August 10, 1792, was a significant insurrectionary day of the French Revolution, during which the Parisians stormed the Tuileries Palace and ended the constitutional monarchy. It originated from a manifesto by the Duke of Brunswick, the leader of the Prussian army, who promised the revolutionaries severe reprisals if the royal family was threatened.
The Parisians responded with an insurrection that led to the seizure of the Tuileries Palace, where Louis XVI resided, following a violent battle that resulted in over 1000 deaths among the defenders. The king, who had sought refuge at the Legislative Assembly with his family, was suspended and imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple with them.
—>The Storming of the Tuileries Palace marked a turning point in the French Revolution. It symbolized the end of the constitutional monarchy and the rise of radical republican forces. The event resulted in the suspension of Louis XVI’s powers and paved the way for the establishment of the First French Republic.
1792: The King Alone with Divided Revolutionaries
Since his escape on June 20, 1791, Louis XVI had been isolated within the Tuileries Palace. Consequently, he lost all his supporters and embraced a bellicose policy, aiming to reclaim his throne once foreign armies quelled the revolution. The remaining aristocrats, advocates of absolute monarchy, had departed France, assembling partly in Coblence, where they orchestrated their return with assistance from foreign courts. Nevertheless, Louis XVI was acutely aware that this traditional nobility harbored ambitions to seize power forcibly, either by installing a puppet king or compelling him to abdicate in favor of the young and impressionable dauphin.
The king could hardly rely on the Feuillants (who gathered supporters of constitutional monarchy), who had gradually deprived the monarch of his powers since 1789 and who were very divided on the subject of war. The supporters of La Fayette were in favor, while those of Lameth refused any conflict that might fuel the revolutionary fire within. Despite Louis XVI’s obstruction, they still came close to it to escape possible reprisals from the Émigrés. Lafayette, on the other hand, dreamed of a return to the political stage from which he was excluded.
On April 20, 1792, the Legislative Assembly declared war on the King of Bohemia and Hungary with the King’s strong encouragement. The Girondins, through the voices of Brissot and Roland, the left wing of the Legislative Assembly, blindly plunged into war. Defending a liberal economic policy, they expected significant benefits from the exploitation of lands and ports in Northern Europe. Convinced of the victory of revolutionary troops, they saw it as a means to force the King to accept the revolution or to unmask him.
Through intimidation, they succeeded in imposing a Girondin ministry on the King, convinced that the sovereign would not dare to make such a serious decision as to dismiss his ministers if they did not give him their necessary countersignature for the veto’s application.
On May 17, 1792, the Girondin ministry became aware of the intrigues of the Feuillants and Lafayette, who communicated with the Emperor and explicitly promised to march on Paris and close the Jacobin Club. They also knew that the general refused to lead his armies to war. Lafayette and the Feuillants invited the King to resist. The Girondins preferred to conceal these maneuvers and negotiate with Lafayette. In these conditions, the king saw himself as the arbiter of the parties.
Despite Brissot’s confidence, the King dismissed the Girondin ministry on June 12. The Feuillants applauded; one of them, Adrien Duport, did not hesitate to advise the King on dictatorship after the dissolution of the Assembly. But the king did not intend to give them power nonetheless.
The Fatherland in Danger
The Girondins, wary of Louis XVI’s excessive use of his veto power, launched a vehement campaign against the King. With the mobilization and influence of Mayor Pétion and National Guard leader Santerre, they organized a demonstration at the Tuileries on June 20th. Workers and artisans from the suburbs flocked there en masse, demanding with violence that the King suspend his veto. Insulted and threatened, the King refused and rebuffed the maneuver with placidity.
Simultaneously, on the 29th, he rejected Lafayette’s outstretched hand, which proposed, under the pretext of a review of the National Guard, nothing less than a coup d’état. Subsequently, he appeared before the Assembly and demanded the dissolution of the Jacobins and measures against the “anarchists”; the royalist reaction to the events of the 20th was so strong that he was acclaimed there. In fact, Louis XVI played a reckless card, awaiting one thing: the arrival of foreign troops in Paris, despite repeated proposals from the Feuillants. He continued his policy of obstruction and intrigue, communicating with foreign courts.
Having missed his Eighteenth of Brumaire, Lafayette left Paris to join his army. His effigy was burned at the Palais-Royal. Faced with peril, the Jacobins united; Brissot and Robespierre demanded punishment for Lafayette; and in the Legislative Assembly, the Girondins circumvented a new royal veto by calling on the Federates from all departments to celebrate July 14th in Paris. Already, 500 Marseillais were on their way to the capital.
Faced with the advance of numerous troops toward the borders, on July 11th, the Assembly proclaimed “The Fatherland in Danger”: administrative bodies and municipalities sat permanently, new battalions of volunteers were raised, and already 15,000 Parisians enlisted. These exceptional measures aimed to exert popular and military pressure on the King, whom no one was fooled by his double-dealing.
