The Women's March on Versailles, also known as the Black March, the October Days, or simply the March on Versailles, was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. The march began among women in the marketplaces of Paris who, on the morning of 5 October 1789, were rioting over the high price of bread. The unrest quickly became intertwined with the activities of revolutionaries seeking liberal political reforms and a constitutional monarchy for France. The market women and their allies ultimately grew into a crowd of thousands. Encouraged by revolutionary agitators, they ransacked the city armory for weapons and marched on the Palace of Versailles. The crowd besieged the palace and, in a dramatic and violent confrontation, they successfully pressed their demands upon King Louis XVI. The very next day, the crowd forced the king and his family to return with them to Paris. Over the next few weeks, most of the French assembly also relocated to the capital.
These events ended the king's independence and heralded a new balance of power that would ultimately displace the established, privileged orders of the French nobility in favor of the common people, collectively known as the Third Estate. By bringing together people representing the sources of the Revolution in their largest numbers yet, the march on Versailles proved to be a defining moment of the Revolution.
Background
Following poor harvests, the deregulation of the grain market in 1774 implemented by Turgot, Louis XVI's Controller-General of Finances was a main cause of the famine which led to the Flour War in 1775. At the end of the Ancien Régime, the fear of famine was ever-present for the lower strata of the urban Third Estate, and rumors of the "Pacte de Famine", ostensibly concluded to starve the poor, were rampant and readily believed. Mere rumors of food shortages led to the Réveillon riots in April 1789. Rumors of a plot to destroy wheat crops in order to starve the population provoked the Great Fear in the summer of 1789.
When the October journées took place, France's revolutionary decade, 1789–1799, had only just begun. The storming of the Bastille had occurred less than three months earlier, but the Revolution's capacity for violence was not yet fully realized. Flush with their newly discovered power, the common citizens of France – particularly in Paris – began to participate in politics and government. The poorest among them focused almost exclusively on the issue of food: most workers spent nearly half their income on bread. In the post-Bastille period, price inflation and severe shortages in Paris were commonplace, as were local incidents of violence in the marketplaces.
The king's court and the deputies of the National Constituent Assembly resided comfortably in the royal city of Versailles, where they were considering momentous changes to the French political system. Reformist deputies had managed to pass sweeping legislation in the weeks after the Bastille's fall, including the revolutionary August Decrees (which formally abolished most noble and clerical privileges) and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Their attention then shifted to the creation of a permanent constitution. Monarchists and other conservatives had thus far been unable to resist the surging strength of the reformers, but by September their position was beginning to improve. During constitutional negotiations they were able to secure a legislative veto power for the king. Many of the reformers were left aghast by this and further negotiations were hobbled by discord.
Versailles, the seat of royal power, was a stifling environment for reformers. Their stronghold was in Paris. The bustling metropolis lay within walking distance, less than 21 kilometres (13 mi) to the northeast. The reformist deputies were well aware that the four hundred or more monarchist deputies were working to transfer the Assembly to the distant royalist city of Tours, a place even less hospitable to their efforts than Versailles. Worse, many feared that the King, emboldened by the growing presence of royal troops, might simply dissolve the Assembly, or at least renege on the August decrees. The King was indeed considering this, and when, on 18 September, he issued a formal statement giving his approval to only a portion of the decrees, the deputies were incensed. Stoking their anger even further, the King stated on 4 October that he had reservations about the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Early plans
Contrary to post-revolutionary mythology, the march was not a spontaneous event. Numerous calls for a mass demonstration at Versailles had already been made; notably, the Marquis of Saint-Huruge, one of the popular orators of the Palais-Royal, had militated for just such a march in August to evict the obstructionist deputies who, he claimed, were protecting the King's veto power. Although his efforts were foiled, revolutionaries held onto the idea of a march on Versailles with the aim of compelling the King to accept the Assembly's laws. Speakers at the Palais-Royal mentioned it regularly, fanning suspicions that its proprietor, Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, was secretly fomenting a mass action against Versailles. The idea of a march on Versailles was widespread and was even discussed in the pages of the Mercure de France (5 September 1789). Popular unrest was in the air and many nobles and foreigners fled.
Royal banquet
Following the mutiny of the French Guards a few hours before the storming of the Bastille, the only troops immediately available for the security of the palace at Versailles were the aristocratic Garde du Corps (body guard) and the Cent-Suisses (hundred Swiss). Both were primarily ceremonial units and lacked the numbers and training to provide effective protection for the royal family and the government. Accordingly, the Flanders Regiment (a regular infantry regiment of the Royal Army) was ordered to Versailles in late September 1789 by the king's minister of war, the Comte de Saint-Priest, as a precautionary measure.
