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Champ de Mars Massacre

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For other uses, see Champ de Mars (disambiguation).

The Champ de Mars Massacre took place on 17 July 1791 in Paris in the midst of the French Revolution. The event is named after the site of the massacre, the Champ de Mars.On that day, the National Constituent Assembly issued a decree that the king, Louis XVI, would remain king under a constitutional monarchy. Later that day, leaders of the republicans in France rallied against this decision.

Lafayette orders his troops to fire

In the previous month Louis and his family had unsuccessfully tried to flee France in the Flight to Varennes.

Jacques Pierre Brissot, editor and main writer of Le Patriote français and president of the Comité des Recherches of Paris, drew up a petition demanding the removal of the king. A large crowd gathered at the Champ de Mars to sign the petition. The Marquis de Lafayette and the National Guard, which was under his command, were able to disperse the crowd. Later in the afternoon, the crowd, led by Danton and Camille Desmoulins, returned in even greater numbers.

The larger crowd was also more determined than the first. Lafayette again tried to disperse it. In retaliation, the crowd threw stones at the National Guard. After firing unsuccessful warning shots, the National Guard opened fire directly on the crowd. The exact numbers of dead and wounded are unknown; estimates range from a dozen to fifty dead.^[1][2]

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1Significance
• 2Contemporary news report
• 3Text of the petition
• 4Results
• 5References
• 6External links

Significance[edit source | edit]

At the time of the massacre, divisions within the Third Estate had already began to grow. The massacre was the direct result of various factions reacting to the decree by the Constituent Assembly in different ways. The Cordeliers Club, a populist group, chose to create a petition for a protest. This was originally backed by the Jacobins, though support was withdrawen. The Cordeliers proceeded by by creating a more radical petition calling for a republic. ^[3]

Contemporary news report[edit source | edit]

The following is an excerpt of a news report about the incident printed in the Les Révolutions de Paris, a republican newspaper in support of the anti-royalists who had assembled on the Champ de Mars:

Text of the petition[edit source | edit]

The following is the text of the manifesto which was being read and signed by French citizens in the Champ de Mars on the day of the massacre, 17 July 1791:

Results[edit source | edit]

Among the French, the reputation of Lafayette, the commander of the National Guard, never recovered from this episode.

References[edit source | edit]

1. Jump up^ Andress, The French Revolution and the people, p. 151
2. Jump up^ Neely, p. 128
3. Jump up^ 
4. Jump up^ The red flag was a widely understood signal that martial law had been declared and that normal civil policing would not necessarily be conducted. Under martial law, the National Guard was permitted, when ordered, to discharge their weapons.
5. Jump up^ Les Révolutions de Paris, no. 106, (16–23 July 1791), 53–55, 63, 65–66.
6. Jump up^ Rousseau. The Social Contract, etc., translated with an introduction by G. D. H. Cole (Everyman edition), p. 253.
7. Jump up^ The previous month, on 20 and 21 June 1791, the king and his family had, with the connivance of others (some of them foreign), escaped from Paris in an attempt to reach the fortress of Montmédy in the northeast. There, they expected to find an enclave of royalists in sufficient numbers to ensure their safety and, perhaps, to mount a counter-revolution. They were, however, promptly apprehended at a place called Varennes in the Argonne and returned to Paris.
8. Jump up^ David Andress. Massacre at the Champ de Mars: Popular Dissent and Political Culture in the French Revolution. Suffolk, England: The Royal Historical Society