Who was the woman that defeated Robespierre in 1793, Jacqueline Armand, Elizabeth Olive Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, The wife of Marquis de Merin or person unknown?
I don’t know, but I’ll bite…
Susan Polgar??
You mean she was traveling with Doctor Who and using a different name?
Back on topic, The story goes that a beautiful girl disguised as a man checkmated Robespierre and then revealed her identity to plead for the life of her condemned lover. She got an order for his immediate release. Where lies the truth? Robespierre liked to play chess at the Cafe de la Regence. However, when he became more powerful during the Reign of Terror, few people showed up at the cafe when he was there. The Reign of Terror kept Philidor from returning to France.
During the summer of 1793 he was supposed to have granted a condemned man freedom after losing to his fiancee/wife at the Cafe de la Regence. One source (Ripley’s Believe It or Not in 1944) says that the life he spared was Thomas Paine ( 1737-1809), the author of the “Rights of Man.” Paine’s wife disguised herself in men’s clothes, went to the cafe, and succeeded in engaging him in a chess game. She was supposed to have won two games. Robespierre would grant her any wish if she could beat him a third game. She did and asked for the life of her husband. geocities.com/SiliconValley/ … robesp.htm
Paul Morphy, in a letter to Daniel Fiske in 1863 stated, “I never patronize the Cafe de la Régence; it is a low, and, to borrow a Gallicism, ill frequented establishment.”
Thanks for a wonderfully interesting story! I have another historical question that I’ll pose in a new thread.