Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Jone Johnson Lewis. Women's History Writer. Jone Johnson Lewis is a women's history writer who has been involved with the women's movement since the late s. She is a former faculty member of the Humanist Institute.
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These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. Gazettes portrayed the banquet as an orgy and claimed the tricolour cockade had been trampled underfoot, and that some had even turned it over to show only the white side, the symbol of the king. Organising a banquet when the people were going hungry was a step too far. Marat, Danton and Desmoulins rallied the people to march on Versailles. On 5 October a large crowd mainly composed of women, but also containing a few men, marched on the palace.
At the time the king was hunting in Meudon and the queen was strolling in Trianon. As news of the march spread throughout the town the Palace gates were closed and the queen, having been warned, retreated to her apartments. The crowd arrived at the Palace at half past midnight, soaked by the rain. The mob had gathered in the Marble Courtyard and was demanding a royal appearance. Louis XVI promised to give them bread and to come to Paris. The Palace would never again be a residence of kings.
Revise your French history with help from the artworks of the Palace of Versailles! On the morning of October 5, , women in the marketplaces of Paris were near rioting over the high price and scarcity of bread.
Their demonstrations quickly became intertwined with the activities of revolutionaries seeking liberal political reforms and a constitutional monarchy for France. Rampant rumors of a conspiracy theory held that foods, especially grain, were purposely withheld from the poor for the benefit of the privileged the Pacte de Famine.
Stories of a plot to destroy wheat crops in order to starve the population provoked the so-called Great Fear in the summer of Despite its post-revolutionary mythology, the march was not a spontaneous event. Speakers at the Palais-Royal mentioned it regularly and the idea of a march on Versailles had been widespread. The final trigger came from a royal banquet held on October 1 at which the officers at Versailles welcomed the officers of new troops, a customary practice when a unit changed its garrison.
The royal family briefly attended the affair. The lavish banquet was reported in newspapers as nothing short of a gluttonous orgy. Worst of all, the papers dwelt scornfully on the reputed desecration of the tricolor cockade; drunken officers were said to have stamped upon this symbol of the nation and professed their allegiance solely to the white cockade of the House of Bourbon.
This embellished tale of the royal banquet became the source of intense public outrage. On the morning of October 5, a young woman struck a marching drum at the edge of a group of market women who were infuriated by the chronic shortage and high price of bread. From their starting point in the markets of the eastern section of Paris, the angry women forced a nearby church to toll its bells.
More women from other nearby marketplaces joined in, many bearing kitchen blades and other makeshift weapons. As more women and men arrived, the crowd outside the city hall reached between 6, and 7, and perhaps as high as 10, 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.
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