Théroigne was the daughter of a wealthy farmer in the village of Méricourt near Liége, and received a finished education. When scarcely seventeen her excessive beauty attracted the notice of a young Belgian noble, who owned a château close by her father's home. In those days of the old _régime_ an aristocrat would never have recovered the disgrace of marrying a farmer's daughter; so the consequences of their mutual passion might easily have been foreseen. Deserted by her lover, Théroigne fled to England, and remained here for some months, in an agony of shame and grief. When Paris rose against the ill-starred Louis Seize, she returned to France, and became acquainted with Mirabeau, and through him she was introduced to to the Abbé Siéyes, Joseph Chénier, Brissac, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Ronsin, Romme, and others of the Republican party.
Théroigne de Méricourt was barely eighteen in '89, when the first rumblings of the storm were heard. Plunging headlong into the vortex of Revolution, she soon acquired for her daring the names of "the Amazon of Liége" and "the Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution;" while her surpassing beauty procured for her the title of "La Belle Liégoise." Attired in a blood-coloured silk riding-habit, and a hat surmounted by a magnificent plume of feathers, she made herself conspicuous in all those deadly conflicts between the People and the Royalists. She was first amongst the infuriate mob who burst open the gates of the Invalides and seized the cannon. She was foremost in the storming of the Bastille, June 14th, 1789; and such was her reckless valour on this occasion, that the victors, assembling on the spot, voted her a _sabre d'homme_. Another of the heroines who joined in the attack on the Bastille, afterwards joined the army, and fought against the enemies of the Republic, for which she was made Captain of Artillery. Her husband was a soldier.
On the 5th of October, Théroigne and Rose led eight or ten thousand starving Parisian Women against Versailles. Previous to this, Rose had commanded a body of Furies in the attack on the Hôtel de Ville, August 7th. Théroigne rode to Versailles astride on a cannon. By her side came Cut-Throat Jourdan, the "Man with the Long Beard." The expedition owed its success almost entirely to the Amazon of Liége. The triumph of the people was complete. _Le Boulanger, la Boulangère, et le petit Mitron_ were brought to Paris, escorted by a seething, howling mob, preceded (as a hint to the aristocrats) by two pikes, on which were placed the heads of two Gardes-du-Corps. Several Poissardes performed the return journey on the backs of cannon.