Maximilien Robespierre

News of Necker's dismissal reaches Paris in the afternoon of Sunday, July 12.

The Parisians generally presume that the dismissal marks the start of a coup by conservative elements.

Liberal Parisians are further enraged by the fear that a concentration of Royal troops—brought in from frontier garrisons to Versailles, Sèvres, the Champ de Mars, and Saint-Denis—will attempt to shut down the National Constituent Assembly, which is meeting in Versailles.

Crowds gather throughout Paris, including more than ten thousand at the Palais-Royal.

The angry Parisian crowd, inflamed by a speech from journalist Camille Desmoulins, demonstrates against the King's decision to dismiss Minister Necker.

Desmoulins was born at Guise, Aisne, in Picardy.

His father, Jean Benoît Nicolas Desmoulins, is a rural lawyer and lieutenant-general of the bailliage of Guise.

Through the efforts of a friend, he had obtained a scholarship for the fourteen-year-old Camille to enter the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris.

Desmoulins had proved an exceptional student even among such notable contemporaries as Maximilien Robespierre and Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron.

He had excelled in the study of Classical literature and politics, and gained a particular affinity for Cicero, Tacitus and Livy.

He had pursued law, and succeeded in gaining acceptance as an advocate of the parlement of Paris in 1785; however, his serious stammer and ferocious temper had proved severe obstacles to success in this arena.

Thus stymied, he had turned towards writing as an alternative outlet for his talents; his interest in public affairs had led him to a career as a political journalist.

In March 1789, Jean Benoît Nicolas Desmoulins had been nominated as deputy to the Estates-General from the bailliage of Guise; however, due to illness, he had failed to take his seat.

Camille Desmoulins, himself limited to the role of spectator at the procession of the Estates-General on May 5, 1789, had written a response to the event: Ode aux Etats Generaux.

The Comte de Mirabeau, a powerful political figure within the Estates-General who has positioned himself as a bridge between the aristocracy and the emerging reformist movement, had briefly enlisted Desmoulins to write for his newspaper at this time, strengthening Desmoulins' reputation as a journalist.

Owing to his difficulties in establishing a career as a lawyer, Desmoulins' position in Paris is a precarious one, and he often lives in poverty.

However, he had been greatly inspired and enthused by the current of political reform that surrounded the summoning of the Estates-General.

In letters to his father at the time, he had rhapsodized over the procession of deputies entering the Palace of Versailles, and criticized the events surrounding the closing of the Salle des Menus Plaisirs to the deputies who had declared themselves the National Assembly—events that led to the famous swearing of the Tennis Court Oath.

On July 12, spurred by the news of the politically unsettling dismissal of Necker, Desmoulins leaps onto a table outside the Cafe du Foy (one of many cafés in the garden of the Palais Royal frequented in large part by political dissidents) and delivers an impassioned call to arms.

Shedding his customary stammer in the excitement, he urges the volatile crowd to "take up arms and adopt cockades by which we may know each other", calling Necker's dismissal the tocsin of the St. Bartholomew of the patriots, a reference to the St. Batholomew's Day Massacre.

The stationing of a large number of troops in Paris, many foreign, has led Desmoulins and other political radicals to believe that a massacre of dissidents in the city is indeed imminent.

This is an idea that his audience also finds plausible and threatening, and they are quick to embrace Desmoulins and take up arms in riots that spread throughout Paris rapidly.

The "cockades" worn by the crowd were initially green, a color associated with liberty, and made at first from the leaves of the trees that line the Palais Royal.

However, the color green is also associated with the Comte d'Artois, the reactionary and conservative brother of the King, and the cockades therefore are quickly replaced by others in the traditional colors of Paris: red and blue.

The forces semi-organized under this banner had attacked the Hôtel des Invalides to gain arms and, on 14 July, embark upon the Storming of the Bastille.

The President of the Assembly, Jean Joseph Mounier, with few other options available to him, accompanies a deputation of market-women into the palace to see the king.

A group of six women nominated by the crowd are escorted into the king's apartment, where they tell him of the crowd's privations.

The king responds sympathetically, and using all his charm impresses the women to the point that one of them faints at his feet.

After this brief but pleasant meeting, arrangements are made to disburse some food from the royal stores, with more promised, and some in the crowd feel that their goals have been satisfactorily met.

As rain once again begins to pelt Versailles, Maillard and a small cluster of market women troop triumphantly back to Paris.

Most of the crowd, however, remains unpacified.

