5th to 6th October 1789
By early October 1789 many in France began to question what gains had been made by the revolution. The ending of feudal titles meant little to the poor especially as bread prices remained very high. Louis XVI meanwhile had employed a new bodyguard, the Flanders Regiment for his own security. The officers of the regiment on October 1st held a banquet. The King and Queen attended the celebrations of the newly arrived troops. Tales emerged from the event. Some suggested that the troops had trampled on a revolutionary cockade and mocked the fledgling government and all who supported her. Some reports claimed that the King and Queen appeared to give support to their rhetoric. So it was on the 5th October 1789 that women emerged from the markets of Paris and marched on Paris with the aim of seeking a solution to the bread crisis and voicing their annoyance at the King and his Austrian wife.
It was with some worry that the Marquis de Lafayette assembled his newly formed National Guardsmen to stop the march. When it became apparent that many of his men sympathised with the march he realised he would not be able to stop it merely accompany it. After six hours the march reached Versailles and proceeded to occupy the National Assembly. They aired their grievances and mixed with the members including the famous Mirabeau and the less well known Robespierre. A formal delegation of the President of the Assembly Jean Joseph Mounier and an entourage of market women met the King to air their grievances. The King listened sympathetically and opened some of the royal stores to the marchers. Mounier would return to Paris with news of his success.
As so often occurred and occurs at large events rumours swept the crowd. Vicious stories about the Queen mixed with talk of how the King had no attention of solving the bread crisis. As the night progressed into the morning some protesters burst into the palace itself soon soldiers were firing on the crowd. The Queen was forced to flee and seek sanctuary in the King’s chambers through secret corridors. As quickly as the violence flared it ebbed allowing the King a moment to address the crowd. At this point the King appeared hoping to appease the crowd. Despite all that had come before and would after a cry of, ‘vive le Roi’ went up. He stated he would happily return to Paris at which point Lafayette pinned a revolutionary cockade to the King amidst much cheering. Cries went up for the Queen who appeared to shouts of anguish. This would dissipate as she stood hands crossing her chest and her calmness under pressure seemed to please the crowd. When Lafayette knelt and kissed her hand cries of ‘vive la Reine’ were even heard.
By the afternoon the royal family were being escorted back to Paris. Their progress was slow as the women of the markets and National Guard accompanied them. They were sent to the Tuileries Palace in the centre of Paris. A once radiant palace which now had fallen on hard times due to a lack of care and attention. This would remain their home until they were placed under guard at the Temple in 1792.
The march had strengthened the belief which had started with the storming of the Bastille that violence and intimidation could be used for political ends. As the King came to Paris so did the Assembly and they too would now feel the power of the Parisian revolutionary fervour.
Madam De La Tour Du Pin on the march on Versailles of October 5th 1789. Escape from the Terror The Journal of Madam De La Tour Du Pin, The Folio Society, London (1979) p105-106
M. De La Fayette’s error, if error it were, lay not in the much criticised hour of sleep which he snatched, fully dressed, on a sofa in the salon of Mme de Poix, but in his total unawareness of the Duc d’Orléans plot. The conspirators travelled to Versailles at the same time as M. de La Fayette, but unknown to him. The traitor duke took his seat in the Assembly a number of times during the day of 5 October and, in the evening, left for Paris-or at least, appeared to do so… I discovered beyond any possibility of doubt, that he was at Versailles at the same time of the attempt to assassinate the queen.
The Marquis de Bouille on the events of 5th to the 6th October 1789 and the role he believed Duke D’Orleans played . Taken from Memoirs Relating to the French Revolution by the Marquis de Bouille, Cadell and Davies, London (1797) p129
On the 5th of October the sans culottes in the pay of the duke of Orleans, taking with them the whole populace of Paris proceeded to Versailles for the purpose of massacring the king and royal family, and placing that prince on the bloody throne.
Wollstonecraft on the events of the 5th and 6th October 1789. Taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Man, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2008) p340
On the first of October in consequence of these fresh machinations, a magnificent entertainment was given in the name of the king’s body guards………….
When their heads were heated by a sumptuous banquet, by the tumult of an immense crowd, and the great profusion of delicious wines and liqueurs, the conversation, purposely turned into one channel became unrestrained, and a chivalrous scene completed the folly. The queen, to testify her satisfaction for the homage paid to her, and the wishes expressed in her favour, exhibited herself to this half drunken multitude; carrying the dauphin in her arms, whom she regarded with a mixture of sorrow and tenderness, and seeming to implore in his favour the affection and zeal of the soldiers.
This acting for it is clear that the whole was a preconcerted business, was still more intoxicating than the wine. The exclamation vive la roi, viva la reine, resounded from all sides, and the royal healths were drunk over drawn swords, whilst that of the nation was rejected with contempt by the body guards……………… The king, who is always represented as innocent, though always giving proofs that he more than connived at the attempts to recover his power, was likewise prevailed on to show himself at this entertainment. And some of the same soldiery who had refused to second the former project of the cabal, was now induced to utter insults and menaces against the very authority, they then supported. “The national cockade,” exclaimed Mirabeau, “that emblem of the defenders of liberty has been torn in pieces, and stamped under foot; and another ensign put in it’s place.- Yes- even under the eye of the monarch, who allowed himself to be styled-Restorer of the rights of his people, they then dared to hoist a signal of faction.”
Tom Paine discusses the events of the 5th to the 6th October 1789. Taken from The Rights of Man, Penguin, London (1983) p82-83
The only things certainly known are, that considerable uneasiness was at the time excited at Paris, by the delay of the King in not sanctioning and forwarding the decrees of the National Assembly, particularly that of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the decrees of the fourth of August, which contained the foundation principles on which the constitution was to be erected. The kindest, and perhaps the fairest conjecture upon this matter is, that some of the ministers intended to make remarks and observations upon certain parts of them, before they were finally sanctioned and sent to the provinces; but be this as it may, the enemies of the revolution derived hope from the delay, and the friends of the revolution uneasiness.
