Vulgar History Podcast
French Revolution: Radicals (Part 5): The Triple Agent
May 14, 2025
Ann Foster:
Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and this season, we’re looking at— Well, this part of this season, we’re looking at the Women of the French Revolution. And I have to say, some of these stories are real bummers, [laughs] really. I try to stay in the moment of the story, but I know what’s coming towards the end. And, you know, there’s not been a lot of happy endings, and this episode is like that, too. But it’s a different sort of point of view of the French Revolution, because our main character is from the Netherlands. I guess we’ve had other people, like, wasn’t Théroigne…? One of the other people is from Belgium or something. But this is a bit of a different story, although she does end up in the same place as all of the other people. We’re going to go through a lot of the events that we’ve discussed from other points of view, already, in the French Revolution.
But I came across this person who is… Etta, is her name. Just as I was researching some of the other women of the French Revolution, it’s interesting because you start, I start seeing sort of like, oh, well, you know, the women of the French Revolution. It’s like, there’s Olympe de Gouges, Théroigne de Méricourt, there’s Claire Lacombe, Pauline Léon, like names kept adding, and they’re like, oh, and also there is Etta Palm d’Aelders. And I was like, who is this person? But I think this is, this is it. These are the ladies of the French Revolution, on the Jacobins’ side. We’re going to get into some Girondins starting next week.
But Etta was a happy surprise to me. And I had to dig around a bit more for information about her, because she’s not written about as much as others, and that’s because, my friends, she was… a spy. One of the things about being a good spy is the stuff that you do is not always written down, and you can’t find it. She wasn’t the sort of person who was posting all the state secrets on a Signal chat. Like, she knew her shit and she was good at it. How did this woman from Groningen [phonetic Hro-ning-in] in the Netherlands end up in the midst of the French Revolution to the point that she’s mentioned in a lot of sources alongside Théroigne de Méricourt or Olympe de Gouges? Well, that’s the story we’re going to get into today.
Also, huge, huge, huge thanks to several people from the Netherlands, people who speak Dutch, who I… There are some names here, and I hope you’ll be impressed with my pronunciation because I learned the pronunciation from several people from the Netherlands who recorded voice memos or videos for me pronouncing these words. I listened to all of them/watched all of them. It was interesting. Most of the words, everybody said the same way, but there’s some maybe regional differences in some of them. So, I’m just kind of going to go with what feels right to me, but I’m doing my best, and the Netherlands Tits Out Brigade, you really showed up for me and I appreciate it.
So, today’s heroine is Etta Lubina Johanna Derista Aelders [ph. Etta Loo-beena Yo-hanna de Rees-tah Alders], who was born into a middle-class family in Groningen, Netherlands, in April 1743. See, she’s such a spy. I don’t even have a date, but I’m going to guess April 5th because that’s my birthday, and I vibe with her. So, she was born in April 1743, the child of Johan Aelders van Nieuwenhuys [ph. Noo-wen-house], a wallpaper merchant and pawnbroker. Wallpaper merchant is an interesting job I don’t recall having seen on this show before. And Johan’s second wife, Agatha [phonetic: Ahata] Petronella de Sitter, daughter of a silk cloth merchant. So, we’re in a merchant class, although Agatha’s family had never approved of this match because Johan was of a lower social standing than her. Even though they were merchants, I guess one is more, like, a fancy merchant. I guess silk cloth merchant versus wallpaper. I don’t know the ranks of merchants, but anyway.
Johan died when Etta was six years old, and at this point, Agatha took over the family’s business, both the wallpaper shop and also, if you’ll recall, he’s also a pawnbroker. Her family, again, didn’t approve of this. Agatha’s family, like, take all of the seats. They didn’t approve because they didn’t think that this was an appropriate occupation for a lady of her rank but it’s like, who else is going to run these businesses to keep this household thriving and to keep little baby spy Etta fed and clothed and housed? Come on. Agatha kept the same business partner who Johan had worked with in these businesses, who was a Jewish man, and this had an effect because in the Netherlands at this time, widespread antisemitism meant that there was discrimination against Agatha for working with him, including the authorities withdrew her license to run a pawn shop and the business went bankrupt. So, that sucks for everybody, all concerned. But I guess maybe the wallpaper biz was still going, or maybe she had some family money from the silk cloth trade, because they kept going, and they weren’t poverty-stricken.
Agatha ensured the little baby Etta got a good education; she learned German, French, English, and perhaps a little Italian, which was much more of an education than a girl from a non-aristocratic family at the time would usually get. So, Agatha was really just like, “I’m going to get my daughter trained up,” and you know what? Thank god she did because Etta became a spy, and she needed all these languages for spy reasons. Was she being raised to be a spy? Was this, like, the Netherlands’ Black Widow program? I’m not saying it was. But we don’t have the paperwork because of all the spy stuff. Is this like the Kingsman? Is that the movie about, like, British people who are spies? Like, is there a spy school? I’m going to have to do a lot of theorizing here because again, the spy-ness of it all, we don’t have a super lot of details about Etta, so we’ll just fill in the blanks. We’ll have a nice time. These have been some grim-ass episodes. So, let’s just have a nice time while we can.
