The Princess of Monaco's Hair: the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Pregnancy Plea

Abstract

During the Terror, French law forbade the execution of a woman condemned to death if she was pregnant. More than two dozen women who were condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal, the highest political court, claimed pregnancy to delay their execution. This article examines the ways in which some of these pleas were made and the ways that the Tribunal responded to them. In so doing, it shows both that women manipulated the revolutionary reverence for motherhood in an attempt to save their lives and that the Revolutionary Tribunal treated these women as political actors.