to the Revolution. De Gouges welcomed the outbreak of the French Revolution but soon became disenchanted when equal rights were not extended to women. In 1791, in response to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, de Gouges published her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, in which she challenged the practice of male authority and advocated for equal rights for women.

De Gouges was associated with the moderate Girondins and opposed the execution of Louis XVI. Her increasingly vehement writings, which attacked Maximilien Robespierre's radical Montagnards and the Revolutionary government during the Reign of Terror, led to her eventual arrest and execution by guillotine in 1793.

All of Olympe de Gouges's plays and novels convey the overarching theme of her life's work: indignation at social injustices. In addition to women's rights, de Gouges engaged contested topics including the slave trade, divorce, marriage, debtors' prisons, children's rights, and government work schemes for the unemployed. Much of her work foregrounded the troubling intersections of two or more issues. While many plays by women playwrights staged at the Comédie Française were published anonymously or under male pseudonyms, de Gouges broke with tradition; not only did she publish using her own name, but she also pushed the boundaries of what was deemed appropriate subject matter for women playwrights—and withstood the consequences. A record of her papers which were seized at the time of execution in 1793 lists about 40 plays.

In 1784 she published an epistolary novel inspired by Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Her novel claimed to consist of authentic letters exchanged with her father the Marquis de Pompignan, with the names changed. "Madame Valmont" thus represented de Gouges herself, and "Monsieur de Flaucourt" was Pompignan. The full title of the novel, published shortly after Pompignan's death, indicated its claim: Mémoires de Madame de Valmont sur l'ingratitude et la cruauté de la famille des Flaucourt avec la sienne dont les sieurs de Flaucourt on reçu tant de services (Madame de Valmont's Memoirs on the Ingratitude and Cruelty of the Flaucourt Family Towards her Own, which Rendered such Services to the Sirs Flaucourt).

The costumes have obviously been well researched. Even down to the details of the horizontal tricolor revolutionary flag....

Historians will know that the French revolutionary flag actually has the color bars placed horizontally rather than vertically.

In 1790, the white color was the top bar, in 1793, red comes at the top and in 1794, blue comes at the top...

The Venice Carnevale is not solely about masks. Local Italians and an increasing number of foreign costumers now prefer historical costumes or painted faces. During Carnevale, the whole Venice becomes a real life theatrical stage, and many of these historical costumes carry deep perspectives...