Irate over high food prices and chronic shortages, working-class women from the markets of Paris marched to the royal residence at the Palace of Versailles to protest.

Numbering in the thousands, the crowd of women commanded a unique respect: their demands for bread were met and Louis XVI of France was forced to leave his luxurious palace and return, most unwillingly, to Paris to preside "from the national home".

When the Reign of Terror began in 1793, the dangerously unpredictable market women were made unwelcome: in May they were excluded from their traditional seats in the spectator galleries of the National Convention, and only days later they were officially prohibited from any form of political assembly whatsoever.

"Thus deprived of active participation in politics, the market-women became the tricoteuses, or knitting-women, who used to take their seats at the Place de la Révolution, and watch the guillotine as they knitted.

"[2] In the 1965 movie The Art of Love while Casey (James Garner) is being tried for the alleged murder of his friend Paul (Dick Van Dyke) a tricoteuse sits among the public, knitting and yelling "To the guillotine!"