Champ de Mars Massacre (1791): National Guard Fires on Crowd

The Champ de Mars massacre took place in Paris on 17 July 1791, when the National Guard under the marquis de Lafayette opened fire on a crowd that had gathered to sign a petition demanding the removal of King Louis XVI. Coming weeks after the royal family’s failed escape, the shooting deepened the split between moderate constitutional monarchists and the radicals of the French Revolution. It also turned two early heroes of 1789, Lafayette and the mayor Jean-Sylvain Bailly, into figures of hatred for the Paris crowd.

Background: after Varennes

In June 1791 the royal family tried to flee Paris and was caught at Varennes. The Flight to Varennes convinced many Parisians that Louis XVI could not be trusted with the constitution then being completed. Yet most deputies in the National Assembly feared that removing the King would bring chaos and war. On 15 and 16 July they adopted the fiction that Louis had been abducted and confirmed that he would be restored once he accepted the constitution.

Radicals reacted with fury. The Cordeliers Club, a popular political society associated with Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins, called for the King’s deposition. The more moderate Jacobin Club split over the issue: on 16 July most of its deputies left to found the Feuillants Club, which supported the constitutional monarchy.

What happened on 17 July

On Sunday 17 July a petition calling for the King’s removal was placed on the Altar of the Fatherland, a large raised structure built on the Champ de Mars for the Festival of the Federation a year earlier. Thousands of people, many of them artisans and shopkeepers with their families, came to read and sign it. Several thousand signatures were eventually collected.

Early that morning, two men were found hiding beneath the altar. Suspected of planning mischief or spying on women from below, they were seized by a crowd and killed. News of the killings reached the city authorities and convinced them that the gathering was dangerous.

In the afternoon the municipal council, led by Mayor Bailly, proclaimed martial law and raised the red flag that signalled it. In the early evening Bailly and Lafayette marched to the Champ de Mars with several thousand National Guardsmen. Some in the crowd threw stones. The guardsmen fired, first apparently into the air and then into the crowd, and cavalry charged. People fled in panic across the open ground.

Casualties

The death toll is disputed. The municipality reported around a dozen dead, while radical journalists such as Jean-Paul Marat claimed that hundreds had been killed. Most historians accept an estimate of roughly 12 to 50 deaths, with many more wounded.

Consequences

In the weeks that followed, the authorities moved against the radical movement. Arrest warrants were issued, several popular newspapers were suppressed and the Cordeliers Club closed its doors for a time. Danton left for England, and Marat went into hiding.

The repression was short-lived. Popular societies soon revived, and the memory of the shooting fuelled hostility towards the Feuillants and the moderate leadership. In September 1791 Louis XVI accepted the constitution, but the new Legislative Assembly that met in October inherited a deeply divided political scene.

The massacre marked the beginning of a decline for its two main figures. Lafayette left command of the National Guard in October 1791 and, after the storming of the Tuileries in August 1792, fled to the Austrian Netherlands, where he was captured and imprisoned for five years. Bailly resigned as mayor in November 1791. During the Reign of Terror he was tried and guillotined on 12 November 1793, the execution being carried out on ground near the Champ de Mars.

Legacy

The Champ de Mars massacre showed that the Revolution’s own institutions could turn their weapons on the people of Paris. For republicans it became a symbol of the betrayal of 1789 by the moderate leadership, and it helped make the idea of a republic, almost unthinkable two years earlier, a serious political demand.

Contemporary prints, such as Jean-Louis Prieur’s series of revolutionary scenes, kept the image of the shooting in public memory. The site itself was transformed in the following century, and the Eiffel Tower now stands at its north-western end.

Timeline

• 1790, 14 July: The Festival of the Federation is held around the new Altar of the Fatherland on the Champ de Mars.
• 1791, 20 to 21 June: The royal family’s flight ends in arrest at Varennes.
• 1791, 15 to 16 July: The National Assembly confirms the King’s inviolability; the Feuillants split from the Jacobins.
• 1791, 17 July, morning: Two men found under the altar are killed by a crowd.
• 1791, 17 July, evening: Martial law is declared and the National Guard fires on the crowd.
• 1791, 14 September: Louis XVI swears to uphold the constitution.
• 1793, 12 November: Jean-Sylvain Bailly is guillotined in Paris.

Why it matters

The Champ de Mars massacre was the first violent clash between the revolutionary authorities and the Parisian popular movement. It discredited the moderate leaders of 1789 and pushed many ordinary Parisians towards republicanism, preparing the ground for the overthrow of the monarchy in 1792.