Anyway, Etta was thriving. She grew up, she was the it girl around town. She was the Serena van der Woodsen of her age, I think that’s a Dutch name as well. But she was gorgeous, she was popular with… There was a university in Groningen (perhaps there still is), and she’s popular with the university students. Like, those guys were always like, “Oh, who’s this gorgeous girl?” And she had charisma and talent and everything. We’re going to see that later on; people love to be around her and to tell her secrets, which is, again, crucial to her success later on as a spy. So, in this time, in her teenage years, she received several marriage proposals, including one from a married man—so, I’m not sure what that guy was up to—all of which she turned down, she was too busy training to be a spy.
When she was 19, she fell in love with one of these students, whose name was Christiaan Ferdinand Lodewijk Palm [ph. Lode-er-wack Pal-em]. I’ll say that again, because I do have the pronunciation written down for me, thank you, people of the Netherlands. Christiaan Ferdinand Lodewijk Palm. It was the son of a prosecutor in Haarlem in the Netherlands. Her mother opposed the marriage, and I like the generational thing of like Agatha’s parents disapproved of her marriage, then Agatha disapproves of this marriage for Etta. Etta didn’t care. She eloped with Christiaan, and this is where she got her surname because she’s Palm Aelders, like, she was born Aelders, and then she married Mr. Palm. Anyway, they eloped, and it became quickly apparent that this was not a good match. She continued sleeping around with other people, he continued sleeping around with other people. She eventually became pregnant, and he’s like, “Who’s the father?” She’s like, “I don’t know,” and he left her to go to the Dutch colonies of the East Indies, and he’s not in the story again. He truly just abandoned his pregnant, teenage wife. She gave birth to a daughter she named Agatha after her mother, but this baby died within the first three months of infancy because it was olden times, and that sort of thing happened a lot.
So, I do want to also mention, just in a nice change from the last several weeks of episodes, that Etta was a sexually liberated woman. We’ve had people in the last several weeks who were accused by Robespierre of sleeping around and being, like, slutty, trashy bitches, but they weren’t really. But Etta was, and on this podcast, we celebrate sluttiness. I’m just happy to have another story like this where there’s so many lovers, y’all! We’re getting into a lot of lovers in this story. Again, it’s just a nice break from, kind of, the grimness of the last few weeks of this episode.
Anyway, Christiaan is off in the Dutch colonies of the East Indies, and Etta was like, well, they didn’t technically get divorced, but she was like, it’s olden times, no one knows paperwork, whatever. So, she just started claiming that she was a widow. Legal documents referred to her as “Madame Palm.” Later, she would claim that Christiaan had been a baron, which is why, later in her life, she was known as Baroness Palm d’Aelders. Anyway, we love a rebranding moment, we love the Lola Montez vibes of this all. Just invent your personality, travel to a different country, have a nice time. And that is what she did.
For her next era, Etta became what is described as an adventurer. And she had such good social skills… What is it called? Like, emotional intelligence. She was comfortable with higher-class people, probably because of her mother’s family, she spent time with them. But she could also, like, get down and like have a nice time with lower-class people. She charmed everybody. So, she’s gorgeous… You know what? Was she gorgeous? I feel like her personality made it— That was what was most important. She was charming, everybody loved her, like, super popular. And five years after being abandoned by Christiaan, she chose a new lover, Jan Munniks, a young lawyer whose wife had divorced him after he had spent all of her money. So, Etta, is she good at—? I was going to say, “Is she good at choosing lovers?” Clearly. [laughs] Because she chose a lot of them. But you know what? She’s not choosing someone to be her husband to support her. She just wants to have a nice time, and Jan Munniks is the guy for the moment.
He was a lawyer as well… Oh, I said, he was a young lawyer, and then he got a job; he was named consul in Messina in Sicily. And so, he headed off with Etta by his side, and they sort of presented her as his wife. I like the way that she’s just vibing along. She’s like, “I don’t need a marriage certificate to be someone’s wife. I don’t need a death certificate to call myself a widow.” She’s just like, doing the thing. While they were on route, though, she fell ill. She got sick and he sucks and just left her behind. He went on without her. But you know what? She’s fine. She landed on her feet, so to speak, as she met a new lover whose name was Douwe Sirtema van Grovestins [ph. Doh-wah Seer-tem-ah von Hro-vas-teen], a former equerry, which is a high-ranking, like, he oversaw the horses for a rich person, which means he was also kind of a rich person, to the widow of William IV, Prince of Orange. And Douwe became her lover and introduced her to even higher society, where she thrived as well. And then, again, we’re missing some paperwork here. I guess someone who she met in high society was like, “Would you like to be a spy?” And she said yes, because what happened next is she moved to Paris to become a spy.