They mill around the palace grounds with rumors abounding that the women's deputation has been duped—the queen will inevitably force the king to break any promises that had been made.

Well aware of the surrounding dangers, Louis discusses the situation with his advisors.

At about six o'clock in the evening, the king makes a belated effort to quell the rising tide of insurrection: he announces that he will accept the August decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man without qualification.

Adequate preparations to defend the palace are not made, however: the bulk of the royal guards, who have been deployed under arms in the main square for several hours facing a hostile crowd, is withdrawn to the far end of the park of Versailles.

This leaves only the usual night guard of sixty-one Gardes du Corps posted throughout the palace.

Late in the evening, Lafayette's national guardsmen approach up the Avenue de Paris.

Lafayette immediately leaves his troops and goes to see the king, grandly announcing himself with the declaration, "I have come to die at the feet of Your Majesty".

Outside, an uneasy night is spent in which his Parisian guardsmen mingle with the marchers, and the two groups sound each other out.

Many in the crowd persuasively denounce Lafayette as a traitor, complaining of his resistance to leaving Paris and the slowness of his march.

The crowd finally reaches Versailles, and is met by another group that had assembled from the surrounding area.

Members of the Assembly greet the marchers and invite Maillard into their hall, where he fulminates about the Flanders Regiment and the people's need for bread.

As he speaks, the restless Parisians come pouring into the Assembly and sink exhausted on the deputies' benches.

Hungry, fatigued, and bedraggled from the rain, they seem to confirm that the siege is a simple demand for food.

The unprotected deputies have no choice but to receive the marchers, who shout down most of the speakers and demand  to hear from the popular reformist deputy Mirabeau.

The great orator declines this chance at demagoguery but nonetheless mingles familiarly with the market women, even sitting for some time with one of them upon his knee.

A few other deputies welcome the marchers warmly, including Maximilien Robespierre, who is still at that time a relatively obscure figure in politics.

Robespierre gives strong words of support to the women and their plight, and his efforts are received appreciatively; his solicitations help greatly to soften the crowd's hostility towards the Assembly.

The vast throng departs at about one o'clock in the afternoon of October 6, 1789, escorting the royal family and a complement of one hundred deputies back to the capital, this time with the armed National Guards leading the way.

By now the mass of people has grown to over sixty thousand, and the return trip takes about nine hours.

The procession can seem merry at times, as guardsmen hoist up loaves of bread stuck on the tips of their bayonets, and some of the market women ride gleefully astride the captured cannon.

Yet, even as the crowd sings pleasantries about their "Good Papa", their violent mentality cannot be misread; celebratory gunshots fly over the royal carriage and some marchers even carry pikes bearing the heads of the slaughtered Versailles guards.

A sense of victory over the ancien régime is imbued in the parade, and it is understood by all that the king is now fully at the service of the people.

No one understands this so viscerally as the king himself.

An alliance of the national guards and the women is evident By the first light of morning, and as the crowd's vigor is restored, their roughneck poissard clamoring resumes.

At about six o'clock in the morning, some of the protesters discover a small gate to the palace is unguarded.

Making their way inside, they search for the queen's bedchamber.

The royal guards race throughout the palace, bolting doors and barricading hallways and those in the compromised sector, the cour de marbre, fire their guns at the intruders, killing a young member of the crowd.

Infuriated, the rest surge towards the breach and stream inside.

Two guardsmen, Miomandre and Tardivet, each separately attempt to face down the crowd and are overpowered.

The violence boils over into savagery as Tardivet's head is shorn off and raised aloft on a pike.

As battering and screaming fills the halls around her, the queen runs barefoot with her ladies to the king's bedchamber and spends several agonizing minutes banging on its locked door, unheard above the din.

In a close brush with death, they barely escape through the doorway in time.

The chaos continues as other royal guards are found and beaten; at least one more is killed and his head too appears atop a pike.

Finally, the fury of the attack subsides enough to permit some communication between the former French Guards, who form the professional core of Lafayette's National Guard militia, and the royal gardes du corps.

The units have a history of cooperation and a military sense of mutual respect, and Lafayette, who has been snatching a few hours of sleep in his exhaustion, awakens to make the most of it.

To the relief of the royals, the two sets of soldiers are reconciled by his charismatic mediation and a tenuous peace is established within the palace.

The mob is still everywhere outside, although the fighting ceases and the two commands of troops have cleared the palace.

The rank and file of both the Flanders Regiment and another regular unit present, the Montmorency Dragoons, now appear unwilling to act against the people.

