Insurrection of 10 August 1792

The Tuileries Palace, Louis XVI's residence at the time of the insurrection

The king had failed to buy off the popular leaders. According to Malouet, thirty-seven thousand livres had been paid to Pétion and Santerre for worthless promises to stop the insurrection. He rejected the last-minute advice, not only of Vergniaud and Guadet, now alarmed by a turn of affairs they brought about and also of his loyal old minister Malesherbes, to abdicate the throne. He was determined to defend the Tuileries. His supporters had anticipated and prepared for the attack long beforehand, and were confident of success. A plan of defense, drawn up by a professional soldier, had been adopted by the Paris department on 25 June: for it was their official duty to safeguard the Executive Power. The palace was easy to defend. It was garrisoned by the only regular troops on either side—950 veteran Swiss mercenaries of the Gardes Suisse; these were backed by 930 gendarmes, 2,000 national guards, and 200–300 Chevaliers de Saint Louis, and other royalist volunteers.[20] Five thousand men should have been an ample defense; though it appears that, by some oversight, they were seriously short of ammunition. Police spies reported to the commune that underground passages had been constructed by which additional troops could be secretly introduced from their barracks.[18] Mandat, the commander of the National Guard, was not very sure of his forces, but the tone of his orders was so resolute that it seemed to steady the troops. He had stationed some troops on the Pont Neuf so as to prevent a junction between the insurgents on the two sides of the river, which could prevent any combined movement on their part.[19]

Louis XVI inspecting loyal troops

Pétion, the mayor of Paris, Roederer the prosecutor of the Paris department, and Mandat, the commander of the National Guard and the officer in charge of the troops detailed for the defense of the Tuileries. Pétion professed that he had to come to defend the royal family; but at about two a.m., hearing himself threatened by a group of royalist gunners, he obeyed summons to the Parliament-house, reported that all precautions had been taken to keep the peace, and retired to the Mairie, where he was confined on the orders of the Insurrectional Commune. Roederer's first act was to assure the royal family that there would be no attack. His second act, when a series of bulletins from Blondel, the secretary of the department, made it clear that an attack was imminent, was to persuade Louis to abandon the defense of the palace and to put himself under the protection of the assembly. Mandat, after seeing to the defense of the palace, was persuaded by Roederer (in the third and fatal mistake of the Tuileries defense) to obey a treacherous summons from the Town Hall.[21] Mandat knew nothing of the formation of the Insurrectional Commune, and thus he departed without any escort. He was put under arrest, and shortly after murdered. His command was transferred to Santerre.[19]

At about seven a.m. the head of the federal column was seen debouching on the back of the palace, there was no one to order the defense. Louis, sleepily reviewing his garrison, "in full dress, with his sword at his side, but with the powder falling out his hair," was greeted by some of the National Guards with cries of "Vive la nation!" and "A bas le véto!". Louis made no reply and went back to the Tuileries. Behind him, quarrels were breaking out in the ranks. The gunners declared they would not fire on their brethren.[19]

Hating violence, and dreading bloodshed, Louis listened willingly to Roederer's suggestion that he should abandon the defense of the palace. The queen urged in vain that they should stay and fight. Before even a single shot had been fired, the royal family were in retreat across the gardens to the door of the Assembly. "Gentlemen," said the king, "I come here to avoid a great crime; I think I cannot be safer than with you." "Sire," replied Vergniaud, who filled the chair, "you may rely on the firmness of the national assembly. Its members have sworn to die in maintaining the rights of the people, and the constituted authorities." The king then took his seat next to the president. But Chabot reminded him that the assembly could not deliberate in the presence of the king, and Louis retired with his family and ministers into the reporter's box behind the president.[22] There, the king was given a seat and he listened, with his customary air of bland indifference, whilst the deputies discussed his fate. The queen sat at the bar of the House, with the Dauphin on her knees.[21]

Print of the Tuileries attack, (musée de la Révolution française).

