When the morning of 6 October had come, Lafayette addressed the crowd, promising them that they should be provided for, and, at the critical moment, there appeared at his side on the balcony of the palace the royal family—the king, the little prince, the little princess, and the queen—all wearing red-white-and-blue cockades. A hush fell upon the mob. The respected general leaned over and gallantly kissed the hand of Marie Antoinette. A great shout of joy went up. Apparently even the queen had joined the Revolution. The Parisians were happy, and arrangements were made for the return journey.
[Sidenote: Forcible Removal of the Court and Assembly from Versailles to Paris]
The procession of 6 October from Versailles to Paris was more curious and more significant than that of the preceding day in the opposite direction. There were still the women and the National Guardsmen and Lafayette on his white horse and a host of people of the slums, but this time in the midst of the throng was a great lumbering coach, in which rode Louis and his wife and children, for Paris now insisted that the court should no longer possess the freedom of Versailles in which to plot unwatched against the rights of the French people. All along the procession reechoed the shout, "We have the baker and the baker's wife and the little cook-boy—now we shall have bread." And so the court of Louis XVI left forever the proud, imposing palace of Versailles, and came to humbler lodgings [Footnote: In the palace of the Tuileries.] in the city of Paris.
Paris had again saved the National Assembly from royal intimidation, and the Assembly promptly acknowledged the debt by following the king to that city. After October, 1789, not reactionary Versailles but radical Paris was at once the scene and the impulse of the Revolution.
The "Fall of the Bastille" and the "March of the Women to Versailles" were the two picturesque events which assured the independence of the National Assembly from the armed force and intrigue of the court. Meanwhile, the answer to the other question which we propounded above, "What direction would the reforms of the Assembly take?" had been supplied by the people at large.
[Sidenote: Disintegration of the Old Régime throughout France]
[Sidenote: Peasant Reprisals against the Nobility]
Ever since the assembling of the Estates-General, ordinary administration of the country had been at a standstill. The people, expecting great changes, refused to pay the customary taxes and imposts, and the king, for fear of the National Assembly and of a popular uprising, hesitated to compel tax collection by force of arms. The local officials did not know whether they were to obey the Assembly or the king. In fact, the Assembly was for a time so busy with constitutional questions that it neglected to provide for local government, and the king was always timorous. So, during the summer of 1789, the institutions of the "old régime" disappeared throughout France, one after another, because there was no popular desire to maintain them and no competent authority to enforce them. The insurrection in Paris and the fall of the Bastille was the signal in July for similar action elsewhere: other cities and towns substituted new elective officers for the ancient royal or gild agents and organized National Guards of their own. At the same time the direct action of the people spread to the country districts. In most provinces the oppressed peasants formed bands which stormed and burned the châteaux of the hated nobles, taking particular pains to destroy feudal or servile title-deeds. Monasteries were often ransacked and pillaged. A few of the unlucky lords were murdered, and many others were driven into the towns or across the frontier. Amid the universal confusion, the old system of local government completely collapsed. The intendants and governors quitted their posts. The ancient courts of justice, whether feudal or royal, ceased to act. The summer of 1789 really ended French absolutism, and the transfer of the central government from Versailles to Paris in October merely confirmed an accomplished fact.
[Sidenote: The Revolution Social as well as Political]
Whatever had been hitherto the reforming policies of the National Assembly, the deputies henceforth faced facts rather than theories. Radical social readjustments were now to be effected along with purely governmental and administrative changes. The Revolution was to be social as well as political.