In Paris, she lived in the Palais Royal area. And through her connections, this is again where it’s just like, we need to fill in some real blanks here. So, she was friends with a lot of high-class people who helped her just have an income. I guess she’s being paid an income from her spy work. What this says is, “She secured a large income through her connections, benefitting from profits on shares in military necessities such as gunpowder and saltpeter.” Saltpeter is the thing I looked up, and I still don’t quite understand what it is, but it’s some sort of mineral that is worth money. So, she was just, like, grifting her way along really, doing whatever she could, using all of her language skills. She’s also being paid for her espionage work and her diplomatic work. Some of her stuff she was doing was like spy stuff, and some of the stuff she’s doing is like, could you go and mediate this problem between these two nations? She’s just like… How is this your life, Etta? How did you manifest this? And how can we all manifest this amazing life of just spy diplomatic work, and have connections who set us up with profits on shares in, I don’t know… She’s doing amazing, and I’m here for it.
So, her house in the Palais Royale, she lived in luxurious quarters. In her house, like so many wealthier women in the French Revolution (although we haven’t talked about them for a while, we’ve been talking about less wealthy people), she ran a salon, like so many women did. So, her house functioned as a salon for young intellectuals and politically-engaged people. This is pre-Revolution. This is, like, 20 years pre-Revolution. So, there are people there talking about stuff, but the Revolution’s not happening yet. So, she’s doing all this, and then perhaps this is another way that maybe these are the connections who help her get shares, where she also was being a courtesan, which is… So, the closest thing now I can describe it to is, like, a sugar daddy-sugar baby relationship. Like, she would just kind of, you know, be an escort, like, fuck some men and they would get her, like, help her pay for her house or whatever. She had to figure it out. She took a number of lovers while also being a spy for the Netherlands. That’s why she’s there, right? Like, the Netherlands had sent her to Paris to be a spy. And she’s being a spy kind of on these politically-minded people in Paris who would come to her salon. So, running a salon is pretty good cover for being a spy. It was around this time that she started being called the Baroness, Baroness Palm d’Aelders.
Interior design note, [laughs softly] this one source said “She furnished her apartment in a rather coquettish style,” which sounds pretty amazing to me. “Her bedroom featured four large mirrors, one at the foot of the bed.” I thought it was going to say, “Four large mirrors, one on the ceiling.” But like, you know, she’s reminding me of, and I think it’s the word ‘coquettish,’ is Gabby Windey. I just feel like she’s got a Gabby Windey energy where everyone’s just kind of like, “You’re an unusual and interesting and beautiful person. And let’s just tell you all our secrets.” And she’s like, “Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.”
So, she’s in Paris being a spy for the Netherlands, and while she’s there, the French Secret Service noticed her and they don’t know she’s a spy, I guess, and they were like, “Could you be a spy for us, the French Secret Service? Could you spy on the Netherlands for us?” And she’s like, “Bet! Yeah!” So, now she’s a double agent. She’s a spy for France against the Netherlands, and she’s a spy for the Netherlands against France. And then somehow, Prussia enters the chat, and she becomes a spy for Prussia as well. So, she’s like a triple agent, just sharing secrets with various people, running her salon, taking lovers. Just like, what an icon. What a Vulgar History-coded individual this is.
So, this is, again, the 1770s, like, 20 years before the French Revolution, but coincidentally, the same time as the American Revolution. So, in 1778, when the American Revolution was still ongoing, Etta was sent by France to The Hague for some just kind of like, it’s not even spy work, it’s not really espionage, it’s more like market research. They wanted her to go there to see, how did people in the Netherlands feel about the American Revolution? France wanted to know if the Dutch would support France. France was allied with America during the American Revolution; we know that because Lafayette did both, and he’s in the musical Hamilton. So, France was like, “Would the Dutch also join this kind of squad? What are the vibes?” That was her job, just to kind of like, do woman-on-the-street interviews and see what the vibe was. During this short mission, she ran into guess who? Jan Munniks, her ex, the one who ditched her when she got sick on route. It turns out he was now a spy for the British. Just spy versus spy drama happening. So, she’s just, like, doing all this spy business, just crossing national borders.
And then, we’re not going to get into this in detail because this is not part of this episode. But in the 1780s, there were, shall we say, political upheavals in the Dutch Republic. So, just to sort of explain a bit of how things were happening over there because it’s different from other places, one of my Dutch contacts explained this to me… one sec. This is from Kim. Thank you, Kim, Dutch Tits Out Brigade member. So, there’s the Dutch Republic. It was called the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. So, there wasn’t a king. What there was was a Stadtholder [ph. Stad-how-ter] is the word, which means it’s a person who’s practically a king, who looked at the military and political tasks. The Stadtholder served one or more of these individual states of the seven regions. So, there wasn’t a king in the Netherlands until 1815. So, at this point, we’re just looking at these various stadtholders running things over there. And kind of like in France, there were some revolutionary people who were like, “We should not be under the control of these wealthy elites. We should do a revolution. Let’s do it.”