The incentive for resistance fell away with the king's departure. The means of defense had been diminished by the departure of a detachment of National Guardsmen who escorted the royal family to the National Assembly. The gendarmerie left their posts, crying "Vive la nation!", and the National Guard's inclination began to move towards the insurgents. On the right bank of the river, the battalions of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and, on the left, those of the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, the Bretons, and the Marseilles fédérés, marched forth as freely as if going to parade. At many places that had been ordered guarded, no resistance was put up at all, like at the Arcade Saint-Jean, the passages of the bridges, alongside the quays, and in the court of the Louvre. An advance guard consisting of men, women, and children, all armed with cutters, cudgels, and pikes, spread over the abandoned Carrousel, and around eight o'clock the advance column, led by Westermann, was in front of the palace.[23]

Staircase faceoff.

The assault on the Palace began at eight o'clock in the morning. As per the King's orders, the regulars of the Swiss Guard had retired into the interior of the building, and the defense of the courtyard had been left to the National Guard. The Marseillais rushed in, fraternized with the gunners of the National Guard, reached the vestibule, ascended the grand staircase, and called on the Swiss Guard to surrender. "Surrender to the Nation!", shouted Westermann in German. "We should think ourselves dishonored!" was the reply.[24] "We are Swiss, the Swiss do not part with their arms but with their lives. We think that we do not merit such an insult. If the regiment is no longer wanted, let it be legally discharged. But we will not leave our post, nor will we let our arms be taken from us."[23]

The Swiss filled the windows of the château and stood motionless. The two bodies confronted each other for some time, without either of them making a definitive move. A few of the assailants advanced amicably, and, in what was taken by the revolutionaries to be a gesture of encouragement, some of the Swiss threw some cartridges from the windows as a token of peace. The insurgents penetrated as far as the vestibule, where they were met by a less friendly group of Swiss defenders of the château, commanded by officers of the Court.[25] The two bodies of troops remained facing each other on the staircase for forty-five minutes. A barrier separated them, and there the combat began; it is unknown which side took the initiative. [26] The Swiss, firing from above, cleaned out the vestibule and the courts, rushed down into the square and seized the cannon; the insurgents scattered out of range. The Marseillais, nevertheless, rallied behind the entrances of the houses on the Carrousel, threw cartridges into the courts of the small buildings and set them on fire. Then the Swiss attacked, stepped over the corpses, seized the cannon, recovered possession of the royal entrance, crossed the Place du Carrousel, and even carried off the guns drawn up there.[24][27] As at the Bastille, the cry of "Treachery!" went up. The attackers assumed that they had been drawn into a deliberate ambush and henceforth the Swiss were the subject of violent hatred on the part of sans-culottes.[28][29]

Louis XVI order to surrender

At that moment the battalions of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine arrived, and the reinforced insurgents pushed the Swiss back into the palace. Louis, hearing from the manége the sound of firing, wrote on a scrap of paper: "The king orders the Swiss to lay down their arms at once, and to retire to their barracks." To obey this order in the midst of heavy fighting meant almost certain death and the Swiss officers in command did not immediately act upon it. However, the position of the Swiss Guard soon became untenable as their ammunition ran low and casualties mounted. The King's note was then produced and the defenders were ordered to disengage. The main body of Swiss Guards fell back through the palace and retreated under fire through the gardens at the rear of the building. They were brought to a halt near the central Round Pond, broken into smaller groups and slaughtered.[30] Some sought sanctuary in the Parliament House: about sixty were surrounded, taken as prisoners to the Town Hall, and put to death by the crowd there, beneath the statue of Louis XIV.[31] Out of the nine hundred Swiss only three hundred survived, and of these an estimated two hundred either died of their wounds in prison or during the September Massacres that followed.[32]

The victims of the massacre also included some of the male courtiers and members of the palace staff, although being less conspicuous than the red-coated Swiss Guards others were able to escape.  No female members of the court seem to have been killed during the massacre. According to Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan, after the royal family left the palace only in the company of Princess de Lamballe and Madame de Tourzel, the remaining ladies-in-waiting were gathered in a room in the queen's apartment, and when they were spotted, a man prevented an attack upon them by exclaiming, in the name of Pétion: "Spare the women! Don't disgrace the nation!"[33] As the queen's entire household was gathered in her apartment, this may also have included female servants. Campan also mentioned two maids outside of this room, neither of whom was killed despite a male member of the staff being murdered beside them.[33] The ladies-in-waiting were, according to Campan, "escorted to prison."[33] This is more or less confirmed in the memoirs of Pauline de Tourzel, who states that when the mob entered the chamber where the ladies-in-waiting were gathered, the Princesse de Tarente approached one of the rebels and asked for his protection for her colleagues Madame de Ginestous and Pauline de Tourzel, upon which he replied: "We do not fight with women; go, all of you, if you choose". [34] Following this example, the rest of the ladies-in-waiting departed the palace in about the same way,[33] and all passed safely out.[34]

