A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

450 Ch. 12 • The French Revolution

Women of Paris leaving for Versailles.

sang that they were returning to Paris with ‘The Baker, the Baker’s Wife,

and the Baker’s Little Boy,” reflecting the popular notion that the king was

responsible for providing bread for his people. The National Assembly, too,

left Versailles for Paris. By putting the king and the Assembly under the pres­

sure of popular political will, the women’s march to Versailles changed the

course of the French Revolution.

Reforming the Church and Clergy

As the National Assembly set about creating a constitution that would

limit the authority of the king, it proclaimed Louis ‘‘the king of the

French,” instead of the king of France, a significant change that suggested

that he embodied the sovereignty of his people. Alarmed by such changes,

the king’s brother, the count of Artois, went into exile after the October

Days, and was soon followed by more than 20,000 other emigres, most of

whom were nobles, other people of means, and clergymen.

The Assembly turned its attention to reforming the Church. The decrees

of August had ended the unpopular tithe payments to the Church, and

now the Assembly looked to the Church’s wealth to help resolve the

state’s mounting financial crisis. On October 10, Charles-Maurice de Tal­

leyrand (1754-1838), who had entered the priesthood at the insistence of

his family and had been consecrated bishop early in 1789, proposed that

Church property become “national properties” (biens nattonaux). After

the Assembly narrowly passed Talleyrand’s measure on November 2, some

400 million francs in Church property—roughly 10 percent of the nation’s