al three months before,
yet it served the purpose of immediately crystallizing two opposite
currents of opinion.

In Paris suffering was intense. There had been a good harvest, and in
many respects the economic situation was better. But there was a
drought, and the millers, depending on water to drive their mills,
could not produce flour. There had been a sudden curtailment of Court
and aristocratic expenditure, so that the Parisian wage earner was
unemployed. The emigration had thrown many retainers out of their
places. Paris was starving even before the summer months were over,
and the agitators and political leaders were not slow to point to
Versailles as the cause. That city, owing to the King's presence, was
always comparatively well supplied with provisions; if only Louis could
be brought to the capital, Versailles might starve and Paris would
fatten. And winter was fast coming on.

At the palace of Versailles offended pride and rebounding hope were
going out to the regiment of Flanders. On the 1st of October {82} the
crisis was reached. On that day the assembly sent to the King a
declaration of rights to which his assent was demanded. In the evening
a banquet was given in the palace to bring together the officers of the
King's bodyguard, of the regiment of Flanders and of the national
guards of Versailles; and it resulted in a demonstration. The King and
Queen visited the assembled officers and were received with great
enthusiasm. _O Richard, o mon Roi_, the air that Blondel sings to
Richard, the imprisoned king of England, in the then popular opera by
Gretry, was sung, and officers of the national guard were moved to
change their tricolour cockade for the white one of the King. All
this, if not very dangerous, was exciting; it was immensely magnified
by rumour. In Paris the popular orators soon conjured up visions of a
great royalist plot, and the renewal of military operations against the
city.

On the 5th of October, the King, struggling against the pressure of the
assembly, sent in a conditional acceptance of the proposals of the 1st,
making some reservations as to the declaration of rights. He did not
know that at the very moment Paris had risen once more, and was already
marching out to Versailles to {83} carry him off and bring him back to
the capital.

The insurrection of the 5th of October had rather obscure origins.
Some of its leading factors, however, stand out clearly enough. Fir