During this state of suspense, the Garde du Corps, which was composed, as such regiments generally are, of persons much connected with the court, gave an entertainment at Versailles to some foreign regiments the arrived; and when the entertainment was at the height, on a given signal, the Garde du Corps tore the national cockade from their hats, trampled it underfoot, and replaced it with a counter cockade prepared for the purpose. An indignity of this kind amounted to defiance. It was like declaring war; and if men will give challenges, they must expect consequences……………
On the 5th of October, a very numerous body of women, and men in the disguise of women, collected round the Hotel de Ville or town-hall at Paris, and set off for Versailles. Their professed object was the Garde du Corps; but prudent men readily recollect that mischief is more easily begun than ended; and this impressed itself with more force, from the suspicions already stated, and the irregularity of such a cavalcade. As soon therefore as a sufficient force could be collected, M de Lafayette, by orders from the civil authority of Paris, set off after them at the head of over twenty thousand the Paris militia………………
He arrived at Versailles between ten and eleven at night. The Gard du Corps was drawn up, and the people had arrived some time before, but everything had remained suspended. Wisdom and policy now consisted in changing a scene of danger into a happy event. M de Lafayette became the mediator between the enraged parties; and the King to remove the uneasiness which had arisen from the delay already stated, sent for the President of the National Assembly, and signed the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and such other parts of the constitution as were in readiness.
It was now about one in the morning. Everything appeared to be composed, and a general congratulation took place. By the beat of a drum a proclamation was made, that the citizens of Versailles would give the hospitality of their houses to their fellow citizens of Paris…..
In this state matters passed till the break of day, when a fresh disturbance arose from the censurable conduct of some of both parties, for such characters there will be in such scenes. One of the Gard du Corps appeared at one of the windows of the palace, and the people who had remained during the night in the streets accosted him with reviling and provocative language. Instead of retiring, as in such a case prudence would have dictated, he presented his musket, fired, and killed one of the Paris militia. The peace being thus broken, the people rushed into the palace in quest of the offender. They attacked the quarters of the Garde Du Corps within the palace, and pursued them through the avenues of it, and to the apartments of the king. On this tumult, not the Queen only as Mr Burke had represented it but every person in the palace was awakened and alarmed; and M de Lafayette had a second time to interpose between the parties, the event of which was, that the Garde Du Corps put on the national cockade, and the matter ended as by oblivion, after the loss of two or three lives.
During the latter part of the time in which the confusion was acting, the King and Queen were in public in the balcony, and neither of them concealed for safety’s sake, as Mr Burke insinuates. Matters thus being appeased, and tranquillity restored a general acclamation burst forth of Le Roi a Paris- Le Roi a Paris- The King to Paris. It was the shout of peace and immediately accepted the part of the king. …..The King and his family reached Paris in the evening and were congratulated on their arrival by M. Bailley the Mayor of Paris, in the name of the citizens.
Edmund Burke on the events of the 5th to the 6th of October 1789. Taken from Reflections on the Revolution in France, Penguin Classics, London (2004) p164-165
History will record, that on the morning the 6th of October 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of her centinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight- that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give- that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman but just time to fly almost naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of the king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.
The king, to say no more of him, and tis queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed the king’s body guard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the vilest of women. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours, they were under a guard, composed of these very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a Bastille for kings.
Letters XI from Helen Maria Williams detailing her visit to Versailles after the events of October 1789 Taken from Letters Written in France, Broadview Literary Texts, Ormskirk (2002) p98-99
We are just returned from Versailles, which I could not help fancying I saw, in the background of that magnificent abode of a despot, the gloomy dungeons of the Bastille, which still haunt my imagination, and prevented my being much dazzled by the splendour of this superb palace.
We were shown the passages through which the Queen escaped from her own apartment to the King’s on the memorable night when the Poissardes visited Versailles, and also the balcony at which she stood with the Dauphin in her arms, when after having remained a few hours concealed in some secret recess of the palace, it was thought proper to comply with the desire of the crowd, who repeatedly demanded her presence……..
All the bread which could be procured in the town of Versailles, was distributed amongst the Poissardes; who, with savage ferocity, held up their morsels of bread on their bloody spikes, towards the balcony where the Queen stood, crying in a tone of defiance, “Nous avons du Pain!” (We now have bread)
During the whole of the journey from Versailles to Paris, the Queen held the Dauphin in her arms, who had been previously taught to put his infant hands together, and attempt to soften the enraged multitude by repeating, “Grace pour maman.” (Spare mama).
Mons. De la Fayette prevented the whole Gardes du Corps from being massacred at Versailles, by calling to the incensed people, “Le Roi vous demande grace pour ses Gardes du Corps.” (The King begs of you to spare his body guard). The voice of Mons. De la Fayette was listened to, and obeyed.
Jean Paul Marat reports on the royal family being moved to Paris in the wake of the events of the 5th to the 6th October 1789 in his publication Friend of the People. Taken from Jean Paul Marat: The People’s Friend by Ernest Belfort Bax, Grant Richards, London (1901) p107
The King, Queen, and Dauphin arrived in the capital about seven o'clock last night. It is indeed a festival for the good Parisians to possess their King. His presence will promptly change the face of things: the poor people will no longer die of hunger; but this benefit will soon vanish like a dream if we do not fix the Royal family in our midst until the complete consecration of the Constitution. The ' People's Friend ' shares in the joy of his dear fellow- citizens, but he will not give himself over to sleep.