The Women’s March on Versailles, also known as the Bread March, occurred October 5-6, 1789 and is one of the central events in the French Revolution. Women in the central marketplace of Paris decided to march the 10 miles to the king’s residence, the Palace of Versailles, to demand bread and lower food prices for their starving families. They marched through the rain, arriving on the morning of Oct. 6, drenched. The women were also armed with farm implements and even a cannon. Men and other women joined the throng, estimated at 6,000, along the way.
Most specific names of instigators are not known. One participant is known, however, Theroigne de Mericourt a political activist who reported proposed using violence to achieve her goals. She is known to have circulated among the marchers, encouraging them along the way to maintain their stance. The march’s success was to earn her recognition.
Why bread, why then, and why Versailles?
Bread was such an essential staple of the French diet that people spent half their income on it. Therefore bread prices and availability directly impacted people’s lives. Being hungry oneself and worse yet, seeing one’s children going hungry, can be powerful motivators. Versailles was seen as a place of luxury and plenty while those outside went without. Versailles was home not just to France’s king and queen but also French nobility. As such, Versailles symbolized rank and privilege at a time when much of France’s population wanted to create a more egalitarian society. Interestingly this was not the first time French women had assembled at Versailles to protest bread prices. A similar action had taken place in the winter of 1708-9 and had also met with success.
The growing revolution had its own symbols, as well. One was the national tri-colored flag. Rumors that banqueting soldiers at Versailles had denigrated this symbol by deliberately stepping on it further angered the Paris women. Thus, honor was at stake in addition to hunger. The women had several specific political goals, as well, such as persuading the king to renounce his right to absolute veto.
The back story – before the Women’s March
The people of France six months earlier, May 5, had forced King Louis XVI to convene a gathering of clergy, nobility, and “third estate” (working men) if he wanted to raise taxes. The nation was in dire straits due to bad harvests and costly wars. This gathering was called an “estates general” and it was traditional for voters to write grievance petitions, which they did. Soon, those gathered decided petitions would not be sufficient. They resolved in June 1789 to write a new, more egalitarian, constitution.
A few weeks late, on July 14, a Paris mob attacked and took over Bastille, a prison which was a symbol of royal authority because a decree from the king was all it took to be imprisoned there. By the time of the mob’s storming, however, more “ordinary” criminals were being housed there. Bastille was feared and hated for its reputation as a tool of royal suppression. The coming weeks (particularly July 19 to August 3) brought the “Great Fear” in which peasants attacked manors owned by nobility.
The Women’s March ends, king surrenders
Given the summer’s events, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had reason to fear as thousands of angry and armed women and men approached their palace. Marchers reportedly demanded to see “the baker,” by which they meant the king. The crowd stormed the gates, killing several guards in the process. Some marchers even made it into the queen’s rooms and Marie Antoinette had to escape through a secret passage to safety. The king agreed to see some of the women and also give them the bread at Versailles. He spoke to the gathered crowd from a balcony and announced he would return to Paris. He would never see Versailles again. The royal family of eight was packed into a carriage and escorted back to Paris by the protesting women. This female escort reportedly chanted that they were bringing “the baker, the baker’s wife, and the baker’s son,” meaning the royal family. Wagons of flour from Versailles’ storerooms also accompanied them. The royal family was sequestered under house arrest in the Tuileries palace in Paris and from then the king’s political power was greatly diminished.
The Revolution would continue. A new constitution would be written. France would be declared a republic on September 21, 1792 and the king executed January 21, 1793. There were riots before and after the Bread March. The combination of political ideological goals and practical immediate needs, however, makes the Bread March unique.