So, in 1784, there was a conspiracy. A bunch of these revolutionary-type people were scheming, and she single-handedly averted this conspiracy by, I guess, being a spy and infiltrating them and then telling people that it was happening. She basically saved the life of this person, who was a German person, who was the personal counsellor of the stadtholder and who this person was who she saved was none other than Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, Wolfenbüttel, who you know better as the father of Caroline of Brunswick. A military hero, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand. I was just, like, Caroline of Brunswick’s dad is in the story, and Etta saved his life?! Like, the crossing over of episode to episode is just, like, everyone knew everyone.
In 1785, the Patriots’ revolt began in the Dutch Republic. Etta sided with the stadtholders in this situation, which is interesting because she would later side with the revolutionaries in France. But it’s kind of like, if this is your country and she was raised, like, her mother was very much on team Stadtholders, so Etta was also. But it’s also a different situation. The Dutch situation is a lot more complicated than France. Like, France was like, there’s the king and there’s the aristocrats, and then there’s kind of, like, everybody else. In the Netherlands, it was more complicated, and maybe we’ll do an episode about that one day. But basically, for her whole life, Etta was always on the side of the stadtholders, who were equivalent to kings, but not actually kings.
In 1787, the Dutch revolutionaries arrested Princess Wilhelmina, the wife of the stadtholder, and the Prussian army intervened to defeat the revolutionaries, many of whom fled to France. The possibility of a civil war followed, which could have exposed the Netherlands to the threat of foreign powers or threaten its autonomy. Etta Palm d’Aelders stepped in to mediate on her own initiative. Like, she wasn’t hired by Prussia, she wasn’t hired by the Netherlands or France. She was just like, “Hey, freelance mediator here. Do you want me to sort this stuff out?” And she succeeded in stopping France from intervening in the conflict. Who is this woman? This woman is a person who is, like, a spy for three nations against each other, simultaneously.
1788 in France, she was hired by the Dutch stadtholders to spread propaganda against the Dutch revolutionary faction. So, I don’t know if this meant she was doing, like, a pamphlet moment, or if she was just kind of spreading rumours on the street, or I guess she’s having her salon, so she could just tell people stuff there, and they would spread the words and information. She’s still getting lots of information to send along. So, like, people in the Netherlands are sort of following French newspapers to try to follow what was happening. And this is 1788; this is the year before the Storming of the Bastille, where the French Revolution starts up officially. So, like, shit was in the wind and so she was just like, “Hey, the Netherlands, stadtholders, here’s what’s happening in France. This isn’t in the newspapers, but here’s the word on the street. I’m Etta, and I got this information for you.” And then she’s also spreading information around Paris from The Hague that The Hague wanted people in Paris to know about. And then she does, in fact, get a pamphlet moment.
So, someone— I did not write down who, and I don’t know if anyone knows who. A pamphlet was published that was saying, “The Dutch revolutionaries are great. The stadtholders suck. Like, people of Paris, let’s support the Dutch revolution.” Etta was so affected by this, or maybe someone paid her to do this, but she published a pamphlet defending the Dutch stadtholders. Not just any pamphlet, a 36-page pamphlet. So, she’s just like, “Listen up y’all. Here’s what’s going on.” She became, or had right away, because she was always on the side of the stadtholders, she was an opponent of the approximately 6,000 Dutch exiles in France. And so, she defended the Dutch stadtholders against their attacks.
So, here’s kind of where she’s coming from. Like, I forget if I even said what my sources were, but my sources were the Women in World History essay by David S. Newhall, and I was looking at her Wikipedia page as well. But some of the information I was reading was saying it’s kind of hard to understand her politics because she supported the stadtholders in the Netherlands, but then she supported the revolutionaries in France and, like, isn’t that inconsistent? And it was not because it’s two different countries in two different situations. So, why she was against the Dutch exiles in Paris; she saw them as “Aristocrats masquerading as democrats in order to preserve and extend their old political privileges.” She wanted to preserve the Dutch monarchy, or like, not monarchy but the stadtholders, like, that whole situation, but also introduce more democratic structures and practices into the Dutch regime. So, it’s kind of like what the Girondins wanted in France. So, she’s busy with all this stuff, you know, taking lovers, running her salon, being a triple agent, trying to prevent wars, and then the French Revolution kicks off.
