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 Regime 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.
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