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Ladies, I’m just gonna leave this here. For no particular reason. No ulterior motive. Do with it as you will. Many of you may already know about it, if you do, by all means, pass it on. I’m talking about an event that occurred on the 5th of October, 1789 - THREAD! /1 
So, Paris at the end of the 18th century. A complex series of factors are conspiring to make life miserable for a large slice of the population. Crap harvests. Bad weather. Fiscal mismanagement. A detached elite. Misinformation. Agitators in the streets, baying for blood. /2
Months before, Parisians had sought to signal their hatred of the absolutist monarchy - the ‘Ancien Regime' - & arm themselves for an uprising they saw as inevitable. The Bastille, a prison and armoury was attacked in July - guards murdered, prisoners freed & weapons secured. /3
The storming of the Bastille had scared the ‘Ancien Regime’ of King Louis XVI into introducing *some* reforms in terms of the Church & nobility, but damn if the price of bread - the staple - wasn’t still through the roof. Imagine paying more than your rent for it, a month. /4
The atmosphere was electric. Things were about to kick off. Posters went up, fiery speeches in the streets, absolute bangers being sung in pubs about what folks would like to do to the aristos, King Louis & his wife, Marie Antoinette. Someone just needed to pull the trigger. /5
On the 5th of October, 1789, a bunch of women gathered in a marketplace in the east of Paris, raging about the skyrocketing price of bread. Somewhere, a woman started beating a drum & calls to march on Versailles - something revolutionaries had been calling for - rang out. /6
Commandeered church bells summoned more to the crowd, and women came running with whatever they had to arm themselves with - knives, household implements, agricultural tools, old swords, the odd pistol - and the mass of women began to move. /7
Their first target was the city hall The place was ransacked & weapons taken from the armoury - including cannon. The crowd grew larger as more joined - mostly women, but also men. The Marquis de Lafayette - yeah, him - decided to join them, in order to try to control the mob. /8
It had begun to rain by this stage, but undeterred, the women marched to Versailles, taking the better part of six hours. Once there, they sat in front of the palace, while some went to speak to the reformist members of the National Assembly, who knew they were coming. /9
Night came, and the mob outside the palace and those within eyed each other warily. The crowd seemed hesitant to act - perhaps out of a lingering deference to the monarch - and those within were simply unable to withstand an assault against a crowd that size. /10
The fuse that prompted the violence came the next morning. A few women snuck into the palace through a side gate, at which point one was shot dead by a guard. Enraged, the crowd fell upon the palace, surging through corridors, attacking anyone putting up any resistance. /11
A couple of guards tried to gamely resist, but they were overcome and killed - a couple had their heads torn off and place on pikes, that were waved around in a mad frenzy. Marie Antoinette was almost killed, only managing to barely escape out a window. /12
The fighting throughout the palace only stopped when some of the guardsmen who had joined the crowd recognized some of the soldiers guarding the King. Quite literally adopting a policy of ‘bros before (garden) hoes’, they established an uneasy peace. /13
The Marquis de Lafayette saw his opportunity and had the king brought out on the balcony before the crowd, then the queen. A popular bloke, his deference to the monarchs acted to calm the crowd. It was at this point that King Louis agreed to come back to Paris for talks. /14
The crowd then headed back to Paris, singing revolutionary anthems, laden with spoils they had liberated from the palace. Along the way, word spread that they had managed to bend the king to their will. This was a decisive moment, the fall of the monarchy now inevitable. /15
King Louis and Marie Antoinette would never again know true freedom. They would be arrested in 1792, and both executed by guillotine in 1793. The Committee of Public Safety, and then the Directory, would go on to govern France until Napoleon overthrew them in 1799. /16
Now, I’m not going to go and come up with a cute little lesson here. I’m just telling you guys about the Women’s March on Versailles. I thought you might find it interesting. No historical parallels here. You guys like marching? I don’t know. I’m just a bloke. HELP. /FIN
PS. Check out this @MissedInHistory podcast for more info on the Women’s March on Versailles. missedinhistory.com/podcasts/women…
PPS. Seriously, why would you think I was trying to say something? No, not at all. Just sharing my love of history with the ladies. Yeah, ladies love history. They totally wouldn't go and act on it, because that would be foolish. It's just banter.
PPPS.