The total losses on the king's side were perhaps eight hundred. On the side of the insurgents, three hundred and seventy-six were either killed or wounded. Eighty-three of these were fédérés, and two hundred and eighty-five members of these were the National Guard: common citizens from every branch of the trading and working classes of Paris, including hair-dressers, harness-makers, carpenters, joiners, house-painters, tailors, hatters, boot-makers, locksmiths, laundry-men, and domestic servants. Two female combatants were among the wounded.[31]

The insurgents at Legislative Assembly

Over half of the Legislative Assembly's members fled and on the evening 10 August only 284 deputies were in their seats.[37] The Assembly looked on anxiously at the vicissitudes of the struggle. So long as the issue was doubtful, Louis XVI was treated like a king. As soon as the insurrection was definitely victorious, the Assembly announced the suspension of the King. The King was placed under a strong guard. The Assembly would have liked to assign him the Luxembourg Palace, but the insurgent Commune demanded that he should be taken to the Temple, a smaller prison, which would be easier to guard.[8]

14 July had saved the Constitutional Assembly, 10 August passed sentence on the Legislative Assembly: the day's victors intended to dissolve the Assembly and keep power in their own hands. But because the new Commune, composed of unknowns, hesitated to alarm the provinces, the Girondins were kept and the Revolution was mired in compromise. The Assembly remained for the time being but recognized the Commune, increased through elections to 288 members. The Assembly appointed a provisional Executive Council and put Monge and Lebrun-Tondu on it, along with several former Girondin ministers. The Assembly voted that the Convention should be summoned and elected by universal suffrage to decide on the future organization of the State.[38] One of its first acts was to abolish the monarchy.[2]

With the fall of the Tuileries, the face of Parisian society underwent an abrupt change. The August insurrection greatly increased sans-culotte influence in Paris. Whereas the old Commune had been predominantly middle class, the new one contained twice as many artisans as lawyers—and the latter were often obscure men, very different from the brilliant barristers of 1789. Moreover, the Commune itself was little more than "a sort of federal parliament in a federal republic of 48 states". It had only a tenuous control over the Sections, which began practicing the direct democracy of Rousseau. "Passive" citizens were admitted to meetings, justices of the peace and police officers dismissed and the assemblée générale of the Section became, in some cases, a "people's court", while a new comité de surveillance hunted down counter-revolutionaries. For the Parisian nobility, it was 10 August 1792 rather than 14 July 1789 that marked the end of the ancien régime.[37]

The victors of 10 August were concerned with establishing their dictatorship. The Commune silenced the opposition press, closed the toll gates, and seized a number of refractory priests and aristocratic notables. On 11 August the Legislative Assembly gave municipalities the authority to arrest suspects.[39] The volunteers were preparing to leave to the front and the rumors spread rapidly that their departure was to be the signal for prisoners to stage an uprising. The wave of executions in prisons followed, what later was known as The September Massacres.[40]

The Lion Monument in Lucerne in memory of the Swiss Guards.
Text reads: HELVETIORUM FIDEI AC VIRTUTI (To the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss)

To convince the revolutionaries that the insurrection of 10 August had decided nothing, the Prussian army crossed the French frontier on the 16th. A week later the powerful fortress of Longwy fell so quickly that Vergniaud declared it to "have been handed over to the enemy." By the end of the month the Prussians were at Verdun, the last fortress barring the road to Paris. In the capital, there was a well-justified belief that Verdun would offer no more than a token resistance. The war, which had appeared to bring the triumph of the Revolution, now seemed likely to lead it to disaster.[41]

On 2 September the alarm gun was fired and drums beat the citizens to their Sections again. The walls of Paris were plastered with recruiting posters whose opening sentence, "To arms, citizens, the enemy is at our gates!" was taken literally by many readers. In the Assembly, Danton concluded the most famous of all his speeches: "De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace, et la France est sauvée!" (Audacity, and yet more audacity, and always audacity, and France will be saved!) Once more the sans-culottes responded and in the next three weeks, 20,000 marched from Paris for the defence of the Revolution.[42]