"Thou wilt show my head to the people: It is worth showing"

The famous last words of Georges Jacques Danton, the French Revolutionary, were uttered on April 5, 1794.  Danton, who had participated in the storming of the Bastille, was guillotined toward the end of the reign of terror.  Financial improprieties were cited, including an attempt to gain from insider trading related to the French East India Company.

Walter Scott covers Danton in his "Life of Napoleon", considering him in the same breath as Robespierre and Marat; the triumvirate, as Scott referred to them.

"...The Jacobins—the second of these parties —were allies of the Brissotins, with the ulterior purpose of urging the revolutionary force to the uttermost, but using as yet the shelter of their republican mantle. Robespierre, who, by an affectation of a frugal and sequestered course of life, preserved among the multitude the title of the Incorruptible, might be considered as the head of the Jacobins, if they had indeed a leader more than wolves have, which tune their united voices to the cry of him who bays the loudest. Danton, inexorable as Robespierre himself, but less prudent, because he loved gold and pleasure as well as blood and power, was next in authority. Marat, who loved to talk of murder as soldiers do of battles; the wretched Collot d'Herbóte, a broker-down play-actor ; Chabot, an eicapuchin ; with many other men of desperate character, whose moderate talents were eked cut by the most profligate effrontery, formed the advanced guard of this party, soiled with every species of crime, and accustomed to act their parts in the management of those dreadful insurrections, which had at once promoted and dishonoured the Revolution..."

Madame Roland

Madame Roland was once on the cutting edge of the French Revolution. She ended life under the guillotine, on this day in 1793. Madame Roland and her husband were among the Girodonist faction, so named due to the predominant geographic sourcing of its members from the region of the Gironde estuary (where the mouths of the Garonne and Dordogne rivers merge); comprised of much of the former provinces of Guyenne and Gascogne.

Madame Roland held a salon in her house, which became the meeting place for the Girodonists. This group became powerful prior to the actual revolution, forcing King Louis XVI in 1792 to appoint a ministry comprised of its adherents. One of these was Roland's husband, Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere.

The Girodonists wound up in a power struggle with the Montagnards, whose leading members included Robespierrre, Marat and Danton. Eventually, the Girodonists were destroyed. Mssr. Roland fled to Rouen, while Madame Roland was imprisoned, and eventually beheaded - quite possibly to get at her husband. Madame Roland is remembered for her remark on the Statue of Liberty in the Place de la Revolution, where she was to be executed: "Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name."

Scott includes Madame Roland in his "Life of Napoleon Buonaparte" seven times, with a reference also to her husband as the husband of Madame Roland.