Storming of the Tuileries (1792): Fall of the French Monarchy

The storming of the Tuileries took place in Paris on 10 August 1792, when armed citizens of the city’s sections and volunteer soldiers from the provinces attacked the Tuileries Palace, the residence of King Louis XVI. After fierce fighting, in which most of the Swiss Guards defending the palace were killed, the Legislative Assembly suspended the King. The insurrection brought down the French monarchy and opened the most radical phase of the French Revolution.

Background: war and suspicion

By 1792 the constitutional monarchy set up in 1791 was in deep trouble. Trust in Louis XVI had never recovered from the Flight to Varennes, and on 20 April 1792 France declared war on Austria. The first campaigns went badly, and Prussia soon joined Austria.

In June the King vetoed two decrees: one against priests who refused the oath to the constitution, and another creating a camp of 20,000 provincial National Guards, known as fédérés, near Paris. He also dismissed the patriot ministers associated with the Girondins. On 20 June 1792 a crowd invaded the Tuileries and made the King wear the red cap of liberty, but he refused to withdraw his vetoes.

On 11 July the Assembly declared “the fatherland in danger” and called for volunteers. Fédérés poured into Paris anyway. A battalion from Marseille arrived on 30 July singing a new war song, which Parisians named “La Marseillaise”. At the same time the Brunswick Manifesto, issued by the commander of the Austro-Prussian army and known in Paris from 1 August, threatened the city with destruction if the royal family were harmed. Instead of intimidating Parisians, it convinced many that the King was in league with the enemy.

Most of the 48 sections, the city’s local assemblies, called for the King’s deposition. When the Assembly failed to act, the radicals prepared an insurrection.

The night of 9 to 10 August

During the night of 9 to 10 August, delegates from the sections met at the Hôtel de Ville and set up an insurrectionary Commune, displacing the legal city government. The commander of the National Guard, the marquis de Mandat, who had organised the palace’s defence, was summoned to the Hôtel de Ville, arrested and killed.

The Tuileries was defended by about 900 Swiss Guards, a regiment of professional soldiers from Switzerland in French royal service, along with a few hundred noble volunteers and a number of National Guards and gendarmes whose loyalty proved uncertain.

What happened on 10 August

Early in the morning the King reviewed the defenders and was met with shouts hostile to him from some of the National Guards. Pierre-Louis Roederer, the chief law officer of the department of Paris, advised him to take refuge with the Legislative Assembly. At about eight o’clock Louis, Marie Antoinette, their children and Madame Élisabeth crossed the gardens to the Salle du Manège, where the Assembly sat.

Shortly afterwards the insurgents, led by the fédérés of Marseille and Brest and by armed men from the eastern faubourgs, entered the palace courtyards. Fighting broke out, and the Swiss Guards’ disciplined musket fire at first drove the attackers back with heavy losses. Then a note arrived from the King ordering the Swiss to cease fire and withdraw to their barracks.

As the Swiss tried to obey, many were cut down in the courtyards and gardens or killed after surrendering. Some servants and courtiers were also killed, and the palace was looted.

Among the onlookers was Napoleon Bonaparte, then a young artillery officer without a command, who watched from near the Carrousel. Years later, in exile on St Helena, he recalled the scene as one of the most shocking he had witnessed and expressed scorn for the King’s failure to defend the palace firmly.

Inside the Assembly hall, the deputies debated while the sound of gunfire carried across the gardens. In the afternoon, on a proposal presented by the Girondin orator Pierre Vergniaud, they voted to suspend the King provisionally and to summon a National Convention to decide the future form of government.

By the numbers

Figures for 10 August are uncertain, and different sources give somewhat different totals.

Key people

• Louis XVI left the palace before the fighting and spent the day in the reporters’ box of the Assembly hall, listening to the debate on his fate.
• Georges Danton, a leading figure of the Cordeliers, played a key role in the insurrection and became Minister of Justice the next day.
• Pierre-Louis Roederer persuaded the royal family to seek the Assembly’s protection.
• The Swiss Guards, commanded by officers including Karl Josef von Bachmann, were the palace’s main defence; many of their survivors were later tried or killed.
• The fédérés of Marseille and Brest formed the most experienced part of the attacking force.

Consequences

The Legislative Assembly, much reduced because many moderate deputies stayed away, suspended the King and called for the election of a National Convention by nearly universal male suffrage. Executive power passed to a Provisional Executive Council of ministers, in which Danton took Justice and the Girondin Jean-Marie Roland returned to the Interior. In practice, however, the insurrectionary Commune often acted on its own authority, ordering arrests and pressing the Assembly for harsher measures against suspected royalists. On 13 August the royal family was imprisoned in the Temple, a medieval tower in the Marais district.

The insurrectionary Commune became a powerful force in Paris. Fear of invasion and of traitors inside the city led to the September Massacres of 2 to 6 September, when crowds killed well over a thousand prisoners, including some of the surviving Swiss. On 20 September the French army halted the Prussians at the Battle of Valmy, and on 21 September the newly assembled Convention abolished the monarchy.

Louis XVI was put on trial in December 1792 and executed on 21 January 1793. The radical politics that emerged from 10 August eventually led to the Reign of Terror.

Legacy

Revolutionaries celebrated 10 August as a second revolution, completing what 14 July 1789 had begun. In Switzerland, the dead guards were remembered as men who had kept their oath. The Lion of Lucerne, a monument carved into a sandstone cliff and unveiled in 1821, shows a dying lion beside a shield bearing the fleur-de-lis of the French monarchy.

The Tuileries Palace itself survived the Revolution and later served Napoleon and the restored kings, but it was burned during the Paris Commune of 1871 and demolished in the 1880s. Its gardens remain one of the best-known public spaces in central Paris.

Timeline

• 1792, 20 April: France declares war on Austria.
• 1792, 20 June: A crowd invades the Tuileries; the King refuses to withdraw his vetoes.
• 1792, 11 July: The Assembly declares the fatherland in danger.
• 1792, 30 July: The fédérés of Marseille arrive in Paris.
• 1792, 1 August: The Brunswick Manifesto becomes known in Paris.
• 1792, 10 August: Insurgents storm the Tuileries; the King is suspended.
• 1792, 13 August: The royal family is imprisoned in the Temple.
• 1792, 2 to 6 September: The September Massacres take place in Paris prisons.
• 1792, 21 September: The National Convention abolishes the monarchy.

Why it matters

The storming of the Tuileries ended a French monarchy that had lasted for centuries and turned the Revolution towards a republic. It also showed the power of the armed Parisian population, a force that would shape French politics throughout the following two years.