The Reign of Terror 1793–1794: Leading the Angry Mob and Murdering Political Rivals. Part 8: L’Insurrection du 10 Août 1792
Fear can act as a great motivator for some, others it may control them, and very few are able to control their own, but fear in the form of an angry mob will only cause unquenchable destruction. Ever since the sans-culottes stormed into the Tuileries Palace on 20 June 1792, they no longer needed the politicians’ beckoning to sway an erroneous political view in order to riot. No longer did they need the political sanctions for violence, no longer did they listen to reason and logic, but only fear acted as the great motivator, the great controller, the great philosophe, and the great unquenchable vengeance on anyone who opposed them. Leftwing politicians appeased them and attempted to guide them, but eventually found themselves in line for the guillotine because the only thing that the angry mob desires is death. The journalists played the most prominent role in cultivating and circulating fear since the Revolution’s inception, which Jean-Paul Marat became the infamous agitator, yet two men patiently waited and slowly accumulated respect and power: Maximilien Robespierre and Georges-Jacques Danton.
While Marat continually called for blood in his journal, Robespierre formed the radical leftwing Montagnard (mountain) political party to counter Brissot’s moderate Gironde party and began editing a Parisian journal, Défenseur de la Constitution, which he wrote 75% of the material. Danton was a leader in Parisian district politics, but slowly gained celebrity status in the Jacobin clubs and eventually became the Committee of Public Safety’s president. Following the early defeats in the war against Austria, the Assembly members blamed everyone except themselves. Brissot and his followers attempted to remove Robespierre from the Assembly through baseless accusations and vituperation, while Robespierre and his followers accused Brissot of inviting France’s enemies to conquer them through a declaration of war. Yet, Louis XVI was consistently the one person that everyone blamed their failures upon, and the easiest way to prevent Austria and Prussia from placing him back on the throne was to ignite an insurrection and send Louis to the guillotine.
Similar to every event thus far in the Revolution, the summer of 1792 to January 1793 became a chain reaction of scapegoating, fear, vengeance, and murder. Fear struck once again on 25 July 1792 with the Brunswick manifesto, issued by the Prussian Duke of Brunswick, designed to stir panic into revolutionary hearts and minds. The Dukes intentions were clear, once he invaded France and returned the royal family back onto the throne, he would slaughter every revolutionary. French citizens providing no resistance to the Prussian war machine were exempt from punishment, but with the Manifesto made public, Girondin right-wing journalists started to publish “Patriot” names for the Prussians to execute upon arrival (McPhee 2012, 124). With Parisians panicking, the Assembly decided to arm the citizens, where the masses joined the already present National Guard. Due to the Bastille Day anniversary on 14 July (Fête de la Fédération), many provincial national guardsmen came to Paris for a celebration (these soldiers came to be known as “Fédérés”). Tensions in Paris were already high when the Manifesto arrived on the 28th, but when the Marseilles National Guard finally arrived on 30 July 1792 singing La Marseillaise throughout the Parisian streets (originally titled “War Song of the Army of the Rhine” and declared the French National Anthem in 1795), the angry mob and all of Paris were emboldened. Translated to English, the words of the Marseillaise are as follows:
Arise, children of the Fatherland, our day of glory has arrived. Against us the bloody flag of tyranny is raised; the bloody flag is raised. Do you hear, in the countryside, The roar of those ferocious soldiers? They’re coming right into your arms to cut the throats of your sons, your comrades! To arms, citizens! Form your battalions let’s march, let’s march that their impure blood should water our fields. (Roberts 2020)
July occupied many establishments throughout Paris. The National Guard used the anniversary as an opportunity to raise troops for the front lines, the Jacobin Clubs launched a campaign to abolish the monarchy, the Assembly was only capable of arguing with each other and unable to solve current issues, and once again the angry mob found themselves suffocated with poverty and high bread prices. Along with grain prices rising due to natural supply and demand, sugar prices skyrocketed in the spring and summer following the 1791 St. Dominique slave rebellion (modern day Haiti), while town officials refused to fix prices similar to the Ancien Régime levels, causing food riots to become customary incidents. Angry mobs accused bakers of hoarding and unfair prices, which ended with them smashing shop windows, looting, and the occasional murder. The most common theme throughout the Revolution’s entirety is the angry mob’s capacity to destroy and murder those who disagree or resist their path. There was no coincidence that the angry mob, once joined with the national guardsmen from the provinces, considered themselves no longer a politician’s weapon, but a legitimate force that grew tired of the Legislative Assembly’s tolerance with a constitutional monarchy. Louis XVI caused their poverty; Louis let bread prices rise again; Louis bankrupted the country with wars in the Americas; Louis tried to silence the people in 1789 with troops gathering around Paris; Louis tried to flee the country to join the émigré army; Louis invited the Austrians and Prussians to invade the country; and not a single person took responsibility for their own actions but blamed everything on Louis XVI. With this mindset, combined with fear from the Brunswick Manifesto, the angry mob took the initiative.