It was in a frosty atmosphere that the royal couple attended the Federation Festival on the 14th before thousands of Federates. Indeed, the divided Feuillant ministry preferred to resign. Emigrant families’ weapons were burned there. No one shouted “Long live the King” anymore, but many spectators had written “Long live Pétion” in chalk on their hats.
It was then that the Girondins secretly contacted the court, hoping to regain the now-available ministry. From then on, they tried to smother “the regicidal factions that wanted to establish the Republic.” An unacceptable volte-face for the people who felt betrayed as the enemy threatened and issued a very clumsy ultimatum.
Parisian Insurrection
The Marquis de Limon, an émigré who supported Fersen, wrote and published the Brunswick Manifesto on July 25. This pamphlet promised to reduce Paris to ashes if the King were endangered. It was a thunderclap; indeed, even though the king’s intrigues were becoming less and less doubtful, it was an unequivocal confession of treason. This triggered a strong popular reaction outside of party actions.
The Parisian sections grumbled and unanimously sent Pétion (minus one section, namely 47 sections) to the Assembly to solemnly demand the deposition of the king. The Girondins vainly attempted to stifle the growing revolt, which was becoming more insistent. The Quinze-Vingt section (from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, one of the most revolutionary) threatened to sound the tocsin on August 10 if the king’s deposition was not pronounced. Meanwhile, the king called upon the Swiss guards from Rueil and Courbevoie to defend himself.
The Federates from all departments, composed of common people, gathered in committees to coordinate their movement. They were encouraged to stay in Paris after July 14 to pressure the king. Their committee regularly met at the carpenter Duplay’s place on Saint-Honoré Street, where Robespierre, who was very active among them, arranged lodgings for them with patriots, thus connecting them to the people who were rebelling. The sections and the Federates prepared together to march on the Tuileries.
This popular uprising occurred independently of the parties, although those who would soon be called the Montagnards supported and encouraged them to organize: Robespierre and Marat, who published a new appeal to the Federates urging them to action. No present or future political figure directly participated in the insurrection. Danton is often cited as the “man of August 10,” but he only returned to Paris from his house in Arcis-sur-Aube on the evening of August 9.
The Assembly was powerless: on August 8, it had absolved Lafayette; on the 9th, it dared not address the petition from the 47 sections regarding the king’s deposition and adjourned without debate at 7 p.m. In the sections, insurrectional slogans were distributed, and at 11 p.m., the tocsin rang.
August 10, 1792: The Taking of the Tuileries
During the night, Santerre stirs up the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and Alexandre stirs up the Faubourg Saint-Marceau, while the Marseille Federates are in turmoil. The sections send revolutionary commissioners to the Hôtel de Ville, who remove the legal municipality and establish the insurrectional commune. They ensure the passivity of Pétion and execute the Marquis de Mandat, commander of the national guard, which has recently been composed of inactive citizens (who do not pay the sufficient property qualification to vote).
The Sans-culottes from all sections gather at the Tuileries Palace. For the first time, they display the red flag, inscribed with “Martial Law of the Sovereign People against the Rebellion of the Executive Power.” It is a reprisal of July 17, 1791, when Lafayette and Bailly ordered shots fired on the unarmed people demanding the Republic. During that shooting, which resulted in 50 deaths, the National Guard raised the red flag of martial law.
Immediately, the national guard and the artillerymen aligned themselves with the insurgents, leaving only the Swiss guards and a few aristocrats to defend the king. Despite attempts at fraternization with the Swiss, zealous royalists opened fire. The insurgents are furious at this final betrayal and, with the help of the Brestois and Marseillais Federates, break the resistance of the palace defenders, which eventually falls. The insurgents suffered 1,000 deaths and wounds.
The Fall of the Monarchy
Upon the arrival of the demonstrators, the royal family fled the Tuileries Palace and sought refuge at the Assembly. Embarrassed and powerless, the latter declared their intention to protect the “established authorities” before decreeing the suspension of the king of France under the pressure of the victorious insurgents. They voted for the convocation of a national convention long demanded by Robespierre and criticized by Brissot. The king’s guard was entrusted to the insurrectionary commune, which imprisoned him in the temple.
Thus fell the throne after a thousand years of uninterrupted monarchy. But with the throne came its last defenders, the minority nobility, who had promised to lead and tame this revolution. Even the Girondin party, which sought to prevent this uprising by negotiating with the Court at the last moment, was weakened.
The passive citizens, the proletarians, and their spokespersons, the Montagnards, seized their revenge on July 17; they are the great victors of this day. August 10, 1792, is a revolution in itself; it is the advent of the Republic. Judged for treason, Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were guillotined the following year.