account this conduct of the Garde du Corps, as might
well be expected, alarmed and enraged the Partisans. The colors of
the cause, and the cause itself, were become too united to mistake the
intention of the insult, and the Partisans were determined to call
the Garde du Corps to an account. There was certainly nothing of the
cowardice of assassination in marching in the face of the day to demand
satisfaction, if such a phrase may be used, of a body of armed men who
had voluntarily given defiance. But the circumstance which serves
to throw this affair into embarrassment is, that the enemies of the
Revolution appear to have encouraged it as well as its friends. The one
hoped to prevent a civil war by checking it in time, and the other to
make one. The hopes of those opposed to the Revolution rested in making
the King of their party, and getting him from Versailles to Metz,
where they expected to collect a force and set up a standard. We have,
therefore, two different objects presenting themselves at the same time,
and to be accomplished by the same means: the one to chastise the Garde
du Corps, which was the object of the Partisans; the other to render the
confusion of such a scene an inducement to the King to set off for Metz.

On the 5th of October a very numerous body of women, and men in the
disguise of women, collected around the Hotel de Ville or town-hall at
Paris, and set off for Versailles. Their professed object was the Garde
du Corps; but prudent men readily recollect that mischief is more easily
begun than ended; and this impressed itself with the more force from the
suspicions already stated, and the irregularity of such a cavalcade.
As soon, therefore, as a sufficient force could be collected, M. de la
Fayette, by orders from the civil authority of Paris, set off after
them at the head of twenty thousand of the Paris militia. The Revolution
could derive no benefit from confusion, and its opposers might. By an
amiable and spirited manner of address he had hitherto been fortunate in
calming disquietudes, and in this he was extraordinarily successful; to
frustrate, therefore, the hopes of those who might seek to improve
this scene into a sort of justifiable necessity for the King's quitting
Versailles and withdrawing to Metz, and to prevent at the same time
the consequences that might ensue between the Garde du Corps and this
phalanx of men and women, he forwarded expresses to the King, that he
was on his march