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The potato was introduced into Europe, today in 1586. By Sir Thomas Harriot - who had the humility not to name it after himself. Solanum tuberosum, in Latin, Batatas in the Caribean, Spuds in Lancashire, Recycled Peelings in MacDonalds - but those were surely yams, sweet potatoes, and not the white ones eaten by the Peruvian Incas for at least five thousand years, and which they called papas.
The potato was introduced into Europe, today in 1588, by Carolus Clusius, on behalf of the governor of Mons, who had been given one by one of the Pope's attendants.
The potato was introduced into Europe, today in 1589, by Sir Walter Raleigh, who planted 40,000 of them on his estate near Cork (what, they were never a native crop? Not even in Ireland?).
But hadn't Christopher Columbus already brought back the patata, decades and decades earlier?
French fried potatoes were introduced into Europe, today in 1789, by street vendors on the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, conscious that revolution was about to bring vast crowds onto the streets, and hoping to cash in on their hunger...
World War One began, today in 1914. And isn't that a wonderful headline! So succinct, so precise, so complete! The event which brought a thousand years of European civilisation to its dramatic end, its apocalypse; the insemination of the most barbaric century in human history, at the end of which technology stood poised to reduce humans to automatons and the entire globe to homogeneity; the century in which the proletariat rose up across the globe, and failed completely to overthrow the masters; the century in which the human mania for exploration stood on the verge of turning the rest of the cosmos into a toilet, just as we have done to our own little corner of it... all of it, summed up in just those six simple words and four numbers!
But my real delight in coming to this page, today, is the opportunity to celebrate a woman of whom I am certain you have never heard, Thérésa Cabarrus, though remembered, by those who do, as Madame Tallien; born in Madrid in 1773 to a father of French extraction and a Spanish mother, brought up in Paris, and married at the age of just 14 to the Marquis de Fontenay, a libertine gambler with whom she did not stay longer than the first of the eleven children she would eventually have, with several fathers.
It was in Bordeaux that she met politican and second husband Jean-Lambert Tallien, one of the Jacobins who had ousted the Girondins and seized power. Thérésa may have loved the man, unquestionably shared his politics, but she was ready to fall out with him when he yielded passively to the creation of a so-called "Committee for Public Safety", really the initiation of a Reign of Terror that would stalinise any opposition; throughout 1793 and 1794... but let me quote from one of the historians:
"She was tireless in her efforts to save prisoners from execution, getting false passports for people on the run and seeing them to safety. She used her influence over Tallien to snatch prey from the guillotine and he complied, despite his dislike for Royalists and the risks to which he was exposing himself. Friend or enemy or stranger, it did not seem to matter to Thérésia: their plight as hunted creatures was what mattered. The grateful citizens of Bordeaux used to cheer her in the street, as Notre Dame de Bon Secours."
The Frank Foley of Revolutionary France. Where, pray, is the statue in
her honour? But even that isn't why she is on this page.
Doing what she was, it was inevitable that her turn would come to be
arrested, and in her case on Robespierre's
personal orders; her cellmate was another glamorous and beautiful young woman, Joséphine
de Beauharnais by name, though you probably know her by her later married-name, as Joséphine Buonaparte.
In prison, to humiliate them, the women were stripped to their
underwear. Released, she and Joséphine made politics out of it, becoming famous as the "sans-chemises",
arbiters of glamour and beauty, wearers of revealing outfits, insisters upon
women's rights, sexual as well as political, in a mysogynistic world dedicated
to female chastity and puritan values - yes, that France, the Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg France of today;
she was one of its initiators. But that too isn't why she is on this page, nor
the reason for my expression of delight.
Move back a
single day, July 27 1794, and let me quote another of the historians:
During these same weeks of the Great Terror, Tallien and
his colleagues in the legislature were becoming nervous of how Robespierre kept
looking towards them in the chamber. They began to fear that they would be in
the next purge. The impetus for Tallien and his faction to take action against
the powerful Robespierre was a note wrapped in a dagger that Thérésia managed
to get to him on 26 July. She tells him that she is now on the death list,
and accuses him of weakness for not attempting to free her. “I die in
despair at having belonged to a coward like you”. Tallien spurred to
action brandishes the dagger in the chamber, declaring he would use it if the
Convention didn’t have the courage to arrest Robsepierre. The result was
the downfall of Robespierre. He was charged with “tyranny” and “dictatorship”,
and within twenty-four hours was sent to the guillotine. Such was
the rapidity of a change of fortune at that time.”
Slight error: she sent him the dagger on the 26th; he made his "Thermidorian
Reaction" speech on the 27th (I would like to call it his "Who stands
firm?" speech, given what she said, and given the date*).
Today, July 28th, Robespierre was sent to the guillotine,
and his brother Augustin, and his co-leaders Georges Couthon and Louis de Saint-Just as well. Nice work, Madame Tallien.
The three historical sources
quoted above can be found here, here and here. For more on the
"Thermidorian Reaction", try here
She is also now remembered as "Notre-Dame
de Thermidor" ("Our Lady of Thermidor"), because it was her
action on July 26th that incipited the Thermidorian Reaction on July 28
* see my entry
on Dietrich Bonhoeffer on that date
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