The angry mob’s catalyst came on 8 August 1792 when the Assembly defied public pressure to indict Lafayette for treason. Still on the front lines, Lafayette would flee to enemy lines within a week’s time. Up till this point, left-wing politicians encouraged the angry mob to suppress any injustice by any means possible, yet not even they expected the angry mob to operate a successful insurrection. Known as the Insurrection of 10 August 1792, the Storming of the Tuileries Palace, or the Second Revolution, this day morphed the sans-culottes from political weapon to political authority. The tocsin rang at midnight, every citizen in Paris was acutely aware that the morning would only bring disaster for some, glory for others, but upheaval for all. The sans-culottes marched onto the Tuileries Palace at nine on the August 10th morning, joined by the fédérés, the angry mob numbered close to 20,000 insurrectionists. Even though Louis and his family escaped to the Assembly, 900 Swiss Guards remained at the palace to confront the ravaging mob. At the day’s end the angry mob killed 600 Swiss Guards, and while some guards attempted to retreat, “they were pursued by mobs of bystanders without firearms who hacked them to death with knives, pikes, and hatchets, and tore their uniforms to pieces to make trophies (Doyle 2002, 189). The angry mob ransacked the palace, tore down anything resembling royalty throughout Paris (even street signs with “King” in the name), and with the insurrection successful, the sans-culottes formed the Paris Commune which took control of the government until a new Assembly was elected six weeks later; this day marked the French monarchy’s denouement and Louis was imprisoned. Had Louis remained at the palace during the Insurrection, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the angry mob would have joyfully cut off his head and paraded it through the streets on a pike. In the Assembly itself, any remaining conservative politician avoided attending future meetings all together as Jean- Marie Rivoallan wrote, “fear kept a great many deputies away or in hiding,” and another observer commented, “the patriot side of the hall is always more full than the opposite side. Those on the Right seem to take no part in the deliberations” (Tackett and Strick 2015, 195). The Storming of the Bastille and the Revolution’s first three years are considered the Bourgeoisie Revolution, but the Second Revolution of 10 August 1792 is none other than the Sans-Culottes’ Revolution.
Constantly moving from one place to the other to avoid arrest for sedition, the Insurrection and establishment of the Paris Commune allowed Jean-Paul Marat to come out of hiding and no longer an outlaw from this point till his assassination. On the evening of the Insurrection, Marat posted a placard which efficaciously announced, “A man who has been anathema for a long time escaped today from his underground hideout to try to consolidate the victory in your hands.” The placard continued with a list of goals for the angry mob to accomplish:
• Above all else, take the King and his wife and son hostage…Make it plain to him that the Austrians and Prussians have two weeks to permanently retreat to a line twenty miles beyond the border or his head will roll.
• Seize all of the ex-ministers and lock them up.
• Execute all the counterrevolutionary members of the Parisian General Staff.
• Expel all the antipatriotic officers from their battalions.
• Disarm the infected battalions.
• Arm all patriotic citizens and generously supply them with ammunition.
