September Massacres
1792 CE
The September Massacres refer to a wave of mob violence that overtakes Paris in late summer 1792, during the French Revolution.
By the time it had subsided, half the prison population of Paris has been executed: some 1,200 trapped prisoners, including many women and young boys.
Sporadic violence, in particular against the Roman Catholic Church, will continue throughout France for nearly a decade to come.
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Danton and his friends are assisted in their work by the fear of invasion, for the allied army was at length mustering on the frontier.
The Assembly declares the country in danger.
All the regular troops in or near Paris are sent to the front.
Volunteers and fédérés are constantly arriving in Paris, and, although most go on to join the army, the Jacobins enlist those who are suitable for their purpose, especially some five hundred whom Barbaroux, a Girondin, had summoned from Marseille.
At the same time the National Guard—up to now middle-class in character—is opened to those from the lower classes.
All of Paris is now against the king and hopes that the Assembly will depose the king, but the Assembly hesitates.
Brunswick's famous declaration of July 25, 1792, announcing that the allies will enter France to restore the royal authority and will visit the Assembly and the city of Paris with military execution if any further outrage is offered to the king, heats the republican spirit to fury, motivating the revolutionary army and government to oppose the invaders by any means necessary.It is resolved to strike the decisive blow on August 10.
On the night of August 9, a new revolutionary Paris Commune takes possession of the Hôtel de Ville.
Nobles, priests, bishops and other alleged counterrevolutionaries are murdered in the prisons of Paris in the September Massacres.
The first instance of massacre occur when twenty-four non-juring priests are being transported to the prison of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which has become a national prison of the revolutionary government.
They are attacked by a mob that quickly kills them all as they are trying to escape into the prison, then mutilate the bodies, "with circumstances of barbarity too shocking to describe" according to the British diplomatic dispatch.
Of two hundred and eighty-four prisoners, one hundred and thirty-five are killed, twenty-seven are transferred, eighty-six are set free, and thirty-six have uncertain fates.
In the afternoon of September 2, one hundred and fifty priests in the convent of Carmelites are massacred, mostly by sans-culottes.
On September 3 and 4, groups break into other Paris prisons, where they murder the prisoners, who, some fear, are counterrevolutionaries who will aid the invading Prussians.
From September 2 to 7, summary trials take place in all Paris prisons.
Almost fourteen hundred prisoners are condemned and executed, in truth half the detained persons from the previous days.
Among the victims are more than two hundred priests, almost a hundred Swiss guards and many political prisoners and aristocrats.
Religious personalities also figure prominently among the victims: the massacres occur during a time of great and rising resentment against the Roman Catholic Church, which eventually leads to the temporary dechristianization of France.
Restif de la Bretonne sees the bodies piled high in front of the Châtelet and witnesses atrocities that he will record in Les Nuits de Paris (1793).
A number of state prisoners awaiting trial at Orléans are ordered to Paris and on the way are slaughtered at Versailles.
The Assembly offers a feeble resistance to these actions.
Danton can hardly be acquitted of connivance at them.
Roland hints disapproval, but does not venture more.
He with many other Girondins had been marked for slaughter in the original project.
The duc d’Orleans accepts the name Philippe Egalité and is elected as a delegate.
The elections to the Convention are by almost universal suffrage, but indifference or intimidation reduces the voters to a small number.
Many who had sat in the National Constituent Assembly and many more who had sat in the Legislative Assembly are returned.
The Convention meets on September 20 and becomes the new de facto government of France.
Louis is stripped of all of his titles and honors, and from this date is known is Citoyen Louis Capet.
Members of the Commune and the most radical deputies, who will soon form the group known as the Mountain, argue for Louis's immediate execution.
The legal background of many of the deputies makes it difficult for a great number of them to accept an execution without the due process of law, and it is voted that the deposed monarch be tried before the National Convention, the organ that houses the representatives of the sovereign people.
In many ways, the former king's trial represents the trial of the monarchy by the revolution.
It is seen as if with the death of one comes the life of the other.
There are two events that had led to the trial for Louis XVI.
First, after the Battle of Valmy on September 22, 1792, General Dumouriez had negotiated with the Prussians who evacuated France.
Louis could no longer be considered a hostage or as leverage in negotiations with the invading forces.
Second, in November 1792, the armoire de fer (iron chest) incident had taken place at the Tuileries Palace, when the existence, in the king's bedroom, of the hidden safe containing compromising documents and correspondence, was revealed by François Gamain, the Versailles locksmith who had installed it.
Gamain had gone to Paris on November 20 and told Jean-Marie Roland, Girondinist Minister of the Interior, who had ordered it opened.
The resulting scandal had served to discredit the king.
Following these two events the Girondins can no longer keep the king from trial.
On December 26, his counsel, Raymond Desèze, delivers Louis' response to the charges, with the assistance of François Tronchet and Malesherbes.
Before the trial starts and Louis mounts his defense to the Convention, he tells his lawyers that he knows he will be found guilty and be killed, but to prepare and act as though they can win.
He is resigned to and accepts his fate before the verdict is determined, but he is willing to fight to be remembered as a good king for his people.