Insurrection of 10 August 1792
The Insurrection of the 10th of August 1792 has an unlikely accelerant: a foreign general's miscalculation. On the 1st of August, news reached Paris that the allied Prussian and Austrian commander had issued the Brunswick Manifesto. His document promised "unforgettable vengeance" on Paris if the royal family were harmed. The threat was designed to protect King Louis XVI. It helped destroy him. In the days that followed, the revolutionary sections of Paris moved from argument to ultimatum to action. How had the relationship between the King and his capital deteriorated so completely? And who were the men who had been waiting for exactly this moment?
On the 20th of April 1792, the Kingdom of France declared war on Austria. The opening battles were disastrous. The Royal Army had been hollowed out by mutinies and the departure of officers who had emigrated. Prussia then allied with Austria and declared war on France on the 13th of June. Blame for these early defeats fell on the King and his ministers, whom critics called the Austrian Committee, and then on the Girondin party.
On the 27th of May, the Legislative Assembly passed a decree ordering the deportation of any priest denounced by twenty citizens. On the 29th of May, it dissolved the King's Constitutional Guard, falsely alleging it was staffed by aristocrats. On the 8th of June, it voted to establish a camp of 20,000 federes near Paris. Louis vetoed every decree and dismissed the Girondist ministers, replacing them with constitutional monarchists known as Feuillants. The breach between the King and the Assembly grew sharper.
Lafayette wrote to the Assembly on the 16th of June, urging the suppression of "anarchists" and political clubs in the capital. Six days later, the Assembly declared la patrie est en danger. Banners appeared in the public squares. They warned of foreign armies threatening to spread "like a destroying torrent" across France, to ravage the harvest and murder those held dearest. The volunteers who read those banners would soon find their way to the Jacobin clubs already recruiting them.
Georges Jacques Danton, thirty-two years old and a barrister by training, had never sat in either of France's new assemblies. Yet he was the ruling spirit of the insurrection. He led the Cordeliers, a republican club popular in working-class Paris. Its formal title was the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Around him gathered Maximilien Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Fabre d'Eglantine, and Jean-Paul Marat, their work driven forward by the fear of foreign invasion.
Charles Jean Marie Barbaroux, a Girondin, had summoned some 500 men from Marseille specifically for what was being planned in Paris. Volunteers and federes arrived in the capital constantly, most on their way to join the army. The Jacobin clubs screened those who lingered, enlisting the ones who were useful. The historian Francois Mignet recorded that an insurrection had been set for the 26th of July. It was "badly contrived" and Petion managed to prevent it. A second attempt, timed to coincide with the Marseille federes' passage toward the camp at Soissons, also failed. The decisive blow was set for the 10th of August.
On the 3rd of August, Jerome Petion de Villeneuve addressed the Legislative Assembly on behalf of the commune and the sections. He called openly for an end to the monarchy. Five days later, the Assembly debated charges against Lafayette. He was acquitted. Those who had voted for him were hissed, pursued from the building, and in some cases subjected to death threats and invasions of their homes. The minister of justice wrote to the Assembly president that law had become "powerless." Without prompt help from the legislature, the government could no longer be held responsible for order. Forty-seven of Paris's forty-eight sections had already moved beyond persuasion.
The section of the Quinze-vingts set a deadline on the 8th of August. Dethrone the King by midnight, it declared, or the tocsin would ring and the Tuileries would be attacked. Nearly every section in Paris backed the position. Petion told the Legislative Assembly that the sections had "resumed their sovereignty" and that he had no power over the people other than persuasion.
On the night of the 9th of August, a new revolutionary Paris Commune seized control of the Hotel de Ville, the seat of city government. The Jacobins' plan was straightforward: dissolve the departement of Paris, dismiss Petion, install an insurrectionary commune, and then assault the Tuileries. By dawn, the assault was ready to begin.
Louis XVI heard gunfire from the manege where the Legislative Assembly met. He wrote on a scrap of paper: "The King orders the Swiss to lay down their arms at once, and to retire to their barracks." As the note made its way to the palace, Louis and the royal family crossed to the Legislative Assembly for shelter. The Swiss officers received the order in the middle of heavy fighting. To obey meant near-certain death, and they did not immediately comply. Ammunition was running low and casualties were mounting. When the note was finally acted upon, the main body of Swiss Guards fell back through the palace. They retreated under fire through the Tuileries Garden at the rear of the building.
