– The Royalists, aiming at suppressing the Revolution, stop the supplying of Paris in order to generate a famine.
– On the eve of October 5, a few hundred fanatic women, workers from the Halle or progressive bourgeois, head to the Town Hall.
– Workers from the Halle dressed up as women join the procession.
– On its way, the group threatens other Parisian women with cutting their hair if they don’t join them.
– The crowd, armed with pikes and iron bars, besiege the Town Hall and attack the employees, break up the desks and tear the papers of the Parisian administration.
– The crowd takes the money from the coffers of the Town Hall and loots the armoury.
– The Parisian women hang the abbot in charge of the magazine at the Town Hall’s belfry and hurl his body twenty-five feet down into the crowd.
– An agitator from Saint-Antoine persuades the Parisian women to go and punish the Royalists, and to take the bread from Versailles for the Parisian people’s sake.
– The first wave of people which leaving Paris amounts 5-6000 agitated women.
– Rose Lacombe appears, one of the leaders of the Palais Royal prostitutes, as well as Louison Chabry, an activist girl chosen as the movement’s orator; Théroigne de Méricourt, famous as a loose woman, is seated on a cannon and stirs up the surrounding men and women.
– On the way to Versailles, the troop loots the inns, steals some bred and much alcohol, and begins to get drunk.
– Before reaching Versailles, the Parisian women hide their arms in order to appear less threatening.
– In the meantime, the Paris militiamen arrive at the Town Hall.
– When their commanding officer is reluctant to go to Versailles for fear of increasing the social unrest, the militiamen threaten him with hanging if he doesn’t lead them there.
– 15,000 men set off, joined by thousands of people’s and bourgeois men.
– In Versailles, the national assembly is upset by the forum’s audience who howls whenever a right-wing orator speaks, while the left-wing waits for the Parisian women’s arrival and support against the Royalists.
– The news of a small drunk crowd arriving at the castle doesn’t worry the King.
– By nightfall, when the Parisian women arrive at Versailles, it is raining; they are exhausted and covered with mud, which only infuriates them more as they shout through the streets: “We are the devils come to take the damned Queen back to Paris, dead or alive!”.
– The King’s Counsel deploys the guards and two people’s regiments on the Place d’Armes in front of the castle.
– The Parisian women besiege the National Assembly at the Hôtel des Menus.
– A delegation of Parisian women is heard and speaks at the assembly, demanding punishment for the royalists and death for the Archbishop of Paris, whom they accuse of plotting the famine.
– Parisian women and deputies go to the castle in order to speak to the King.
– As they are impatient, the women who remain outside force open the doors of the National Assembly and invade the room, shouting, singing and spewing obscenities.
– They jump on the deputies’ benches, attack the Royalist deputies, insult the President, yell with laughter and drunkenness, make indecent gestures, caress and rub themselves on every man, whether from the people, clergymen, or aristocrats.
– When Louison Chabry arrives in front of the king, she is so agitated and drunk that she falls down unconscious.
– Théroigne de Méricourt and a group of Parisian women infiltrate the King’s regiments, make them drink, disarm and caress them.
– As she gives out alcohol on the Place d’Armes, Théroigne dances among the soldiers, while some of her comrades give themselves to the most ardent men.
– The popular soldiers’ bawdiness and the situation’s degeneracy provoke the King’s guards, who attack these lascivious and drunk masses to restore order.
– The popular soldiers and the women on the Place d’Armes defend themselves.
– Faced with the resentful crowd, the King’s guards step back.
– The commanding officer of the King’s guard orders the crowd to withdraw from the Place d’Armes.
– A middle-aged woman cuts off with a knife the head of a Royal guardsman killed during the fight in order to throw it by way of answer to the commanding officer.
– While five conveyances try to escape the castle to check whether flight is possible, the Parisian women throw stones with rage on the convoy until it surges back.
– The Parisian women settle on the Place d’Armes with their comrades – popular soldiers – joining their group, or working-class Parisians dressed up as women.
– The national assembly starts to reek of sweat and wine; a tall woman singing shocking songs is presiding; on the benches, in each gallery, in every nook of the building, men and women are drinking, eating, coarsely shouting at each other, fornicating, and threatening the deputies who complain about it.
– At 11 a.m., a second procession, about 25,000 men, arrives near the Assembly, which is absorbed in an orgy.
– The King’s guards withdraw in order to stay inside the castle.
– Blazes are lit everywhere on the Place d’Armes; people cut the throats of horses stolen during the fight against the King’s guards and in the city, and roast them.
– The crowd devours the almost-raw meat and gets drunk with all the alcohol stolen in the city.
– The assembly’s orgy reaches the Place d’Armes; by the light of makeshift fires, they sing, dance and fornicate, while the most furious skewer the guards’ dead bodies in order to roast them on the blazes.
– From the windows, the royal circle looks down with horror at the scene taking place in front of the castle.
– Some deputies take advantage of the king’s terror to make him ratify the contentious texts.
– Until 5 o’clock, groups loot Versailles’ inns and churches.
– The crowd gathers again on the Place d’Armes about 6 o’clock, forces open the railings and enters the castle.
– The rioters kill all the courtyard guards, while a man from the Halle, wearing a skirt and a headdress cuts the head of a guardsman and hoists it on a spear as the carnage’s flag.
– The King’s guards try to protect the castle and fire into the crowd from the windows, but too many insurgents soon enter the palace.
– Moving from room to room, the lead groups systematically slaughter every person met, whether guard or not, while the following groups destroy whatever they can, tear off the ornaments and engrave obscene graffiti on the mirrors and on the windowpanes of the main galleries.
– The slaughter reaches the “bull’s-eye” room, where the queen and the king are sheltered.
– The militiamen’s commanding officer persuades the King to show up at the window in order to calm down the crowd which is demanding his return to Paris, but which also demands to see the Queen.
– When the Queen appears at the balcony, the women in the crowd cry out, and show her the gesture of cutting off her head, and some of them brandish limbs cut from the guards’ dead bodies.
– At 1 p.m., covered with blood, the Parisian women escort the royal family and their enemies’ dead bodies back to Paris, while the militiamen’s commanding officer sees to protecting the monarchs and the guards’ remains.
– After seven, the procession reaches Paris and comes to a halt at the Town Hall before the royal family is summoned to dwell in the Tuileries Palace.
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