Women's March on Versailles

The Women's March on Versailles was an October 1789 protest in which crowds from Paris marched to Versailles and compelled Louis XVI and his family to return to Paris.

October Days: The Parisian uprising of 5–6 October 1789 that brought the royal family from Versailles to Paris. This broader name covers the march and the events that culminated in the royal family's transfer.
French Revolution: A period of political and social upheaval in France from 1789 to 1799 that ended the Bourbon monarchy. The march was an early turning point within the wider revolutionary upheaval.
National Constituent Assembly: The French assembly that drafted a constitution and enacted major reforms from 1789 to 1791. The assembly also moved to Paris, closer to the crowd and the royal family.
Théroigne de Méricourt: A French political activist associated with the revolutionary movement and women's public participation. Her later prominence illustrates the contested place of women in revolutionary politics.
Bread riots: Food-price protests in which crowds demand affordable or available bread. High bread prices and shortages helped draw Parisian women toward Versailles.
Great Fear: A wave of rural panic and revolt across France in the summer of 1789. The unrest formed part of the crisis that preceded the October march.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: A 1789 statement of individual and collective rights adopted by France's National Constituent Assembly. The march followed royal resistance to approving revolutionary decrees associated with this declaration.
Olympe de Gouges: A French playwright and political writer who published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791. Her later arguments for women's citizenship sharpen questions raised by women's collective action in 1789.
National Guard (France): A citizen militia formed in France during the Revolution, commanded initially by the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette and National Guard troops accompanied the crowd to Versailles.
Estates-General of 1789: An assembly of France's three estates convened by Louis XVI in May 1789 to address the kingdom's crisis. Its political deadlock and aftermath deepened distrust of the court.

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