He was again called to the Tuileries on February 28, 1791, when several hundred armed aristocrats surrounded the palace in an effort to defend the king. Many people in Paris were thus hungry and restless. Leading up to the March In 1789 France, the main food of the commoners was bread. It was an additional factor for the mobilization of the working poor in Paris and other cities during the early stages of the French Revolution. Despite its post-revolutionary mythology, the march was not a spontaneous event. The … The Women's March on Versailles was an important event at the start of the French Revolution. From their starting point in the markets of the eastern section of Paris, the angry women forced a nearby church to toll its bells. An illustration of the Women’s March on Versailles, October 5, 1789, author unknown. On October 4, 1789, a crowd of women demanding bread for their families gathered other discontented Parisians, including some men, and marched toward Versailles, arriving soaking wet from the rain. For the women of Paris, the march became the source of apotheosis in revolutionary hagiography. The lavish banquet was reported in newspapers as nothing short of a gluttonous orgy. Infuriated, the rest surged towards the breach and streamed inside. They were convinced that the royal family lived in luxury oblivious to the problems … Making their way inside, they searched for the queen’s bedchamber. Upon arriving, the women killed several of the king’s guards, putting their severed heads on pikes, and forced the royal family to return to Paris with them. On October 5, one young woman began beating a drum at the market in eastern Paris. The Women’s March on Versailles, also known as The October March, The October Days, or simply The March on Versailles, was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. Although the fighting ceased quickly and the royal troops had cleared the palace attacked by the revolutionaries, the crowd was still everywhere outside. The Storming of the Bastille took place in Paris, France on July 14, 1789. At the end of the Ancien Régime, the fear of famine became an ever-present dread for the lower strata of the Third Estate. The royal family briefly attended the affair. The Women’s March on Versailles was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. However, at about 6 a.m., some of the protesters discovered a small gate to the palace was unguarded. The clergy and the aristocracy had lost their priviliges, and feudalism had been abolished, but true change for the working class was slow to come.Ordinary citizens were still struggling to keep themselves fed, with the price of grain having skyrocketed due to droughts in the summer of 1788. The Women's March on Versailles October 5, 1789 was a crucial turning point in the French Revolution because it Placed the King and Assembly under the pressure of the Paris crowd The "Great Fear" of … The march on Versailles's main purpose was to obtain bread and force the price of bread down to where it had been. This became one of the most significant events of the French Revolution, eventually forcing the royals to return to Paris. They demanded to see "the Baker," "the Baker's wife," and "the Baker's boy". Fearing for their lives, they agreed, and the palac… They were armed with kitchen knives and many other simple weapons, with some carrying muskets and swords. The crowd then called for the queen, who emerged with two of her children. The “Mothers of the Nation” were highly celebrated upon their return and would be praised and solicited by successive Parisian governments for years to come. Concerned over the high price and scarcity of bread, women from the marketplaces of Paris led the March on Versailles on October 5, 1789. The Crowd Assembles. The Women's March on Versailles in October 1789 is often credited with forcing the royal court and family to move from the traditional seat of government in Versailles to Paris, a major and early turning point in the French Revolution. They seized more weapons at city hall, and also seized the food that they could find there. The march symbolized a new balance of power that displaced the ancient privileged orders of the French nobility and favored the nation’s common people, collectively termed the Third Estate. The queen stayed present, and the crowd was apparently moved by her courage and calm. 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). During the Women’s March on Versailles—one of the Revolution’s earliest and most important events—thousands of people besieged the palace, demanding a more fair and favorable price of bread in Parisian markets. Driven to desperation by food shortages, they hoped the king would intervene – but some had more sinister ambitions. In some ways, this meant that hopes were high among the French for a successful change in government, but there was a reason for despair or fear as well. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was among the statesmen who gathered in France in June 1919 to sign the Treaty of Versailles, an agreement that did little to heal the wounds of World War I … Forcing the royals in 1789, a small gate to the king was mostly a for., valet of the French Revolution, had joined the crowd was still everywhere outside with! 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