Why women marched on versailles

One of the men was Stanislas-Marie Maillard, a prominent conqueror of the Bastille, who by unofficial acclamation was given a leadership role. When the crowd finally reached Versailles, members of the National Assembly greeted the marchers and invited Maillard into their hall. Hungry, fatigued, and bedraggled from the rain, they seemed to confirm that the siege was mostly a demand for food.

With few other options available, the President of the Assembly, Jean Joseph Mounier, accompanied a deputation of market-women into the palace to see the king. The king responded sympathetically and after this brief but pleasant meeting, arrangements were made to disburse some food from the royal stores with more promised. Some in the crowd felt that their goals had been satisfactorily met. However, at about 6 a. The royal guards fired their guns at the intruders, killing a young member of the crowd.

Infuriated, the rest surged towards the breach and streamed inside. Although the fighting ceased quickly and the royal troops cleared the palace, the crowd was still everywhere outside.

After the king withdrew, the exultant crowd would not be denied the same accord from the queen and her presence was demanded loudly. Lafayette brought her to the same balcony, accompanied by her young son and daughter.

However pleased it may have been by the royal displays, the crowd insisted that the king come back with them to Paris. At about 1 p. Bringing together people representing sources of the Revolution in their largest numbers yet, the march on Versailles proved to be a defining moment of that Revolution.

The rest of the National Constituent Assembly followed the king within two weeks to new quarters in Paris, excepting 56 pro-monarchy deputies. Thus, the march effectively deprived the monarchist faction of significant representation in the Assembly as most of these deputies retreated from the political scene. Lafayette, though initially acclaimed, found he had tied himself too closely to the king.

As the Revolution progressed, he was hounded into exile by the radical leadership. Maillard returned to Paris with his status as a local hero made permanent. For the women of Paris, the march became the source of apotheosis in revolutionary hagiography. Desperate, he made his abortive flight to Varennes in June And there was tension between reformers and royalists, based in Paris and Versailles respectively.

The reformers called for a march, and the women of Paris answered. Women, who were tasked with much of the domestic tasks like acquiring and preparing food, were especially put out by the food issues.

While languishing in one of the city's marketplaces, a group of womenbegan to organize. They rang a nearby church bell to call out supporters. Up to 10, people gathered, supported by sympathetic soldiers.

They stormed the city hall of Paris, raided its food stores and emptied its armory. Those who couldn't get guns brought kitchen knives and other improvised weapons. This crowd, led in part by some of the people who stormed the Bastille, decided to bring their grievances to the King.

The main thing they wanted was for the crown to ensure food safety for the poor. This meant fixing the broken grain industry, and releasing food stores to help fix bread prices. They walked for six hours from the center of the city to the palace beyond, dragging several cannons with them.

When they got there, some of the women's leaders negotiated with the King to release grain from the stores, and they went home happy. Most of the women stuck around. They decided that wasn't good enough. Now that they were at the palace gates, they decided to take more radical action.

They besieged the palace until more of their demands were met. They even stormed a gate, killing two guards and threatening the queen. In reply, he assured M. Derminy that the proposed action would have no such results and that it was, in fact, the only means of relieving the City Hall and the capital; moreover, by these means the districts could be alerted, and, while the women marched four leagues, the army would have time to avert the evils that these ladies were proposing to commit.

The witness now seized a drum at the entrance to the City Hall, where the women were already assembled in very large numbers; detachments went off into different districts to recruit other women, who were instructed to meet them at the Place Louis XV. As they had no ammunition, they wanted to compel him to go with a detachment of them to the arsenal to fetch powder, but.

Meanwhile, he had acquired the confidence of these women to the extent that they all said unanimously that they would have only him to lead them.

A score of them left the ranks to compel all the other men to march behind them, and so they took the road to Versailles with eight or ten drums at their head. They now numbered about six or seven thousand and passed through Chaillot along the river. There all houses were closed up, for fear, no doubt, of pillage, but in spite of this, women went knocking at all the doors, and when people refused to open, they wanted to beat them in, and removed all signboards. Observing this, and wishing to prevent the ruin of the inhabitants, he gave the order to halt and told them that they would discredit themselves by behaving in such a manner and that if they continued to do so he would no longer march at their head, that their actions would be looked on unfavorably, whereas if they proceeded peaceably and honestly, all the citizens of the capital would be grateful to them.

Past Viroflay they met a number of individuals on horseback who appeared to be bourgeois and wore black cockades in their hats. The women stopped them and made as if to commit violence against them, saying that they must die as punishment for having insulted, and for insulting, the national cockade; one they struck and pulled off his horse, tearing off his black cockade, which one of the women handed to him the witness.

He ordered the other women to halt. They consented to do as he wished; consequently, the cannons were placed behind them, and he invited the women to chant "Long live Henry IV!

They refused, all wanting to go in, whereupon a guards' officer, on duty at the National Assembly, joined him and urged that not more than twelve of the women should enter. After much discussion among the women, fifteen were chosen to appear with him at the bar of the National Assembly; of these fifteen he only knew the woman Lavarenne, who has just been awarded a medal by the Paris city council.

Entering the assembly, he urged the women to be silent and to leave to him the task of communicating to the assembly their demands, as they had explained them to him on the way; to this they consented. He then asked the president's leave to speak. Mounier, who was then president, granted him leave. He the witness now once more addressed the assembly and said that to restore calm, allay public disquiet, and avert disaster, he begged the gentlemen of the assembly to appoint a deputation to go to the Life-Guards in order to enjoin them to adopt the national cockade and make amends for the injury they were said to have done to it.

Several members raised their voices and said it was false that the Life-Guards had ever insulted the national cockade, that all who wished to be citizens could be so freely, and that no one could be forced to be so.

Speaking again and displaying three black cockades the same that were spoken of earlier , he said that, on the contrary, there should be no person who did not take pride in being so and that if there were within this august assembly any members that felt dishonored by this title, they should be excluded immediately. Many applauded these words, and the hall rang with cries of "Yes, all should be so and we are all citizens.

Meanwhile, angry words were exchanged with the clerical members of the assembly, and it was rumored that the Life-Guards had fired on the women outside.

As he spoke, a dozen women entered the National Assembly and said that the Life-Guards had just fired on them, that one had been arrested, and that they were waiting for him the witness to come down before deciding on the manner of the death he had merited.

At that moment the sound of musket fire could be heard; this caused alarm in the assembly, and he was urged by several deputies to hasten down in order to put a stop to these mischiefs.