Women's March on Versailles

October 5, 1789

Parisian market women, angry about bread prices, marched the twelve miles to Versailles in the rain. They brought cannon. Next morning they invaded the palace, killed two guards, and forced the king to return with them to Paris. Louis XVI would never again sleep in Versailles. The royal family arrived in the capital as virtual prisoners, guarded by Lafayette's National Guard and watched by a suspicious city.