Bals des victimes

Common card · No. 457076

The bals des victimes, or victims' balls, were balls that were said to have been put on by dancing societies after the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. To be admitted to these societies and balls, one had to be a near relative of someone who had been guillotined during the Terror. According to Ronald Schecter, the balls came to prominence after the downfall and death of Robespierre, supposedly first being held in early 1794 and first mentioned in popular writing in 1797. While anecdotal evidence attests to the balls' occurrence, and generations of French and non-French historians described them and accepted them as fact, some recent scholarship, citing a near-total lack of primary evidence, has argued that they may have been fabrications based on rumor. In 2007, historian David A. Bell concluded that "[t]he bals des victimes... never took place—they were an invention of early nineteenth-century Romantic authors."

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