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decade later the Napoleonic Code confirmed and perpetuated
women's second-class status.
When the Revolution opened, groups of women acted forcefully,
making use of the volatile political climate. Women forced their way

into the political sphere. They swore oaths of loyalty, "solemn
declarations of patriotic allegiance, [and] affirmations of the political
responsibilities of citizenship." De Corday d'Armont is a prime
example of such a woman; engaged in the revolutionary political
faction of the Girondins, she assassinated the Jacobin leader, Marat.
Throughout the Revolution, other women such as Pauline Léonand
her Society of Revolutionary Republican Womensupported the

radical Jacobins, staged demonstrations in the National Assembly
and participated in the riots, often using armed force.
The March to Versailles is but one example of feminist militant
activism during the French Revolution. While largely left out of the
thrust for increasing rights of citizens, as the question was left
indeterminate in the Declaration of the Rights of Man activists such

as Pauline Léon and Théroigne de Méricourt agitated for full
citizenship for women. Women were, nonetheless, "denied political
rights of 'active citizenship' (1791) and democratic citizenship (1793).
On 20 June 1792 a number of armed women took part in a
procession that "passed through the halls of the Legislative Assembly,
into the Tuileries Gardens, and then through the King's
residence. Militant women also assumed a special role in the funeral
of Marat, following his murder on 13 July 1793. As part of the funeral

procession, they carried the bathtub in which Marat had been
murdered (by a counter-revolutionary woman) as well as a shirt
stained with Marat's blood. On 20 May 1793 women were at the fore
of a crowd that demanded "bread and the Constitution of 1793."
When their cries went unnoticed, the women went on a rampage,
"sacking shops, seizing grain and kidnapping officials.