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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. The march began among women in the marketplaces of Paris who, on the morning of 5 October 1789, were near rioting over the high price and scarcity of bread. Their demonstrations quickly became intertwined with the activities of revolutionaries, who were seeking liberal political reforms and a constitutional monarchy for France. The market women and their various allies grew into a mob of thousands and, encouraged by revolutionary agitators, they ransacked the city armory for weapons and marched to the Palace of Versailles. The crowd besieged the palace and, in a dramatic and violent confrontation, they successfully pressed their demands upon King Louis XVI. The next day, the crowd compelled the king, his family, and most of the French Assembly to return with them to Paris. These events ended the king's independence and signified the change of power and reforms about to overtake France. 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. Bringing together people representing sources of the Revolution in their largest numbers yet, the march on Versailles proved to be a defining moment of that Revolution. ==Background== The deregulation of the grain market implemented by Turgot, Louis XVI's Controller-General of Finances, in 1774, was the main cause of the famine which led to the Flour War in 1775.〔Lynn Avery Hunt, ''The challenge of the West: Peoples and cultures from 1560 to the global age'', p.672, D. C. Heath, 1995〕 At the end of the Ancien Régime, the fear of famine became an ever-present dread for the lower strata of the Third Estate, and rumors of the "Pacte de Famine" to starve the poor were still rampant and readily believed.〔Doyle, p. 121.〕 Mere rumors of food shortage led to the Réveillon riots in April 1789. Rumors of a plot aiming to destroy wheat crops in order to starve the population provoked the Great Fear in the summer of 1789. When the October ''journées'' took place, France's revolutionary decade, 1789–1799, had barely begun. The revolution's capacity for violence was as yet not fully realized. The storming of the Bastille had occurred less than three months earlier. Flush with newly discovered power, the common citizens of France – particularly in the teeming capital, Paris – felt a newly discovered desire to participate in politics and government. The poorest among them were almost exclusively concerned with the issue of food: most workers spent nearly half their income on bread. In the post-Bastille period, price inflation and severe shortages in Paris became commonplace, as did local incidents of violence in the marketplaces.〔Hibbert, p. 96.〕 The king's court and the deputies of the National Constituent Assembly were all in comfortable residence at the royal city of Versailles, where they were considering momentous changes to the French political system. Reformist deputies had managed to pass sweeping legislation in the weeks after the Bastille's fall, including the revolutionary August Decrees (which formally abolished most noble and clerical privileges) and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.〔Lefebvre, pp.129–130.〕 Now their attention was turned to the creation of a permanent constitution. Monarchists and conservatives of all degrees had thus far been unable to resist the surging strength of the reformers, but by September their positions were beginning, however slightly, to improve. In constitutional negotiations they were able to secure a legislative veto power for the king. Many of the reformers were left aghast by this, and further negotiations were hobbled by contentiousness.〔Rose, pp. 43ff.〕 Quiet Versailles, the seat of royal power, was a stifling environment for reformers. Their stronghold was in Paris. The bustling metropolis lay within walking distance, less than to the northeast. The reformist deputies were well aware that the four hundred or more monarchist deputies were working to transfer the Assembly to the distant royalist city of Tours, a place even less hospitable to their efforts than Versailles.〔Kropotkin, p. 154.〕 Worse, many feared that the king, emboldened by the growing presence of royal troops, might simply dissolve the Assembly, or at least renege on the August decrees. The king was indeed considering this, and when on 18 September he issued a formal statement giving his approval to only a portion of the decrees, the deputies were incensed.〔Doyle, p. 121.〕 Stoking their anger even further, the king even stated on 4 October that he had reservations about the Declaration of the Rights of Man.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Women's March on Versailles」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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