• Demand the convocation of a National Convention to put the King on trial and to reform the constitution; above all, its members must not be chosen by an electoral assembly but by the direct vote of the people. (Conner 2012, 102–103)
The next six weeks remained a stalemate as the Legislative Assembly and the Paris Commune coexisted, but everyone knew that the Commune and their radical leftwing leadership was the governing body in charge, and with each passing moment Marat’s call for blood seemed more reasonable. Robespierre was appointed to the Commune along with his fellow Montagnard member, Georges-Jacques Danton, who was elected as the Minister of Justice, “and was brought in explicitly to keep the sansculottes happy” (Doyle, 190). Since the Revolution’s inception, Danton was a leader of intercity Parisian district politics, a rising celebrity Jacobin club member (specifically the Cordeliers club), Assembly member, sans-culottes influencer, and often found himself as Jean-Paul Marat’s patron and protector from arrest warrants. On one occasion during the early Revolution days, Danton threatened to call upon the vicious women to attack the National Guardsmen if they did not give up their search for Marat with sedition warrants. Danton would remain an important and outspoken component for the Revolution, while after the Insurrection Marat was appointed to the committee of surveillance, a subsidiary to the Paris Commune in charge of the prisons. Yet with the Austrians and Prussians advancing, fear still gripped the angry mob and while Marat oversaw prison surveillance — speculation, accusation, and massacre was inevitable.
Consumed with the notion that Austria and Prussia will eventually conquer Paris, speculation exacerbated the ever-present fear when terrifying news came from the front. The Duke of Brunswick successfully captured the fort at Longwy on 23 August and defeated the French forces at the Battle of Verdun on 29 August 1792 (roughly 162 miles from Paris). The news of Verdun would not reach Paris till September 2nd, but combined with the first French defeats in April 1792, these battles are considered the initial conflicts in the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797). The Assembly, already declaring on 11 July that the fatherland is in danger (“La patrie est en danger” acted similar to a call to arms/marshal law in Paris), reasserted their persecution of refractory priest after the 10 August Insurrection, while counterrevolutionary speculations and accusations became common place, but it was Danton’s speech on 2 September 1792 that put the angry mob to action. Speaking with great fervor to the Assembly and sans-culotte viewers, Danton spurred the angry mob to join the troops’ march to the front lines. Danton stood in front of the crowd as a larger-than-life figure, already regarded as a hero of the Revolution, he began his speech:
It seems a satisfaction for the ministers of a free people to announce to them that their country will be saved. All are stirred, all are enthused, all burn to enter the combat. You know that Verdun is not yet in the power of our enemies, and that its garrison swears to immolate the first who breathes a proposition of surrender. One portion of our people will guard our frontiers, another will dig and arm the entrenchments, the third with pikes will defend the interior of our cities. Paris will second these great efforts. The commissioners of the commune will solemnly proclaim to the citizens the invitation to arm and march to the defense of the country. At such a moment you can proclaim that the capital deserves the esteem of all France. At such a moment this national assembly becomes a veritable committee of war. We ask that you concur with us in directing this sublime movement of the people, by naming commissioners to second and assist all these great measures. We ask that anyone refusing to give personal service or to furnish arms shall meet the punishment of death. We ask that proper instructions be given to the citizens to direct their movements. We ask that carriers be sent to all the departments to notify them of the decrees that you proclaim here. The tocsin we shall sound is not the alarm signal of danger, it orders the charge on the enemies of France. [Applause.] To conquer we have need to dare, to dare again, ever to dare! And the safety of France is insured. (Copeland, Lamm, and McKenna 1999, 188–189)
The time to act finally arrived and the sans-culottes, foaming at the mouth, were ready to take their fury to a global scale. Even Marat finally acknowledged that the time for war was right when he wrote a weak before Danton’s famous speech, “a call for social unity! Suspend for the moment all our hatreds, put aside all our dissension, and silence all our petty emotions in order to unite against our common enemy” (Connor, 105). The call for unity soon became a common theme, but woe unto them whom disagreed with Marat’s version of unity. With resounding applause, Danton’s speech legitimized the need for total war, legitimized the Insurrection, legitimized Marat’s calls for executions, legitimized Louis’ imprisonment, and legitimized the September Massacres.
References
Conner, Clifford D. 2012. Jean Paul Marat: Tribune of the French Revolution. New York: Pluto Press.
Copeland, Lewis, Lawrence W. Lamm, and Stephen J. McKenna. 1999. The World’s Great Speeches. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications.
Doyle, William. 2002. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. 2nd ed. New York: University of Oxford Press.
McPhee, Peter, ed. 2012. Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life. Yale University Press.
Roberts, Maddy Shaw. 2020. “What are the lyrics to the French National Anthem, La Marseillaise — and what do they mean?” Classic FM. https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/periods-genres/national anthems/marseillaise-french-lyrics-meaning/
Tackett, Timothy, and James E. Strick. 2015. The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
