The October Days

Marie Antoinette, Queen of France

You came to France at fourteen, an Austrian archduchess married to the heir to the most powerful throne in Europe. You were young, extravagant, and naive, and France never forgave you for any of it. They called you Madame Deficit while the treasury collapsed. They published obscene pamphlets about your supposed lovers. They blamed you for every royal excess while ignoring that your husband's government was the true architect of France's bankruptcy. Now the Revolution has come. The Bastille fell in July. The Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued in August. And today, the women of Paris have marched to your doorstep. You can hear them outside the gates now, chanting for bread and for your death. Your husband dithers. Your allies have fled. And somewhere in the rain, Lafayette approaches with fifteen thousand National Guardsmen whose loyalty you cannot predict.

The Palace of Versailles, the most magnificent royal residence in Europe, stands besieged by its own people. This morning, thousands of women from the markets of Paris set out on the twelve-mile march to Versailles, demanding bread from the king. They have arrived, soaked by rain, furious and armed with pikes, muskets, and kitchen knives. The National Guard under the Marquis de Lafayette marches behind them, ostensibly to keep order but perhaps to force the king's hand. Inside the palace, the court is paralyzed. The queen — hated, slandered, called Madame Deficit and the Austrian whore — knows that the mob's fury is directed above all at her.