So, shortly before the Revolution started, like, in the years prior, Etta was still hosting her salon, and some of the people who attended the salon included Jean-Paul Marat and Maximilien Robespierre. So, she was in on what was going on and what people were thinking and what they were saying. And even though these guys are coming to her salon she was on the revolutionary side because she’s no stranger to being a double agent and to pretend to support somebody while you’re actually supporting somebody else. Also, at around the same time, in 1790, she was also still kind of like getting up in the whole France versus Netherlands thing. She was able to reassure and calm the French government regarding news about the Dutch government being involved with counterrevolutionaries. So, she was just like, she’s the person in the know! Do you know in the John Wick movies, there’s sort of this underground place where there’s all these kind of like, sexy librarian-looking ladies who have lots of tattoos and glasses and they use typewriters and fax machines to sort of, like, communicate with everybody in John Wick. I feel like whatever the previous version of that was is like what Etta was all up in. Like, she had all this information.
So, in terms of the French Revolution and who she was friends with and who she was siding with, et cetera, she was closely linked to a writer and translator named Louise-Félicité de Kéralio and she also had links to Olympe de Gouges, whose ideas she supported. She was all in on women’s rights which was, you know, Olympe de Gouges’s whole vibe, that was her whole thing. So, Etta, she’s already a notable person around town. Like, people didn’t know at the time, presumably, that she was a triple agent, but she was just a glamorous salon person and she gained, when she started being involved in the French Revolution, like, she was a famous person doing a thing so people were interested. Maybe the first notable French Revolution thing that she did was there was a meeting of the Society of the Friends of Truth on November 26, 1790. There was somebody giving a speech defending the rights of women and when this person was getting tired and was like… I don’t know if it was like… What’s it called where you just keep talking and talking? The thing that they do? Anyway, I don’t know if it was specifically one of those things, but this guy was getting tired and then she took over. So, she interrupted this meeting to talk and as we know from all these episodes, like, women talking in a political club was like “Herman, mon pills!” the French people would say. And so, she gave a speech. I guess she came with a speech prepared because the speech was titled “On the injustice of the law in favour of men, at the expense of women.” And so, this, I guess she published it later, maybe in a pamphlet.
So, her speech did not question this tricky tightrope that all the feminists had to do at this time where it’s just like “We think that women should be able to do more stuff, but men should still be in charge of everything.” So, her speech did not question that women should be in the domestic sphere; she didn’t question the fact that women were subordinate to men but what she demanded was the possibility for women to intervene in political life. And this speech went over pretty well. So, she was invited to make a formal speech, like, I guess this was her just kind of impromptu speech, although it was later published. Later, she made a formal speech which she did on December 30th. This speech was applauded by many, opposed by some, and inspired the Revolution’s first recorded discussion of the rights of women. That was her, Etta, triple agent spy, salon-runner, sexually liberated woman, and speech giver. One society even awarded her a medal for her speeches about women’s rights. And so, with this success, she gave more speeches.
She called for equal education for women; she depicted the sad status of women as “slavery that mocked the ideals of the Revolution.” Here’s a quote from her, which is, “Our life, our liberty, our fortune is not ours at all.” She celebrated the virtues of women, and she evoked the example of the women of ancient Rome. So many people… The French Revolution is just people cosplaying ancient Rome so much of the time. But women of ancient Rome were pretty great; we’ve got Agrippina, we’ve got Livia, we’ve got Messalina, all people I appreciate, all people can get on necklaces from Common Era Jewelry. Anyway, here’s another quote from Etta. “Justice must be the first virtue of free men, and justice demands that the laws be the same for all beings, like the air and the sun.” And so, she called for a revolution “in our customs,” so just like, for society to just like get its act together. And she continued giving speeches.
Through the winter and spring of 1791, she was very active speaking and writing for women’s cause. But as we’ve seen with all the other women who were doing stuff like this in previous episodes, there was a lot of… The majority of revolutionary men were not in favour of women speaking up, especially about women’s rights. And so, they did the same thing they always do, accuse; they spread rumours about her. And it’s interesting because unlike the other women, like Théroigne or Olympe de Gouges, they didn’t spread rumours of like, “Oh my gosh, she’s a slut who loves sex,” where it’s like, that is true and was true. It’s like, when somebody wants to insult another person, if someone’s really worked up, sometimes you’ll just look for like, what’s the most obvious difference that this person has versus everybody else in society? So, for her, it’s the fact that she was foreign. It’s the fact that she was Dutch. And so, she was attacked for being a disloyal, dishonest foreigner. And to be fair, she was a triple agent working for the Dutch and the Prussians and France. So many accusations came out against her, she was just like, “Bitch, like sit down. I’m going to publish another epic pamphlet.”
This one was a 46-page collection of speeches, letters, and a petition entitled, “Appeal to French women on the regeneration of customs and necessity of the influence of women in a free government.” She’s just like, “You’re not going to shut me up. Here’s a 46-page pamphlet.” And she started working on establishing an all-female society in Paris. This is before Claire and Pauline’s all-female society kicked off. So, there’s a newspaper called the Social Circle, and I think that’s one of the clubs as well. So, in the Social Circle newspaper, she made an announcement like, “Hey, I’m starting an all-female society,” this is March 23rd, I want to say 1792. And then, yes, 179… Or could be 1791. Anyway, March 23rd is the date.