Lafayette, who has earned the court's indebtedness, persuades the king to address the crowd.

When the two men step out on a balcony an unexpected cry goes up: "Vive le Roi!"

The relieved king briefly conveys his willingness to return to Paris, acceding "to the love of my good and faithful subjects".

As the crowd cheers, Lafayette stokes their joy by dramatically pinning a tricolor cockade to the hat of the king's nearest bodyguard.

After the king withdraws, the exultant crowd will not be denied the same accord from the queen, and her presence is demanded loudly.

Lafayette brings her to the same balcony, accompanied by her young son and daughter.

The crowd ominously shouts for the children to be taken away, and it seems the stage might be set for a regicide.

Yet, as the queen stands with her hands crossed over her chest, the crowd—some of whom have muskets leveled in her direction—warms to her courage.

Amid this unlikely development, Lafayette cannily lets the mob's fury drain away until, with dramatic timing and flair, he kneels reverently and kisses her hand.

The demonstrators respond with a muted respect, and many even raise a cheer which the queen had not heard for quite a long time: "Vive la Reine!"

The goodwill generated by this surprising turn of events defuses the situation, but to many observers the scene on the balcony is mere theatricality without long-term resonance.

However pleased it may be by the royal displays, the crowd insists that the king come back with them to Paris.

The King, after arriving at the dilapidated Tuileries Palace, abandoned since the reign of Louis XIV, is asked for his orders and he replies with uncharacteristic diffidence, "Let everyone put himself where he pleases!"

Then, with a sullen poignancy, he asks for a history of the deposed Charles I of England to be brought from the library.

A second Constitutional Committee had quickly replaced the first, and includes Talleyrand, Abbé Sieyès, and Le Chapelier from the original group, as well as new members Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target, Jacques Guillaume Thouret, Jean-Nicolas Démeunier, François Denis Tronchet, and Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne, all of the Third Estate.

Their greatest controversy faced by this new committee surrounds the issue of citizenship.

Will every subject of the French Crown be given equal rights, as the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen seems to promise, or will there be some restrictions?

The October Days (5–6 October) intervene and render the question much more complicated.

In the end, a distinction is held between active citizens (over the age of twenty-five, pay direct taxes equal to three days' labor) which have political rights, and passive citizens, who have only civil rights.

This conclusion is intolerable to such radical deputies as Maximilien Robespierre, and thereafter they never can be reconciled to the Constitution of 1791.

The rest of the National Constituent Assembly follows the king within two weeks to new quarters in Paris.

In short order, the entire body settles in only a few steps from the Tuileries at a former riding school, the Salle du Manège.

However, some fifty-six monarchien deputies have not come with them, believing the mob threat in the capital to be personally dangerous.

The October journées have thus effectively deprived the monarchist faction of significant representation in the Assembly as most of these deputies retreat from the political scene; many, like Mounier, flee the country altogether.

Conversely, Robespierre's impassioned defense of the march has raised his public profile considerably.

The episode has given him a lasting heroic status among the poissardes and burnished his reputation as a patron of the poor.

His later rise to become virtual dictator of the Revolution is greatly facilitated by his actions during the occupation of the Assembly.


Lafayette, though initially acclaimed, finds that he has tied himself too closely to the king.

As the Revolution progresses, he will be hounded into exile by the radical leadership.

Maillard has returned to Paris with his status as a local hero made permanent.

He will participate in several later journées, but in 1794 will become stricken with illness, dying at the age of thirty-one.

For the women of Paris, the march will become the source of apotheosis in revolutionary hagiography.

The "Mothers of the Nation" had been highly celebrated upon their return, and they will be praised and solicited by successive Parisian governments for years to come.

King Louis XVI is officially welcomed to Paris with a respectful ceremony held by mayor Jean Sylvain Bailly.

His return is touted as a momentous turning point in the Revolution, by some even as its end.

Optimistic observers such as Camille Desmoulins declare that France will now enter a new golden age, with its revived citizenry and popular constitutional monarchy.

Others are more wary, such as journalist Jean-Paul Marat, who writes:

    It is a source of great rejoicing for the good people of Paris to have their king in their midst once again. His presence will very quickly do much to change the outward appearance of things, and the poor will no longer die of starvation. But this happiness would soon vanish like a dream if we did not ensure that the sojourn of the Royal Family in our midst lasted until the Constitution was ratified in every aspect. L'Ami du Peuple shares the jubilation of its dear fellow citizens, but it will remain ever vigilant.
    — L'Ami du Peuple #7 (1789)