The morning of the 5th of October dawned, dark, cold, and stormy. A dismal rain flooded the streets. There were thousands in Paris that morning who had eaten nothing for thirty hours.[228] The women, in particular, of the humbler class, were in an awful state of destitution and misery. The populace of Paris were actually starving. An energetic woman, half delirious with woe, seized a drum, and strode through the streets beating it violently, occasionally shrieking, "Bread! bread!" She soon collected a crowd of women, which rapidly increased from a few hundred to seven or eight thousand. The men gazed with wonder upon this strange apparition, such as earth had, perhaps, never seen before. Like a swelling inundation the living flood rolled through the streets, and soon the cry was heard, "To Versailles!" As by a common instinct, the tumultuous mass rushed along by the side of the Tuileries and through the Elysian Fields toward Versailles. A few of the more fierce and brutal of the women had guns or pistols. Chancing to find a couple of cannon, they seized them, and also horses to drag the ponderous engines, upon which female furies placed themselves astride, singing revolutionary songs. [Illustration: THE WOMEN OF PARIS MARCHING TO VERSAILLES.] La Fayette gazed appalled upon the strange phenomenon. The troops of the National Guard refused to arrest their course, declaring that they could not resist starving women, who were going to implore bread of their king. La Fayette was powerless. He had under arms that morning thirty-five thousand troops, cavalry, infantry, and artillery. He could only follow the women, to watch the opening of events. Behind these troops advancing in all the glittering panoply of war, followed a straggling mass of, no one can tell how many thousands of the populace of Paris, of all classes, characters, conditions. The city seemed emptied of its inhabitants, as the road to Versailles, ten or twelve miles in length, was filled with the tumultuous multitude. No one, apparently, had any definite object, but each one was going to see what the others would do. Couriers were sent forward to warn the king and queen of the impending peril. The good-natured, silly king had gone to Meudon to amuse himself in chasing hares. Nothing can more conclusively show his utter incapacity to govern a great kingdom, than that he should have been so employed at such an hour. The king was sent for, and speedily returned to Versailles. Marie Antoinette had all the energy and heroism of her mother, Maria Theresa. When entreated immediately to secure her escape with her two children, she replied, "Nothing shall induce me to be separated from my husband. I know that they seek my life; but I am the daughter of Maria Theresa, and have learned not to fear death."