She announced that she’s going to do this on March 23rd, two days later, she started the club, and it’s called the Patriotic and Charitable Society of the Women Friends of Truth. Her plan was to create, this is sort of inspired by the way that the Men’s Society of Truth was running, and some other men’s club. She wanted to have a network of patriotic women’s societies all across France; the men’s societies were set up like this. The society would be organized and connected by a central society in Paris, but there’d be, like, offshoots all over the country. Her society is focused on women’s rights and membership was only offered to women. And you had to pay to join the society as well, which is kind of problematic because a lot of people were poor, like the market ladies, for instance. But she wanted to use the dues of people paid to join the club to advance the prospects of underprivileged girls by teaching them skills, like how she went to spy school when she was a girl and how she got this education a lot of girls didn’t get. So, she wanted other girls to get these opportunities. She never actually succeeded in setting up the schools or workshops to teach these skills because it was the French Revolution, and not a lot of people supported this, but she was able to use the money from this club to benefit three girls. She financed apprenticeships for them with the subscription money paid by the society members. She was, of course, president of the society.
She continued giving speeches, and these speeches were about the social and living conditions of women, and they were heard widely and also published in newspapers and garnered popular support from Parisian women. She was a really skilled speaker, which is interesting too, because Théroigne and Olympe were both criticized for, like, not being perfect at English, and she’s… But I guess, again, people didn’t attack Etta about this. She gained listeners at meetings… She went to society meetings, she gave speeches, and that won more people over to her cause because she was such a good speaker, and she spoke about equal rights, better education for girls, and the right to divorce, which was a pretty major thing. Because remember, her husband left her, and she was just like, “I’m a widow now,” just because divorce is complicated in a lot of countries at this point.
April 1, 1792. She and a bunch of other people from her society went to the National Assembly to make an address. She asked the assembly to admit women to civil and military roles. I don’t know if that’s supposed to say civil or civic. Basically, just like, let women have jobs. She also said she wanted the education of girls should be based on the same principle as the education of boys, that women could become adults at the age of 21, which would mean that they would be allowed to choose their own husbands and things like that. She also said that they should make divorce easier. The response of the president of the National Assembly was, “Yeah, no. No.”
Two months later, Louis XVI, the king, his wife, Marie Antoinette, and the royal family attempted to escape. This is called the Flight to Varennes. They were caught, they were brought back, and this kind of inflamed everybody because everything inflamed everybody. So, this led to a counterrevolutionary offensive, including a demonstration at the Champ de Mars on July 17th. Etta was probably there for that. This demonstration resulted in the massacre of 12 demonstrators. And when this happened, Etta took up a collection for the victim. She was, like, the original GoFundMe, just picking up some money for people who were affected by this thing.
And then, because we’re in 1792, and Robespierre is on the scene, that was suspicious, so she was arrested as a suspicious foreigner. Again, the foreigner thing is what people keep using as an excuse. The same night, another person who was arrested at the same time with her was a Jewish banker named Ephraim, who was thought to be an agent of Prussia. But both were released after three days for lack of evidence, thank goodness. And in fact, three months later, basically three months after Etta gave her speech about, like, “We should make divorce more possible,” the National Assembly took direct action as a result of her proposals. They implemented that basically you could get divorced on a variety of grounds, including mutual consent, which was an important step towards women’s liberation. Why did they suddenly decide to do what she was asking? Could it be because her latest lover, Claude Basire, was a rising young deputy in the National Assembly? So, he had a seat on the Committee of General Security. So, maybe she was just kind of, like, convincing him to agree with her and then he convinced the other ones. So, she’s working every angle; she’s working all the angles.
So, her society, her women’s society, continued on until late 1792. As it was going, it’s not just, like, she didn’t publish the 46-page pamphlet, and everyone’s like, “Oh, she’s cool actually.” Like, she got this lover in a highly-placed position, but that didn’t make Robespierre people stop being suspicious of her, and not for the reasons they should have been suspicious of her, like that she was a spy, but just because she was a woman speaking out. So, she kept being trashed in the media, like so many strong women are, and for being a foreigner, for being kind of shifty, for being kind of shady, for like, probably being a spy. By this point, the National Assembly, maybe they knew that she was a spy because they had been, like, paying her to be a spy. So, her reputation tainted her and the association, like her society, as well, just because it was her society. Also, everybody was still poor, still angry, nobody had any money, and so her society ended up just kind of ending. Not enough people joined it, partially because she chose, as the patron of the society, this aristocrat, so a lot of people didn’t want to be associated with that. But then also, people didn’t have money to join to pay the society, and also, women being politically involved was a really controversial thing to do. So, her society tragically ends. This is all the end of 1792.
