20 Julia Crezintt Stoddard 



circulation of grain in the interior of the realm might be assured. 1 

 This demand was renewed by the women. . They wished to be 

 assured of means of subsistence in the prospect of coming win- 

 ter. And after the assembly had decreed a strict police to facili- 

 tate the transportation of wheat, and after they were furnished 

 with the king's assurance that, he would do all in his power in 

 the matter, many of the women, together with their leader, Mail- 

 lard, returned to Paris in the night of the 5th. 2 Loustalot gives 

 the "lack of bread" as one of the motives for the insurrection. 3 

 Was he not right? Were not the conditions such that the out- 

 break was inevitable? Could this movement have taken place 

 as the result of mere political intrigue ? Would it have been pos- 

 sible except among a people driven to desperation by physical 

 distress ? T-he conclusion seems beyond question : a very cer- 

 tain, active, and potent cause of the insurrection of the 5th and 

 6th of October was fear of famine. 



II 



POLITICAL MOTIVES 



Human motives are always mixed. It was not alone the lack 

 of bread that sent the mob to Versailles. If economic conditions 

 were conducive to insurrection, the political situation was not 

 less liable to provoke the movement of October, 1789. 



Up to this time the revolution had made three great strides. 

 First on the 23d of June, when an attempt was made to annul 

 all that had been done since the meeting of the estates general 

 and to restore old conditions, the deputies of the third estate re- 



1 Le point du jour, No. XCVIII, 203. One of the demands by this depu- 

 tation on the 6th of October was that " la commune de Paris suppliait le roi 

 de faire communiquer, par ses ministres les £tats et les moyens de subsist- 

 ance de la capitale, afin de rassurer la multitude sur les craints qui redoublent 

 aux approaches d'hiver." Actes de la commune de Pat is, II, 183. 



2 Bailly, Mt moires, III, 421. Deposition of Maillard: " Ensuite il fit lec- 

 ture de cinq pieces relative a la d€mande . . . pour les subsistances 

 . . . les pieces furent transcrites . . . et lui ddposant immediatement 

 apr£s, revint a Paris avec une partie de ces femmes." Also p. 118. 

 "Maillard et son cortege avaient paru de grande matin a l'hotel de ville"; 

 Deux amis de la liberty, Histoid de la revolution de France, III, 206. 



8 Revolutions de Paris, No. XIII, 11. 



286 



