HER COURAGE WHEN FACED WITH A CROWD WANTING TO KILL HER CONTRADICTS HER FRIVOLOUIS IMAGE
On October 5, 1789 7-8,000 women seize arms at City Hall and march on Versailles, to demand grain and bring the king back to Paris.
The March at Passy, a famous print estampe (Passy is a wealthy suburb on the route to Versailles) / zoom
Militants threaten to cut the hair of women who do not join them (Michelet, p. 51)
" The certain cause, for the women, for the crowd of the most miserable, was hunger. Having made a rider dismount, the killed the horse and ate it almost raw.
Would the men have marched on Versailles if the women had not preceded them? Probably not. No one had had the idea of going to find the king." (p. 51)
Michelet on the women's engagement:
"Great misery is fierce, it strikes the most feeble" (p.56)
They were more exposed to hunger than men, because more isolated; with children who cried and died, or seamstresses who worked alone (he does not mention washerwomen, whose work was sociable). Not all militantes were hungry, such as market-women and prostitutes, but they were surrounded by misery.
Bring the king back to Paris:
"The King must live with his people, feel and share the suffering [...] If Kingship be not tyranny, there must be a mariage, a community [...] Is it not strange and unnatural, enough to dry the heart of kings, to keep them in selfish solitude, with an artificial peple of golden beggars, to make them forget the people? How be surprised that such kings become hard and barbarous strangers?" (pp.51-52)
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The story:
- These pictures are misleading. The march was much tougher, for it was a cold, rainy October day and they walked in mud.
- One woman seized a drum from guards and beat as they advanced through the streets. Others join them:
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The child is imaginary but the drumbeat's stirring call was real.These photos and the next come from "The French Revolution by Robert Enrico, 1989 |
- Thousands of women and several hundred men dressed as women arrive at Versailles toward 16h. The National Guard led by La Fayette* and a crowd of men join them a few hours later.
* Americans' only foreign hero was active in both revolutions.
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| Internet, no source named |
- The crowd arrives around 4 pm. The king receives a delegation of women and agrees to send grain to Paris and to sign the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.
- Parisians camp out in the palace's huge courtyard:
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At dawn on October 6, the mob breaks through the gates and seeks the queen to kill her:
- Chambermaids lock the door and help her throw on a dress:
Here and below, Marie-Antoinette by Jean Delannoy with Michèle Morgan, 1956
They take a secret passage that leads to the king's room, but he has left to look for them. They rush through the palace to find him. A locked door adds to the panic: It takes five minutes for servants to hear the terrified pounding.
- Two guards who try to protect the queen are killed:
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Brigands Massacre of a Guard at the Queen's Apartment, print by Jean-François Janinet / zoom |
- The queen and the chambermaids finally find the king, the children, their governess and Lafayette, in the salon that looks out on the courtyard:
General La Fayette Advises the King and Queen on October 6, 1789 by Jean-Frédéric Shall, before 1825, zoom
- Louis refuses to let his troops fire on the crowd...
...but it demands to see the queen...
...who comes out on the balcony with the children but the mob screams, "No children!"
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After the terrifying awakening and the frantic rush through the palace, Marie-Antoinette calmly faces the throng that had wished to kill her:
Michelet says La Fayette was next to her. He does not like her and says little about her, including almost nothing of her execution.
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The king is forced to settle in Paris, asking only that his family come too. "The royal coach, La Fayette riding alongside it, advanced like a hearse."
-- Michelet, p. 79
- His carriage leads the march, surrounded by people carrying the heads of the murdered guards on pikes. The court follows in a hundred coaches:
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| The Escape of Louis XVI by Viktor Lazarevski, 2013 (in French) / Youtube |
"In the midst of that troop of cannibals rose up the two heads of the massacred guards. The monsters, who had made trophies of them, had the atrocious idea of forcing a wig-maker to re-style their coiffures by powdering their bloodied heads...
-- Madame Campan
- Parisians dance in the streets to celebrate the arrival of bags of grain and the royal family:
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Louis XVI enters Paris, October 6, 1789 by Jacques François Joseph Swebach, 1789 / zoom |
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If you visit the château of Versailles
you will cross through the courtyard
and pass under the balcony:
Think of the mob, of the massacred guards
and of the courage of Marie-Antoinette.
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