January, like we’re ending 1792, now, we’re beginning 1793. January 21st, the execution of Louis XVI, which damaged relations between France and the Netherlands, which damaged her income stream because she was being paid by both of those governments. In fact, France declared war on the Dutch and the British on February 1st. So, this war basically disintegrated her job as an intermediary, as a spy, like, there wasn’t a role for her in this situation. It was a war; they didn’t need her kind of spies at this point, like, woman-on-the-street spies. So, her spy boss in the Netherlands complained that her information was of little value. And it’s like, yeah, she wasn’t on the front lines of the war, she couldn’t get them that information that they wanted. And then, in fact, she was fired from being a spy on October 5, 1793. And guess what? We’ve seen this so many times on this podcast with women and other people who are serving their countries, and then they stop serving their countries, and then they don’t get paid. So, she hadn’t been paid for several months, even though she had been still technically working for them, and she kept asking them like, “Where is my salary? Please.” They gave her a paltry 20 ducats, which I don’t know what that is, but it says it’s paltry, so it’s not very much. So, like, she was not paid for her last year of spy work. And it’s like, the French Revolution is happening, it’d be great to have some money, thank you.
So, the whole Dutch thing fell apart and, like, she’s still being slandered in the press in France, but she was still technically a spy for the French government, somehow. She was subsequently sent on a diplomatic mission to Holland, and she decided to just stay there because things were not going great for her in France. And she just kind of stayed there, and I guess just being a spy, like, in the Netherlands, which was again in the process of its own revolutionary-type situations. So, two years pass, and she’s just in the Netherlands, and then the French Revolutionary armies invade. So, what would this be? 1795.
At this point, the Bataafse [ph. Bah-tav-sha] Republiek, new kind of Netherlands Republic was proclaimed, which is kind of like, I think, again, I was researching the French side of things, not so much the Netherlands side of things, except for the pronunciation, but basically, I think the revolutionary-type people kind of took over at this point and she fell under suspicion because she’d been on the stadtholders side this whole time and also because she was known to be a spy. Jan Munniks, her ex, shows up in the story again. Both of them came to the attention of the Dutch authorities. And Jan was sentenced to be banished from the Netherlands or from the Bataafse Republiek. Etta was put under arrest. She was sent to the fortress of Woerden [ph. Voor-din] and someone else who was in the same fortress prison was her old spymaster boss who had fired her, and he was in comfortable political confinement, like, in a nice room with a bed. But she was put among the common criminals, assigned a one room cell and allowed only one hour’s daily exercise, which sucks for anybody. I think for her as a person who is just like so active, like, that would have been really shitty. And she couldn’t talk her way out of it, after having been able to talk her way out of so many sticky situations for so many years. And there she stayed for three years.
Three years later, she was released on December 20, 1798, along with a bunch of other prisoners. There was a general amnesty for political prisoners, and she just went to live with a friend. She’s just like, “What’s my next move? What am I going to do?” If she considered going back to France, she couldn’t really because in 1798, we haven’t even talked about what France is doing in 1798, but she had been pronounced an émigré. Émigré was the word that they called French people who left France because they didn’t support the Revolution, people who fled to Italy or England or places. And when you’re an émigré, then all of her property and money would be confiscated. So, if she went back to France, she wouldn’t have anything. So, they had confiscated all of her papers and property, they sold all but her political correspondence; I guess they kept the political correspondence for just spy reasons.
So, she had no money, and she had nowhere to go, and she was sick. I don’t know if she became sick when she was in jail and then it got worse, or if she became ill after she got out of jail. But what killed her, because that’s what’s about to happen, she had a breast infection. So, I don’t know if that means, like, breast cancer, or if that means, do they mean breasts like chest? Like a lung infection or like pleurisy? I’m not sure. She died of a breast infection, March 28, 1799, aged 55. She was buried the next day in an unmarked grave in the cemetery in Rijswijk [ph. Reeks-weekt], I forgot to ask how to pronounce this, a suburb of The Hague. And that is a saga of Etta Lubina Johanna Derista Aelders-Palm, which is, I had never heard of her until I started reading up about other women of the French Revolution and her name just kind of came up as like, “Oh, she was also there.” And I’m like, wait, who is this? Wait, she’s a spy?! Like, it’s just… What a fascinating story.
To the Netherlands listeners who helped me with this, and who I now know are out there, what a cool heroine you have. A few years ago, when I was doing the Internationale season of the podcast, I made a goal, I stated my goal that I wanted to, you know, at some point do a story about somebody from each country where there is a listener from. And that is still a goal that I have, like, a long-term goal. So, I’m happy to have been able to do this Netherlands-based story and to learn a bit about how to pronounce Groningen. Did I say that right? I don’t know.
So, it’s time to score Etta in the four categories. If you’ve never heard this podcast before, we have four categories where we score the women at the very end of it. And then we see like where that lands them, who they’re next to on the list of the Fredegund Memorial Scandaliciousness Scale.
