July 26th, 1794. The last five nuns were killed.
July 28th, 1794. Just two days later, Maximilien Robespierre was arrested in Paris. The man behind the entire Reign of Terror was guillotined by his own machine.
The Terror was over. The killing stopped.
Ten other nuns who had been sitting in Orange prison waiting for their turn were released. They walked out of those cells in 1795, alive because five women had died two days too early.
Sixteen Ursulines. Thirteen Sacramentines. Two Cistercians. One Benedictine.
Thirty-two women from four different orders who had never planned to live together or die together. But when the Revolution came for them, they chose both.
The government stripped their habits. Burned their convents. Banned their vows. Threw them in prison. Dragged them before judges. Cut off their heads one by one over twenty days.
And through every single moment of it, those thirty-two women refused to stop being nuns.
In 1925, Pope Pius XI declared all thirty-two nuns blessed martyrs. Their feast day is July 9th. Every year, people walk the same streets these women walked on their way to die.
They come to pray. They come to remember. They come because two hundred and thirty years later, those voices are still singing.
The Revolution tried to erase God from France. It thought thirty-two nuns singing on their way to a guillotine were silly girls who didn’t understand reality.
Two hundred and thirty years later, nobody remembers the names of the judges who sentenced them. But thousands of people still visit the chapel built over their mass grave.
Those silly girls are still laughing.
