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THEIR COURAGEOUS COMPASSION.

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These unfortunate beings possess not even enough energy to complain, to make known their situation, and protest against their fate. Such as act and agitate in times of great distress, are the strong, the least exhausted by misery, poor rather than indigent. Generally, the intrepid ones, who then make themselves conspicuous, are women of a noble heart, who suffer little for themselves, but much for others; pity, inert and passive in men, who are more resigned to the sufferings of others, is in women a very active, violent sentiment, which occasionally becomes heroic, and impels them imperatively towards the boldest achievements.

On the 5th of October, there was a multitude of unfortunate creatures who had eaten nothing for thirty hours.* That painful sight affected everybody, yet nobody did anything for them; everybody contented themselves with deploring the hard necessity of the times. On Sunday evening (4th) a courageous woman, who could not behold this any longer, ran from the quarter Saint-Denis to the Palais Royal, forced her way through a noisy crowd of orators, and obtained a hearing. She was a woman of thirty-six years of age, well dressed and respectable, but powerful and intrepid. She wants them to go to Versailles, and she will march at their head. Some laugh at her; she boxes the ears of one of them for doing so. The next morning she departed among the foremost, sword in hand, took a cannon from the city, sat astride on it, and, with the match ready lit, rode off to Versailles.

Among the failing trades which seemed to be perishing with the ancien régime was that of carvers of wood. There used to be much work of that kind, both for the churches and apartments. Many women were sculptors. One of them, Madeleine Chabry, being quite out of work, had set up as a flowergirl (bouquetière) in the quarter of the Palais Royal, under the name of Louison; she was a girl of seventeen, handsome and witty. One may boldly venture to state that it was not hunger that drove her to Versailles. She followed the general impulse, and the dictates of her good courageous heart.

* See the depositions of the witnesses, Moniteur, i., p. 568, col. 2. This is the principal source. Another, very important, abounding in details, and which everybody copies, without quoting it, is the Histoire de deux Amis de la Liberté, t. iii.

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COURAGEOUS COMPASSION OF THE WOMEN.

The women placed her at their head and made her their

orator.

There were many others who were not driven by hunger: shopwomen, portresses, girls of the town, compassionate and charitable, as they so often are. There was also a considerable number of market-women; the latter were strict Royalists, but they wanted so much the more to have the king at Paris. They had already been to see him, on some occasion or other, some time before; they had spoken to him with much affection, with a laughable yet touching familiarity, which showed a perfect sense of the situation of affairs: "Poor man, said they, looking at the king, poor dear man, good papa!" And to the queen more seriously: "Madam, madam, take compassion, let us be free with each other. Let us conceal nothing, but say frankly what we have to say."

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These market-women are not those who suffer much from misery their trade consisting of the necessaries of life is subject to less variation. But they see wretchedness more than anybody, and feel it; passing their lives in the public. streets, they do not, like us, escape the scenes of suffering. Nobody is more compassionate or kinder towards the wretchedly poor. With their clownish forms and rude and violent language, they have often a noble heart overflowing with good nature. We have seen our women of Picardy, poor fruitwomen of the market of Amiens, save the father of four children, who was going to be guillotined. It was at the time of the coronation of Charles X.; they left their business and their families, went off to Reims, made the king weep with compassion, obtained the pardon, and on their return, making an abundant subscription among themselves, sent away the father, with his wife and children, safe, and loaded with presents.

On the 5th of October, at seven in the morning, they heard the beating of a drum, and could no longer resist. A little girl had taken a drum from the guard-house, and was beating the générale. It was Monday; the markets were deserted, and all marched forth. We will bring back," said they, "the baker and the baker's wife. And we shall have the pleasure of hearing our little daring mother Mirabeau."

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The market people march forth, and the Faubourg Saint

THEY INVADE THE HÔTEL-DE-VILLE.

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Antoine, on the other hand, was likewise marching. On the road, the women hurry along with them all they happen to meet, threatening such as are unwilling that they will cut their hair off. First they go to the Hôtel-de-Ville. There a baker had just been brought who used to give false weight of seven ounces in a two pound loaf. The lamp was lowered. Though the man was guilty on his own confession, the National Guard contrived to let him escape. They presented their bayonets to the four or five hundred women already assembled. On the other side, at the bottom of the square, stood the cavalry of the National Guard. The women were by no means daunted. They charged infantry and cavalry with a shower of stones; but the soldiers could not make up their minds to fire on them. The women then forced open the Hôtel-de-Ville, and entered all the offices. Many of them were well dressed: they had put on white gowns for that grand day. They inquired curiously into the use of every room, and entreated the representatives of the districts to give a kind reception to the women they had forced to accompany them, several of whom were enceinte, and ill, perhaps from fear. Others, ravenous and wild, shouted out Bread and arms!—that the men were cowards,—and they would show them what courage was.-That the people of the Hôtel-de-Ville were only fit to be hanged, that they must burn their writings and waste paper. And they were going to do so, and to burn the building perhaps. A man stopped them, -a man of gigantic stature, dressed in black, and whose serious countenance seemed more sombre than his dress. first they were going to kill him, thinking he belonged to the town, and calling him a traitor. He replied he was no traitor, but a bailiff by profession, and one of the conquerors of the Bastille. It was Stanislas Maillard.

