The hunger and despair of the market women was the original impetus for the march, but what started as a search for bread soon took on a much more ambitious goal. The Hôtel de Ville had already opened its plentiful stores to the rioters, but they remained unsatisfied: they wanted not just one meal but the assurance that bread would once again be plentiful and cheap. Famine was a real and ever-present dread for the lower strata of the Third Estate, and rumors of an "aristocrats' plot" to starve the poor were rampant and readily believed.