61 60 I THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 The August Decrees were of great importance for another reason, for they were based on the assumption that henceforth all individuals in France were to enjoy the same rights and be subject to the same laws: the age of privilege and exception was over: Article X ... all special privileges of the provinces, principalities, counties, cantons, towns and communities of inhabitants, be they financial or of any other nature, are abolished without compensation, and will be absorbed into the common rights of all French people." The Declaration, like the August Decrees, explicitly asserted that all careers and positions would be open to talent, and that henceforth 'social distinctions may be based only on general usefulness'. It was therefore felt politic to exclude clauses from an earlier draft which sought to explain the limits to equality rather more directly: II. To ensure his own preservation and find well being, each man receives faculties from nature. Libelty consists in the full and entire usage of these faculties. V. But nature has not given each man the same means to exercise his rights. Inequality between men is born of thiS. Thus inequality is in nature itself. VI. Society is formed by the need to maintain equality in rights, in the midst of inequality in means. 12 As a profoundly revolutionary set of founding principles of a new order, both the August Decrees and the Declarati0E..met with refusal from Louis, The Estates-General had been summoned to offer him advice on the state of his kingdom: did his acceptance of the existence a 'National Assembly' reguire him to accept its decisions? More- over, as the food crisis worsened and evidence multiplied of open contempt for the Revolution on the part of army officers, the victo,q ;f the summer of 1789 seemed again in question. For the second time, the menu peuple of Paris intervened to safeguard a revolution they assumed to be theirs, This time, however, it was particularly the women of the markets: in the words of the observant bookseller Hardy, 'these women said loudly that the men didn't know what it was all about and that they wanted to have a hand in things' .13 On 5 October, up to 7,000 women marched to Versaillesj among their spontaneous leaders were Maillard, a hero of 14 July, and a woman . / -/'5 from Luxembourg, Anne-Josephe Terwagne, who became known as K .._ Theroigne de Mericourt. They were belatedly followed by the THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 National Guard, who compelled their reluctant commander Lafayette to 'lead' them. At Versailles the women invaded the Assembly. A deputation was then presented to the king, who promptly agreed to sanction the decrees, It soon became apparent, however, that the women would be satisfied only if the royal family returned to Paris; on the 6th it did so, and the Assembly followed in its wake. This was a decisive moment in the Revolution of 1789. The National Assembly owed its existence and success once again to the armed intervention of the people of Paris. Convinced now that the Revolution was complete and secure, and determined that never again would the common people of Paris exercise such power, the Assembly ordered an inguiry into the 'crimes' of 5-6 October. Among the hundreds of participants and observers interviewed was Madelaine Glain, a 42-year-old deaner, who milde a link between the imperatives of securing cheap and plentiful bread and the fate of the key revolutionary decrees: she went with the other women to the hall of the National Assembly, where they entered in great numbers; that some of these women having demanded 4 pound bread for 8 sols, and meat for the same price, the witness. , . came back with Mr Milillard and two other women to the Paris town hall, bringing the decrees that were given to them in the National Assembly. The mayor, Bailly, recalled that, when the women returned to Paris on the 6th, they were singing 'vulgar ditties which apparently showed little respect for the queen'. Others claimed to have brought with them the royal family as 'the baker and his Wife, and the baker's apprentice'.14 The women were here making explicit the ancient assumption of royal responSibility to God for the provision of food. The key decrees sanctioned, and the court party in disarray, the Revo- lution's triumph seemed assured; to signify the magnitude of what they had achieved, people now began to refer to the ancien regirne, Elsewhere in Europe, people were similarly struck by the dramatic events of the summer. Few failed to be enthused by them: among the crowned heads of Europe, only the kings of Sweden and Spain and Catherine of Russia were resolutely hostile from the outset. Others may have felt a certain pleasure at seeing one of Europe's great powers incommoded by its own people. Among the general Euro- pean populace, however, support for the Revolution was far more