The Women's March on Versailles

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An engraving of the Women's March on Versailles, October 5, 1789
An engraving of the Women's March on Versailles, October 5, 1789
Map of the Palace at the outbreak of the French Revolution
Map of the Palace at the outbreak of the French Revolution
The King's bedchamber, where the family hid at Versailles
The King's bedchamber, where the family hid at Versailles

The March on Versailles, also known as The Bread March of Women, and The Women's March on Versailles, was an event in the French Revolution. Although the National Assembly had taken the Tennis Court Oath and the Bastille had fallen at the hands of the crowd, the poor women of Paris still found that there was a considerable bread shortage and the prices were very high. A crowd had once killed a baker for overpricing his bread. On October 5, 1789, rumors spread in Paris that the royals were hoarding all the grain. A hungry mob of 7,000 largely working-class women decided to march on the Palace of Versailles, taking with them pieces of cannon and other weaponry.

Many in the crowd blamed Queen Marie Antoinette for the lack of bread and gleefully sang songs about killing her. One of the king's courtiers, the young Duc de Fronsac, was in the city at the time and ran on foot through the woods to the palace to warn the queen of the rowdy crowd's deadly intentions. He warned her to seek safety in the king's apartments. An emergency meeting was held to determine the king's response with Marie Antoinette once again repeating a plea that the royal family flee. Her husband, King Louis XVI, refused.

Since she was aware that she was the primary target of the mob's anger, Marie Antoinette chose to sleep on her own that evening. She left strict instructions with the Marquise de Tourzel, the governess of the royal children, to take her young charges straight to the king should there be any disturbances.

Though they were accompanied by twenty thousand National Guardsmen, charged with keeping order under the command of La Fayette, in the early hours of the morning the mob broke into the palace. Two of the Royal bodyguards were killed, their heads severed and stuck high on pikes. The queen and two of her ladies-in-waiting only narrowly escaped with their lives through a secret passage way before the crowd burst in and ransacked her chambers. Taking the Duc de Fronsac's earlier advice, the three ladies ran to the king's bedchamber. The king's younger sister, Madame Élisabeth, was already there. The royal couple's two children, Marie-Thérèse and her younger brother Louis-Charles, soon arrived, and the doors were locked.

A large crowd had gathered in the palace's courtyard and were demanding that the queen come to the balcony. She appeared in her night-robe, accompanied by her two children. The crowd demanded that the two children be sent back inside. So the queen stood alone for almost ten minutes, whilst many in the crowd pointed muskets at her. She then bowed her head and returned inside. Some in the mob were so impressed by her bravery that they cried "Vive la Reine!" ("Long live the Queen!")

The stoic behaviour of the queen had greatly calmed the crowd, but the women still demanded bread and food. As well as this, they asked that the royal family leave Versailles and return to Paris. Louis XVI reluctantly agreed, and the royal family moved to the Tuileries Palace, the dilapidated royal residence in Paris, where they were essentially under house arrest. Amid great confusion, the entire court and the National Constituent Assembly accompanied the royal family on its journey back to Paris. There was a triumphant entrance into the city. Louis XVI, however, had made a fatal mistake and was to never see Versailles again.

The Women's March on Versailles was one of the turning points of the French Revolution; it showed that the peasants of the Third Estate were a force to be reckoned with.

This march also showed that women could be a driving force in history. These women of the Third Estate, however, were from the Parisian underclass, and are depicted as such (often crudely) in art from the Revolution. Since many of the women worked in the city's fish market, artists frequently display them naked with fish heads replacing their real heads.

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