History
Women's March on Versailles
The Women's March on Versailles was a pivotal event during the French Revolution in 1789, where thousands of Parisian women marched to the Palace of Versailles to demand bread and political reforms from King Louis XVI. The march resulted in the royal family being brought back to Paris and marked a turning point in the revolution, highlighting the power of popular protest.
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3 Key excerpts on "Women's March on Versailles"
eBook - PDFNon-Violence and the French Revolution
Political Demonstrations in Paris, 1787–1795
- Micah Alpaugh(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
80 At the edge of Parisian protesters’ physical reach, from the Revolution’s beginning many saw the royal château and National Assembly as potential protester targets. Radicals on May 3 and July 12 already proposed making demonstrations on Versailles. Rumors of a Parisian mass march to occur on August 25, Saint Louis’ feast day, led the government to station military reinforce- ments along the road to Versailles. 81 Though no demonstration occurred that day, five days later one would. 78 Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (Princeton University Press, 2001), 16–17. 79 Ibid., 18; and anon., Compliment prononcé au roi par Mademoiselle Bourbau, âgée de 17 ans, au nom des Dames du Marché S. Martin; et la réception agréable de la part de Sa Majesté (n.p., 1789), which describes the Dames’ post-Bastille visit to Versailles as featuring “about forty” participants (8). 80 [Jeanne-Louise] de Campan, Mémoires sur la vie privée de Marie-Antoinette, reine de France et de Navarre (Paris: Baudouin, 1823), 215; Alain-Charles Gruber, Les grandes fêtes et leurs décors à l’époque de Louis XVI (Geneva: Droz, 1972), 116. 81 Louis Gottschalk and Margaret Maddox, Lafayette in the French Revolution: Through the October Days (University of Chicago Press, 1969), 213. Women, men, and the making of the October Days 67 While the Sainte-Geneviève marches show a growing organizational capability and political reach by the very socio-occupational groups that would lead the October Days, the predominantly male peaceful dem- onstration of August 30 appears an equally important forerunner of the later event.
eBook - PDF- James M. Anderson(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
It was raining heavily as they walked the 12 miles, but their spirits were not dampened. Late in the afternoon, the horde massed in front of the palace gate, and some of the demonstrators pushed their way into the nearby meeting hall of the National Assembly, then in session. Shouting for bread and mock- ing the deputies, the mud-spattered women sang, danced, and shrieked their demands, creating an uproar in the hall. Satire on the death of Louis XVI. A sans-culotte waves a banner labeled “Fête du 21 Janvier” at a female figure “Humanité”; in the background is a scene of murder and mayhem. Courtesy Library of Congress. Women 157 158 Daily Life during the French Revolution In the meantime, the king returned from hunting and, although tired and wet, agreed to see a delegation of the protesters. This decision may have been inspired by the fact that the Versailles National Guard had joined the protest and the Paris National Guard was approaching the palace, which was protected by only a few hundred of the king’s body- guard. The women met with the king, along with the president of the National Assembly, Jean-Joseph Mounier. Demanding bread, whose shortage the king blamed on the deputies of the Constituent Assem- bly, the women were determined not to leave Versailles until they had a promise of lower prices and reform. The king pledged to look into the matter the following day. By now, some demonstrators who had penetrated the palace court- yard were shouting abuse and obscenities at the royal family. Frightened advisers and military officers pleaded with the king to call out the Flan- ders regiment, recently moved to Versailles and stationed nearby, or to set up cannon to intimidate the crowds, but the king refused, hoping no blood would be shed in spite of the fact that a few of the palace guard had already been killed. Besides, the soldiers could not be counted on to fire on their own people, even if so ordered.
eBook - PDF- Karen Offen(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Two English-language documentary collections on the Commune, published in the wake of the May 1968 events in France and with an eye to the centennial of the Commune itself, contain translations of some of the texts concerning women’s participation and concerns: see The Paris Commune of 1871: The View from the Left, ed. Eugene Schulkind (London: Cape, 1972), and The Communards of Paris, 1871, ed. Stewart Edwards (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973). 55 See Robert A. Nye, The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave LeBon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic (London & Beverly Hills: Sage, 1975), and Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth Century France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981). 252 The Woman Question on the Eve of the Third Republic 1848 and to subsequent obstacles to participation women on the Left have since encountered from their male counterparts. Controversy over the woman question lay at the heart of this tension-riddled situation. Of particular interest here is the women’s sense of their own entitlement, as expressed in print, to participate as citoyennes and their invocation of historical memory concerning the revolutionary role of their predecessors to legitimate their demands and participation in 1871. The appeal to history was pronounced in the actions of the Parisian women during the first days of April, when a group of them proposed reenacting the celebrated women’s march on Versailles, but were dissuaded from actually doing so. 56 It was subsequently underscored in the manifesto of Elizabeth Dmitrieff, issued on behalf of “the women citizens of Paris”: 57 Citoyennes de Paris, we, descendants of the women of the Great Revolution, who in the name of the people and justice marched on Versailles, took Louis XVI captive, we, mothers and sisters of the French people – can we tolerate any longer the fact that misery and ignorance make enemies of our children .
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