She was born at the village of Mericourt, near Liege, of a family of wealthy farmers, and had received a finished education.  At the age of seventeen her singular loveliness had attracted the attention of a young seigneur, whose chateau was close to her residence.  Beloved, seduced, and deserted, she had fled from her father’s roof and taken refuge in England, from whence, after a residence of some months, she proceeded to France.  Introduced to Mirabeau, she knew through him Sieyes, Joseph Chenier, Danton, Ronsin, Brissot, and Camille Desmoulins.  Romme, a mystical republican, infused into her mind the German spirit of illumination.  Youth, love, revenge, and the contact with this furnace of a revolution, had turned her head, and she lived in the intoxication of passions, ideas, and pleasures.  Connected at first with the great innovators of ’89, she had passed from their arms into those of rich voluptuaries, who purchased her charms dearly.  Courtezan of opulence, she became the voluntary prostitute of the people; and like her celebrated prototypes of Egypt or of Rome, she lavished upon liberty the wealth she derived from vice.

On the first assemblage of the people she appeared in the streets, and devoted her beauty to serve as an ensign to the people.  Dressed in a riding habit of the colour of blood, a plume of feathers in her hat, a sabre at her side, and two pistols in her belt, she hastened to join every insurrection.  She was the first of those who burst open the gates of the Invalides and took the cannon from thence.  She was also one of the first to attack the Bastille; and a sabre d’homme was voted her on the breach by the victors.  On the days of October, she had led the women of Paris to Versailles, on horseback, by the side of the ferocious Jourdan, called “the man with the long beard.”  She had brought back the king to Paris:  she had followed, without emotion, the heads of the gardes du corps, stuck on pikes as trophies.  Her language, although marked by a foreign accent, had yet the eloquence of tumult.  She elevated her voice amidst the stormy meetings of the clubs, and from the galleries blamed their conduct.  Sometimes she spoke at the Cordeliers.  Camille Desmoulins mentions the enthusiasm which her harangues created.  “Her similes,” says he, “were drawn from the Bible and Pindar,—­it was the eloquence of a Judith.”  She proposed to build the palace of the representative body on the site of the Bastille.  “To found and embellish this edifice,” said she, “let us strip ourselves of our ornaments, our gold, our jewels.  I will be the first to set the example.”  And with these words she tore off her ornaments in the tribune.  Her ascendency during the emeutes was so great, that with a single sign she condemned or acquitted a victim; and the royalists trembled to meet her.