THE PRINCESS OF MONACOS HAIR - THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL AND THE PREGNANCY PLEA

During the Terret; French law forbade the execution of a woman condemn ed to death if she was pregnant. More than two dozen women who were co ndemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal, the highest political court, cl aimed pregnancy To delay their execution. This article examines the wa ys in which some of these pleas were made and the ways that the Tribun al responded to them. In so doing it shows both that women manipulated the revolutionary reverence for motherhood in an attempt to save thei r lives and that the Revolutionary Tribunal treated these women as pol itical actors.