The most inflammatory harangues in the Palais Royal assisted in exciting the general conflagration. The scenes preceding the seizure of the Bastille were renewed; but there was no fortress to be captured on this occasion,—it was the person of the king must be secured, that the democracy might place him in the revolutionary vortex, might keep watch over him, and disperse the clique which dragged him into schemes antagonistic to the wishes and welfare of the nation.
On the morning of the 5th, all Paris was in movement; but that which determined its march on Versailles, was the famine.
In spite of the efforts of the committee of subsistence established by Bailly, corn, and flour especially, arrived in small quantities.
At four o'clock in the morning a crowd besieged the shops of the bakers. For hours the people remained patiently en queue; then they began to fight to obtain for money a loaf often insufficient to fill the mouths that clamoured for it at home. The wretched quality of the bread added to the fury of the populace. Little more was needed to produce an explosion. The account of the scenes which had been enacted at Versailles fell like a spark upon these inflammable tempers, and the fire blazed forth in an instant.
'Let us bring the baker among us!' cried Madeleine, who, like the rest, had been waiting for the morning's provision of bread.
'Yes, we must have the chief baker here,' shouted several others.
Madeleine, without another word, seized on a drum, and rattled it vigorously. The women trooped round her, and in a moment she was at the head of a legion of famished, furious women, some of whom had not tasted food for thirty hours.
'Let us march to Versailles,' cried several; 'let us besiege the great bakehouse.'
'Lead on, you girl with the drum!' cried others.
'Whither shall I lead?' asked Madeleine.