So, the first category is Scandaliciousness, which is how shocked and how scandalized were the people in this person’s time and place? Because one person’s behaviour might be really shocking in one context, but maybe not in another one. So, Etta. She was educated more than girls usually were in that time, girls of her class. Her mother was seen as scandalous for running this pawn shop with a Jewish person. And then she’s being proposed to by married men. She got married and then he left her because she kept sleeping around. Like, I feel like she… And then she became a spy, a triple agent. I think for women of this time and place, this, and again, I don’t know a lot about the Netherlands, but from what I know about other Western European countries at this time, like, that behaviour is not what was expected or anticipated of most women. I think Scandaliciousness is going to be a pretty high score for her. Although, it’s interesting that she was doing all this stuff, like taking the lovers, being the spy, everything, and then the only thing that was ever really used against her in the press was, like, “She’s foreign!” So, it’s like, she was scandalous, but do people not know that she was? Or like, could they not mention these things because were her lovers too important of people? I don’t know. I’m going to give her… Because it’s tricky, she did stuff that, to me, is just scandalous and awesome, but like no one, she wasn’t really, that didn’t really bring her down. That didn’t really ruin her. I’m going to say, like, a 7 for Scandaliciousness. I think just because people in the time seemed kind of okay with it, bananas-ly, considering how sexist France was at this time.
Schemieness though, this is going to be a high score because she was effectively, she was a spy, and then she got hired on to be a spy against the people she was spying for, and then the third party also got her to be a spy. The way that she mediated and stopped wars. Like, she saved Caroline of Brunswick’s dad’s life. Like, she was clearly on the ball, she was coming with good plans, she was executing those plans. The fact that we know so little about her shows what a good spy she was. I’m going to give her 10 out of 10 for Schemieness because… for all of the above. Like, she just killed it. She killed it literally. I don’t know if she was also, you know, like an assassin. It’s kind of like Killing Eve, but oldie times. And that would be a good TV show or movie. Someone should do that.
It’s tricky to do the Significance because so much of what she did was in the shadows. Like, it’s significant that she stopped at least two invasions or wars, that she saved the life of this war hero, Caroline of Brunswick’s father. But so much of what she did was in the shadows. It’s hard to say, like, what did she do? Although in terms of Significance, her speech was the first time that women’s rights were brought up in one of these assemblies. She started the first women’s club in the French Revolution. I’m going to say… I’m going to give her a 6 for significance. These are certainly significant things. But if we’re thinking on a scale of like 0 to, I don’t know who’s like, Harriet Tubman, like, she’s not… You know, like Harriet Tubman would obviously be a 10 Significance, like all the stuff that she did and the way that she’s remembered. Etta, I’m going to say a 6, like, a respectable score.
The Sexism Bonus is interesting as well because she was married, she was abandoned, she rebranded herself as a widow. But like, I don’t know… How much did sexism hold her back? That’s what this category is for. Like, we give more points to a woman when she could have done more if not for the patriarchy, if not for sexism. And I think Etta, stuff got in her way, but it wasn’t really sexism. Even when she was being criticized in the press, it wasn’t for being a woman. Like, if a man had been in town doing the same thing from the Netherlands, being a triple agent, like, he probably would have been written about the same way. And then when she and Jan Munniks were both arrested, he was banished, and she was sent to jail. So, maybe… Like, is being banished better than being sent to jail? I guess, because you’re not in jail. So, he’s treated a bit better. I feel like she’ll get, I think, like a standard classic. Maybe a 5 for sexism? … Mmm, I’m going to give her a 6 for sexism. I think about, like, she had the child and then the child died, and the way that she was treated differently from Jan Munniks when both of them were being arrested for both being spies.
So, let’s see what this is. I believe… Let me just double-check. Yeah, this is a 29, which is really, with the exception of Charlotte Corday, the score that everybody is getting in this… Or Olympe de Gouges got 29.5. But I just kind of like that all the women of the— And if you’re thinking like, “Oh, Ann, you’re planning this ahead of time,” that assumes that I can do math in my head, which I can’t. So, Etta Palm d’Aelders has a score of 29. The other women of the French Revolution, Théroigne de Méricourt has a 29, Claire Lacombe and Pauline Léon have a joint 29, Olympe de Gouges, 29.5. So, they’re all kind of here at the same level, they’re all hanging out in the same sort of place, which is sort of like… Often it’s high… Sometimes it’s high significance, sometimes it’s high scandal. I don’t know. It’s interesting the way that this is turning into sort of like a cool little cul-de-sac where all the French Revolution ladies are all hanging out together.
Next week on the podcast, we’re going to be switching sides. Never let it be said that Vulgar History doesn’t show multiple sides of a situation, because we’re going to be looking at a Girondin. Well, I guess Charlotte Corday was a Girondin, but we’re going to be looking at another salon-running woman during the French Revolution on the other side, and that’s going to be next week on the podcast.
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Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.
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