*''Cimetière de la Madeleine is also the name of a cemetery in

Amiens Amiens (English: or ; ; pcd, Anmien, or ) is a city and commune in northern France, located north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in the region of Hauts-de-France. In 2021, the population of ...

'' Madeleine Cemetery (in French known as ''Cimetière de la Madeleine'') is a former cemetery in the 8th arrondissement of Paris and was one of the four cemeteries (the others being Errancis Cemetery, Picpus Cemetery and the Cemetery of Saint Margaret) used to dispose of the corpses of

guillotine A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with stocks at t ...

victims during the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...

. The cemetery was named after Mary Magdalene, known in French as Sainte-Madeleine.

History

In 1720, the parish of Sainte-Madeleine de la Ville-l’Évêque bought a piece of land of approximately 45x19m destined to become the third cemetery of the parish. It became known as the Madeleine Cemetery. The cemetery was closed on 25 March 1794, reputedly because it was full, but maybe for sanitary reasons, as it was located in an affluent part of Paris. Major interments were the 133 victims of the firework celebration of the marriage of the Dauphin (the future

Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...

) to Marie Antoinette of Habsburg-Lorraine on 30 May 1770 and those of the Swiss Guards who were massacred in the

Tuileries The Tuileries Palace (french: Palais des Tuileries, ) was a royal and imperial palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine, directly in front of the Louvre. It was the usual Parisian residence of most French monarchs, from ...

, 10 August 1792. The day after the execution of the " Hébertists" the cemetery was closed and became private land. The beheaded corpses (victims of the guillotine) were then taken to what was to become the Errancis Cemetery (it remained open for three years but is now also gone). The land was sold to a stonemason. On 3 June 1802, the land in which the bodies lay, was bought by Pierre-Louis Olivier Desclozeaux, a royalist magistrate, who had lived adjacent to the cemetery (now ''Square Louis XVI'

since 1789. Desclozeaux had taken note of the sites where the King and Queen were buried and reputedly surrounded them with a hedge, two weeping willows, and cypress trees. On 11 January 1815, Desclozeaux sold his house and the old cemetery to Louis XVIII. One of the first decisions of

Louis XVIII Louis XVIII (Louis Stanislas Xavier; 17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824), known as the Desired (), was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. He spent twenty-three years in ...

, when he acceded to the throne of France at the time of the Bourbon Restoration, was to move the remains of his brother and sister-in-law, King

and Queen Marie Antoinette, to the Basilica of St Denis, the necropolis of the Kings of France. They were exhumed on 18 and 19 January 1815, and moved to Saint-Denis Basilica on 20 January. Marie Antoinette's remains were identified by a garter and a jaw, which an eyewitness identified as being the queen's, based on having seen her smile over thirty years before. Louis XVIII also searched for the remains of his sister Élisabeth in the Errancis Cemetery, but to no avail. In 1844, the cemetery was cleared and the skeletal remains were transferred to the ''l'Ossuaire de l'Ouest'' (West Ossuary). When the ossuary was closed, the contents were transferred to the

Paris catacombs The Catacombs of Paris (french: Catacombes de Paris, ) are underground ossuaries in Paris, France, which hold the remains of more than six million people in a small part of a tunnel network built to consolidate Paris's ancient stone quarries. Ext ...

, which was also the resting place of remains removed from the Errancis Cemetery.

During the French Revolution

Those killed in the

September Massacres The September Massacres were a series of killings of prisoners in Paris that occurred in 1792, from Sunday, 2 September until Thursday, 6 September, during the French Revolution. Between 1,176 and 1,614 people were killed by '' fédérés'', gu ...

of 1792 are alleged to be buried here: * Princess Marie Louise of Savoy The decapitated corpses of the

victims were thrown in specially dug trenches and covered in quicklime to speed up the decomposition process. There were no markers. Among those reputed to have been "buried" here:Beyern, B., Guide des tombes d'hommes célèbres, Le Cherche Midi, 2008, 377p, *

(21 January 1793); he and Marie Antoinette were reputedly the only victims buried in a coffin. * Marie Antoinette (16 October 1793) * Charlotte Corday (18 July 1793) *22

Girondist The Girondins ( , ), or Girondists, were members of a loosely knit political faction during the French Revolution. From 1791 to 1793, the Girondins were active in the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. Together with the Montagnard ...

s (31 October 1793); among them

Jacques Pierre Brissot Jacques Pierre Brissot (, 15 January 1754 – 31 October 1793), who assumed the name of de Warville (an English version of "d'Ouarville", a hamlet in the village of Lèves where his father owned property), was a leading member of the Girondins du ...

and

Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud (; 31 May 1753 – 31 October 1793) was a French lawyer and statesman, a figure of the French Revolution. A deputy to the Assembly from Bordeaux, Vergniaud was an eloquent orator. He was a supporter of Jacques Pie ...

. * Olympe de Gouges ( 3 November 1793) * Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (6 November 1793); also known as Phillipe Égalité. *

Madame Roland Marie-Jeanne 'Manon' Roland de la Platière (Paris, March 17, 1754 – Paris, November 8, 1793), born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, and best known under the name Madame Roland, was a French revolutionary, salonnière and writer. Initially she led a ...

(8 November 1793) * Madame du Barry (8 December 1793) * Jacques Hébert (24 March 1794) and his supporters. It is unclear how many corpses were "buried": the estimates vary from hundreds up to three thousand.

Location

The cemetery was located on the intersection of ''rue d’Anjou'' and the ''Grand Égout'' (now ''

Boulevard Haussmann Boulevard Haussmann, long from the 8th to the 9th arrondissement, is one of the wide tree-lined boulevards created in Paris by Napoleon III, under the direction of his Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. The Boulevard Haussmann is mostly ...

'') in Paris. It was part of the land on which the ''

Chapelle expiatoire The Chapelle expiatoire ("Expiatory Chapel")''expiatoire'' does not appear in contemporaneous sources; it was added later. is a chapel located in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France. The chapel was constructed on the grounds where King Louis ...

'', built in the memory of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, now stands.

History

During the French Revolution

Location

References

Further reading