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From my earliest days I had a feeling

that adventures lay in store for me.

Lucy de la Tour du Pin

The women have certainly had a considerable share in the French revolution: for, whatever the imperious lords of the creation may fancy, the most important events which take place in this world depend a little on our influence; and we often act in human affairs like those secret springs in mechanism, by which, though invisible, great movements are regulated.

HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS

THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY—France's first constitutional government—met between October 1789 and September 1792 in the covered riding-school of the Tuileries palace in Paris. The long, narrow manège [see ‘Words and Phrases’ p. 437] had been remodelled to accommodate the deputies with a classical austerity intended to correspond to the gravity of their new political responsibilities.

Although women did not possess the rights either of voting or of holding office, they were permitted into the hall's galleries to observe and marvel at the workings of the administration and the debates on France's future. On any given day in the spring of 1791, four women might have been sitting among the onlookers gathered to watch the Assembly's proceedings.