Decapitated. The Tragic Story of Marie Antoinette, Madame Du Barry, Madame Roland, and Olympias de Gouges

1793. In the midst of the French Revolution, which determined the entire future history of Europe. The authorities of the Republic are judging four women: the legislator of public tastes Madame Roland, the tireless defender of women's rights Olympias de Gouges, the extravagant former mistress of Louis XV Madame Du Barry, and finally, the frivolous queen Marie Antoinette. All of them became victims of the revolution and its favorite weapon – the guillotine. Historian Cécile Berli vividly recounts the last days of these influential, extraordinary, and very different women from their arrest to their sentencing and subsequent execution... «What was going on in the minds of these women, deprived of freedom and declared the fiercest enemies of the political regime that emerged in unprecedented, exceptional, and cruel conditions? How did they endure all the public humiliations and attacks on their personal, even intimate lives? How did they struggle against prison restrictions and the fear of death? How did they prepare for the scaffold? How to grasp the emotions that pertain to the realm of the unattainable?» (Cécile Berli)