The Women's March On Versailles - Notes

Notes

• ^ a: Journée (literally, "day") is used frequently in French accounts of the Revolution to denote any episode of popular uprising: thus the women's march is known most commonly in French as the "October Days". English historians have favored more descriptive names for the episodes, and the majority (see Doyle, Schama, Hibbert, Wright, Dawson, et al) employ some variation of the phrase "women's march" in recognition of the market women's prominence as the vanguard of the action.
• ^ b: This was the Parisian City Hall, located at that time on the Place de Grève.
• ^ c: Carlyle repeatedly refers to him as "cunning Maillard" or "shifty Maillard".
• ^ d: Poissard (plural poissardes), literally "fishwife", was a contemporary general term for women of the working class. Derived from the French poix (pitch, tar), it is synonymous with their highly stylized urban slang.
• ^ e: Miomandre was left for dead but survived to become a royalist hero. Schama's index gives his full name as François Aimé Miomandre de Sainte-Marie. Carlyle gives the second guard's name as Tardivet du Repaire.
• ^ f: Some writers, such as Hibbert and Webster, impute significant influence to the Duke; most authoritative historians of the Revolution give him much less emphasis. Lefebvre and Soboul describe Orléanist activity as garden-variety political manœuvres that would have been ineffective without the compelling economic circumstances that motivated the commoners. Carlyle, Michelet, and Rose paint his influence as shadowy and malign, but without resonant success. Schama and Doyle, by their absence of focus, depict him as largely irrelevant to the situation.