The Women of Paris March to Versailles On October 5, 1789, thousands of poor Parisian women marched to Versailles to protest the price of bread. For the common people, the king was the baker of last resort, responsible for feeding his people during times of scarcity. The image of a set of scales one woman holds aloft (along with a loaf of bread stuck on the tip of her pike) symbolizes the crowd’s desire for justice and for bread to be sold at the same price per pound as it always had been. The women forced the royal family to return with them to live in Paris, rather than remain isolated from their subjects at court.
(The Women’s March on Versailles in October 1789, 18th-