In the second year of my degree course we were all packed off to Paris for a week to prepare and research our dissertations. I opted to write mine about representations of Marie Antoinette in Restoration art, which was handy as I already had dozens of books about Marie Antoinette. It also gave me an excuse to spend a week lurking around the Basilica at Saint-Denis, the Chapelle Expiatoire, Versailles, the Conciergerie and Malmaison.
One of the weirdest afternoons was the one that I spent in the private cemetery on the Rue de Picpus in the 12th arrondissement of Paris. This little known cemetery was the final resting place of the victims of the Terror in 1794, whose remains were brought in carts from the guillotine on the Place du Trone, five minutes away and dumped in two large mass graves.
1,306 people, both nobility and commoners were buried there during the Summer of 1794. Their names, ages and occupations are all engraved on a wall behind the altar in the little chapel and are a sobering reminder that the Terror wreaked devastation within every sector of society. Of the victims buried in Picpus, 1109 were male and 197 were female with only 159 aristocrats amongst their numbers. Rosalie Lubomirska, Princesse Joseph de Monaco and Emilie de Sainte-Amaranthe are all included on the list.
Perhaps most poignant of all is the memorial plaque to sixteen Carmelite nuns who were guillotined in Paris on 24th July 1794 and subsequently beatified in 1906.
After the fall of Robespierre, the cemetery was closed off and then secretly bought in 1797 by Princess Amelie de Salm de Hohenzollern, whose brother the Prince of Salm and friend Rosalie were buried in the mass graves. More relatives of victims, including Adrienne de la Fayette, who lost several family members during the Terror, bought up the rest of the land and nowadays it is also the final resting place for members of the aristocracy, including Adrienne and her husband, General La Fayette, who is regarded as a hero by the Americans. An American flag flies over their tomb.
To be buried in Picpus you have to prove that one of your ancestors or relatives was guillotined during the Terror so it is a very select group indeed.
I still remember hunting for the cemetery all those years ago and then feeling intensely disappointed when I found it and discovered the door closed and locked. I lurked for a little while until the doors were opened to admit other people and sneaked inside to wander at will amongst the memorials and around the chapel. I remember feeling close to tears as I read the names behind the altar and then standing for a long time in front of the gate that closes off the area with the two grave pits, thinking about the terrible things that had happened all those years before and vowing to do my bit to ensure that the individual victims are not forgotten.
After a while a lovely nun came out and gently told me that the cemetery was actually closed to visitors on that day as they were holding a special Mass for relatives of victims of the Terror, which explained the enormous cars and very made up women in huge fur coats who were clustered around the little chapel. The nun and I chatted together as she walked with me across the lawn to the gate and she appeared very impressed that une fille anglaise showed so much interest in French history.
I feel very lucky to have been there and seen it with my own eyes.
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