At

Early that morning, he had done good service in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The volunteers of the Bastille under the command of Hullin, were drawn up on the square in arms. The workmen who were demolishing the fortress believed they were sent against them. Maillard interposed and prevented the collision. At the Hôtel-de-Ville, he was lucky enough to prevent its being burnt. The women even promised they would not allow any men to enter: they had left armed sentinels at the grand entrance. At eleven o'clock, the men attacked

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THEY MARCH TO VERSAILLES.

the small door which opened under the arcade Saint-Jean. Armed with levers, hammers, hatchets, and pick-axes, they broke open the door, and forced the magazine of arms. Among them was a French guardsman, who had wanted in the morning to ring the tocsin, and had been caught in the act. He had, he said, escaped by miracle; the moderate party, as furious as the others, would have hung him had it not been for the women; he showed his bare neck, which they had relieved from the rope. By way of retaliation, they took a man of the Hôtel-deVille in order to hang him. It was the brave Abbé Lefebvre, who had distributed the gunpowder on the 14th of July. Some women, or men disguised as women, hung him accordingly to the little steeple; one of them cut the rope, and he fell, alive and only stunned, into a room twenty-five feet below.

Neither Bailly nor Lafayette had arrived. Maillard repaired to the aide-major-general and told him there was only one way of ending the business, which was that he, Maillard, should lead the women to Versailles. That journey will give time to collect the troops. He descends, beats the drum, and obtains a hearing. The austere tragical countenance of that tall man in black was very effective in La Grêve; he appeared a prudent man, and likely to bring matters to a successful issue. The women, who were already departing with the cannon of the town, proclaimed him their captain. He put himself at their head with eight or ten drums; seven or eight thousand women followed, with a few hundred armed men, and a company of the volunteers of the Bastille brought up the rear.

On arriving at the Tuileries, Maillard wanted to follow the quay, but the women wished to pass triumphantly under the clock, through the palace and the garden. Maillard, an observer of ceremony, told them to remember that it was the king's house and garden; and that to pass through without permission was insulting the king. He politely approached the Swiss guard, and told him that those ladies merely wished to pass through, without doing any mischief. The Swiss drew his sword and rushed upon Maillard, who drew his. A portress gave a lucky stroke with a stick; the Swiss fell, and a man held his bayonet to his breast. Maillard stopped him, coolly

* Déposition de Maillard, Moniteur, i., p. 572.

THE ASSEMBLY RECEIVES WARNING.

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disarmed them both, and carried off the bayonet and the swords.

The morning was passing, and their hunger increased. At Chaillot, Auteuil, and Sèvres, it was very difficult to prevent the poor starving women from stealing food. Maillard would not allow it. At Sèvres the troop was exhausted; there, there was nothing to be had, not even for money; every door was closed except one, that of a sick man who had remained; Maillard contrived to buy of him a few pitchers of wine. Then, he choose out seven men, and charged them to bring before him the bakers of Sèvres, with whatever they might have. There were eight loaves in all, thirty-two pounds of bread for eight thousand persons. They shared them among them and crawled further. Fatigue induced most of the women to lay aside their arms. Maillard, moreover, made them understand that as they wished to pay a visit to the king and the Assembly, and to move and affect them, it was not proper to arrive in such a warlike fashion. The cannon were placed in the rear, and in a manner concealed. The sage bailiff wished it to be an amener sans scandale, as they say in courts of law. At the entrance of Versailles, in order to hint their pacific intention, he gave a signal to the women to sing the air of Henri IV.

The people of Versailles were delighted, and cried Vivent nos Parisiennes! Foreigners among the spectators saw nothing but what was innocent in that crowd coming to ask the king for succour. The Genevese Dumont, a man unfriendly to the Revolution, who was dining at the palace Des Petites-Ecuries, looking out of window, says himself: "All that crowd only wanted bread."

The Assembly had been that day full of stormy discussions. The king, being unwilling to sanction either the declaration of rights, or the decrees of the 4th of August, replied that constitutional laws could be judged only in their ensemble; that he acceded, however, in consideration of the alarming circumstances, and on the express condition that the executive power would resume all its force.

"If you accept the king's letter," said Robespierre, there is no longer any constitution, nor any right to have one." Duport,

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