On 1 October, the officers at Versailles held a welcoming banquet for the officers of the newly arrived troops, a customary practice when a unit changed its garrison. The royal family briefly attended the affair, walking amongst the tables set up in the opera house of the palace. Outside, in the cour de marbre (central courtyard), the soldiers' toasts and oaths of fealty to the king grew more demonstrative as the night wore on.
The lavish banquet was certain to be an affront to those suffering in a time of severe austerity, but it was reported in the L'Ami du peuple and other firebrand newspapers as nothing short of a gluttonous orgy. Additionally, 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 tale of the royal banquet was a source of intense public outrage.
Beginning of the march
On the morning of 5 October, 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 known as the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the angry women forced a nearby church to toll its bells. Their numbers continued to grow and with restless energy the group began to march. More women from other marketplaces joined in, many bearing kitchen blades and other makeshift weapons, as the tocsins rang from church towers throughout several districts. Driven by a variety of agitators, the mob converged on the Hôtel de Ville —the city hall of Paris— where they demanded not only bread, but also arms. As more and more women – and men – arrived, the crowd outside the city hall reached between six and seven thousand, and perhaps as many as ten thousand.
One of the men was the audacious Stanislas-Marie Maillard, a prominent vainqueur of the Bastille, who snatched up his own drum and led with the cry of "à Versailles!" Maillard was a popular figure among the market-women, and was given a leadership role by unofficial acclamation. Although hardly a man of gentle disposition, Maillard helped, by force of character, to suppress the mob's worst instincts; he rescued the Hôtel de Ville's quartermaster, Pierre-Louis Lefebvre-Laroche, a priest commonly known as Abbé Lefebvre, who had been strung up on a lamppost for trying to safeguard its gunpowder storage. The City Hall itself was ransacked as the crowd surged through, confiscating its provisions and weapons, but Maillard helped to prevent the crowd from burning down the entire building. In due course, the rioters' attention turned again to Versailles. Maillard deputized a number of women as group leaders and gave a loose sense of order to the proceedings as he led the crowd out of the city in the driving rain.
As they left, thousands of National Guardsmen who had heard the news were assembling at the Place de Grève. The Marquis de Lafayette, in Paris as their commander-in-chief, discovered to his dismay that his soldiers were largely in favor of the march and were being egged on by agitators to join in. Even though he was one of France's greatest war heroes, Lafayette could not dissuade his troops and they began threatening to desert. Rather than see them leave as another anarchic mob, the Parisian municipal government told Lafayette to guide their movements; they also instructed him to request that the king return voluntarily to Paris to satisfy the people. Sending a swift horseman forward to warn Versailles, Lafayette contemplated the near mutiny of his men: he was aware that many of them had openly promised to kill him if he did not lead or get out of the way. At four o'clock in the afternoon, fifteen thousand National Guardsmen with several thousand more civilian latecomers set off for Versailles. Lafayette reluctantly took his place at the head of their column, hoping to protect the king and public order.
Goals
The rioters had already availed themselves of the stores of the Hôtel de Ville, but they remained unsatisfied: they wanted not just one meal but the assurance that bread would once again be plentiful and cheap. Famine was a real and ever-present dread for the lower strata of the Third Estate, and rumors of an "aristocrats' plot" to starve the poor were rampant and readily believed.
The hunger and despair of the market women was the original impetus for the march, but what started as a search for bread soon took on other goals. Notably, there was common resentment against the reactionary attitudes prevailing in court circles even before the uproar sparked by the notorious banquet precipitated the political aspects of the march. Activists in the crowd spread the word that the King needed to dismiss his royal bodyguards entirely and replace them all with patriotic National Guardsmen, a line of argument that resonated with Lafayette's soldiers.
These two popular goals coalesced around a third, which was that the King and his court, and the assembly as well, must all be moved to Paris to reside among the people. Only then would the foreign soldiers be expelled, food supply would be reliable and France served by a leader who was "in communion with his own people". The plan appealed to all segments of the crowd. Even those who were supportive of the monarchy (and there were many among the women) felt the idea of bringing home le bon papa was a good and comforting plan. For revolutionaries, the preservation of their recent legislative victories and the creation of a constitution were of paramount importance and a lockdown of the King within reformist Paris would provide a propitious environment for the revolution to succeed.
Siege of the palace
The crowd traveled the distance from Paris to Versailles in about six hours. Among their makeshift weaponry they dragged along several cannons taken from the Hôtel de Ville. Boisterous and energetic, they recruited (or impressed into service) more and more followers as they surged out of Paris in the autumn rain. In their poissard slang, they chattered about bringing the king back home. They spoke less affectionately of the queen, Marie Antoinette, and many called for her death.