In 1789, France grappled with economic difficulties, food shortages, and widespread dissatisfaction. On October 5, 1789, three months after the storming of the Bastille, women from the Parisian markets, fueled by high bread prices, embarked on a march to Versailles, the symbol of royal extravagance. Other women and supporters joined them, and soon a thousand-strong crowd of enraged people marched towards the royal palace. Armed with improvised weapons and driven by a mix of anger and despair, they demanded an audience with King Louis XVI to address their grievances.
While revolutionaries claimed the event was spontaneous, there were prior calls for the march to force the king to accept the Assembly’s proposals. False news in newspapers, fostering intolerance towards the king, also played a role – it was falsely reported that the king hosted a Flemish regiment in the palace, which came to his aid to suppress the unrest, and that the queen engaged in nightly orgies with the entire regiment.
The king met the demonstrators and, after a brief meeting, promised to distribute food from the royal stores. Some women left, but most believed that, under the influence of the queen, the king would not keep his promises, so they remained near Versailles. The king announced he would accept the August decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, thinking it would appease the crowd. The National Guard, under the command of LaFayette, took no action to defend the palace in case of an attack.
The next morning, protesters discovered that the palace gates were not secured. Count Saint Priest described the events of the following day: “A horde of robbers jumped over the iron gates and rushed towards the palace courtyard. They walked under my windows without seeing me. I stayed hidden for a few more minutes and saw them return, dragging royal guard soldiers behind them to kill them. Fortunately, LaFayette, who had finally awakened, intervened with grenadiers and managed to save some unfortunate ones. Yet the most ruthless among those criminals beheaded two guards standing at the entrance, and some women gathered around the corpses to wash their hands in blood. The worst was yet to come. Dozens of scoundrels quickly climbed the staircase leading to Marie Antoinette’s rooms. A young cadet, beaten to blood, still managed to inform the maids to wake the queen and dragged her into a secret passage to the left of the bed. The king had only enough time to put on a gown and hurried through another secret passage into the toilet rooms. The rulers managed to meet only after LaFayette restored peace by expelling the mob from the palace.”
The court suspected that the march was politically motivated and believed that it was secretly incited by the king’s cousin, the Duke of Orleans, who openly supported the abolition of absolute monarchy in favor of a constitutional monarchy.
Madame de Tourzel described the event as follows: “I had a strange feeling while watching the Parisian women filling the Cour de Marble. Many of them were too well-dressed to be prostitutes. This led me to think that they were simple caretakers, paid to perform that comedy.”
King Louis XVI, surprised by the intensity of the march and the fervor of the protesters, yielded to the crowd’s demands. After more than a century, the royal family had to move to Paris, where they would be under the watchful eyes of the people. The crowd, in the meantime, had grown to around sixty thousand people.
The arrival of the royal procession in Paris was described by Count Chateaubriand: “I saw captured cannons on which sat hags, thieves, and prostitutes chatting intermittently, their gestures were even more bold. In the middle of the crowd walked the royal guard, who had to hand over horses, hats, and sabers to the treacherous National Guard. Behind them were the ragged harlots, butchers with bloody aprons and knives in their hands, close to the door of the royal carriage. The thugs climbed onto the carriages in the procession; others sat on the coachmen’s seats. The sound of knife blows and pistols and shouts were heard: ‘Here are the baker, the baker’s wife, and the assistant!’ On the pikes were impaled two severed heads, their hair curled and powdered by a Sevres hairdresser.”
The event was seen as a victory for revolutionary forces, as the once unbreakable monarchy was forced to kneel before the will of the people.