The retreat ended near the central Round Pond. Broken into smaller groups, the guardsmen were slaughtered. About sixty sought shelter in the Parliament House. They were taken prisoner to the Hotel de Ville and put to death by the crowd there, beneath the statue of Louis XIV. The victims also included male courtiers and palace staff. The Swiss Guards' red coats made them conspicuous targets; those in plainer dress had a better chance of escape.
The total losses on the King's side came to perhaps 800. Some 400 of the attackers also died in the fighting. Of the 900 Swiss on duty at the palace, roughly 300 survived. A further 300 had been sent to Normandy a few days before the insurrection to escort grain convoys, and they escaped the massacre entirely. The commander of all Swiss mercenaries in French service, Louis-Auguste-Augustin d'Affry, had been absent that day due to illness. He reported on the 12th of November that about 300 of his men had been killed at the Tuileries. Of those who survived the fighting, an estimated 200 would die later, in prison of wounds or during the September Massacres.
Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan described what happened to the women left behind after the royal family departed. Only Princess de Lamballe and Madame de Tourzel had accompanied the royal family when it left. The remaining ladies-in-waiting were gathered together in a room in the queen's apartment. When the mob arrived, a man stepped forward in Petion's name: "Spare the women! Don't disgrace the nation!" The ladies-in-waiting were then escorted to prison.
Pauline de Tourzel's memoir provides a second account of those same moments. When the mob entered the chamber, the Princesse de Tarente stepped forward and approached one of the rebels. She asked his protection for her colleagues Madame and Pauline de Tourzel. His reply was direct: "We do not fight with women; go, all of you, if you choose." The remaining ladies departed the palace in the same way, and all passed safely out. Campan also noted two maids stationed just outside the room; neither was harmed, even as a male member of the staff was murdered beside them.
No female members of the court appear to have been killed in the massacre. The accounts of Campan and Pauline de Tourzel capture what happened inside the palace that day, in a space where no official record was being kept.
Six weeks after the insurrection, on the 21st of September 1792, the new National Convention formally abolished the French monarchy. The republic was established the following day, as one of the Convention's first acts.
Up to 350 of the Swiss Guards who survived the fighting eventually enlisted in the Revolutionary Army of the First French Republic. Others joined the counter-revolutionary forces in the War in the Vendee. In 1817, the Swiss Federal Diet awarded 389 survivors the commemorative medal Treue und Ehre, meaning Loyalty and Honor.
The day is still known to historians of the French Revolution as "the 10th of August," or sometimes "the Second Revolution." The 389 men who received their medal in 1817 had survived the single morning that made both names apt.
Common questions
What was the Insurrection of 10 August 1792?
The Insurrection of the 10th of August 1792 was the storming of the Tuileries Palace in Paris. The National Guard of the Paris Commune and federes from Marseille and Brittany led the assault. The monarchy was abolished six weeks later, on the 21st of September 1792.
Who led the Insurrection of 10 August 1792?
The ruling spirit of the insurrection was Georges Jacques Danton, a thirty-two-year-old barrister and leader of the Cordeliers club. His circle included Maximilien Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Fabre d'Eglantine, and Jean-Paul Marat.
What happened to the Swiss Guards during the Insurrection of 10 August 1792?
Of the 900 Swiss Guards on duty at the Tuileries Palace, roughly 300 survived the fighting. Most of those who retreated were cut down near the central Round Pond in the Tuileries Garden. About 60 taken prisoner at the Parliament House were put to death at the Hotel de Ville, beneath the statue of Louis XIV.
What was the Brunswick Manifesto and how did it relate to the Insurrection of 10 August 1792?
The Brunswick Manifesto was issued on the 1st of August 1792 by the commander of the allied Prussian and Austrian armies. It threatened "unforgettable vengeance" on Paris if the French royal family were harmed. Rather than deterring the insurrectionists, it intensified popular hostility toward Louis XVI and accelerated the planning of the assault.
What did the Insurrection of 10 August 1792 lead to?
The insurrection led directly to the abolition of the French monarchy on the 21st of September 1792, six weeks after the Tuileries was stormed. The new National Convention established a republic the following day.
How many people died in the Insurrection of 10 August 1792?
Total losses on the King's side came to perhaps 800. Some 400 of the attackers also died in the fighting. Of the Swiss Guards who survived the battle, an estimated 200 more died later, in prison of wounds or during the September Massacres that followed.
All sources
5 references cited across the entry
- 1BookFrench Revolutionary Infantryman 1791–1802Terry Crowdy — Bloomsbury — 2003
- 4BookNationalizing France's ArmyChristopher J. Tozzi — University of Virginia Press — 2016
- 5BookLes Suisses au Service de la FranceJerome Bodin — Albin Michel — 1988