Versailles is invoked as the destination of the march in the “Last Days of October,” an episode through which the text shows how the significance of a past event depends on the historical projects that later illuminate it. The march links the taking of the Bastille to a possible assertion of popular power, while leaving that interpretation open rather than definitive.

Versailles in the Historical Example

The passage names the march on Versailles as a possible consequence of the taking of the Bastille in 1789. It asks whether the Bastille was merely a popular outburst against a partly dismantled fortress, later made glorious by the Convention, or the first manifestation of popular strength: an event through which the populace asserted itself, gained confidence, and put itself in a position to march on Versailles during the “Last Days of October.” Versailles thus enters the argument not through a description of the place, but as the destination that gives one interpretation of the earlier event its historical reach.

Meaning and Historical Perspective

The example does not settle which interpretation is correct. It emphasizes that the historian, too, is historical, interpreting the past in light of personal and social projects. The fixed fact that the Bastille was taken in 1789 remains, but its significance—whether an isolated revolt or the beginning of consequential popular action—does not. The march on Versailles serves as a hinge in this contrast: it supports a reading of the Bastille’s fall as an opening toward further collective action, without making that reading final.

The Past in Suspense

The discussion extends this uncertainty from societies to persons: both have a past whose meaning remains open to reinterpretation. The text calls the social past perpetually “in suspense” and connects the ongoing reappraisal of the past to the freedom of the For-itself. Versailles therefore matters here as part of an example of historical meaning being continually constituted, rather than as a setting whose description or independent history is supplied.