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 to