Champs de Mars Massacre

After the royal family’s failed flight from Paris in June 1791 some voices called for France to become a Republic. The Cordeliers Club looking to seize initiative from the other political clubs in Paris decided to create a petition calling for the abolishment of the monarchy.  In order to gain more signatures they decided to hold a rally at the Champ De Mars.

On the 17th July 1791 a crowd some estimate at 50,000 assembled at the Champ De Mars.  Mayor of Paris Bailly was concerned enough to declare martial law.  To assert control of the situation the National Guard was sent in under the command of Lafayette.  It is not entirely clear what occurred but the troops shot on the crowd leaving fifty dead.

In the short term several key revolutionaries such as Marat, Robespierre and Danton were forced into hiding.  The actions of Bailly and Lafyette were condemned by many and they could no longer count on the support of the Parisians and were viewed with increasing distrust.  

Gouverneur Morris reports on the Champs de Mars Massacre in July 1791.  Taken from Witnesses to the Revolution American and British Commentators in France 1788-1794, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London (1989) p144-145

The militia would, not as usual, ground their arms on receiving the word of command from the mob.  The last began, according to custom, to pelt them with stones.  It was hot weather and it was Sunday afternoon, for which time, according to usage immemorial, the inhabitants of this capital have generally some pleasurable engagements.  To be disappointed in their amusement, to be paraded through streets through a scorching sun, and then stand, like holiday turkeys, to be knocked down by brickbats was a little more than they had patience to bear; so that, without waiting for orders, they fired and killed a dozen or two of the ragged regiment… Lafayette was very near being killed in the morning,

Barère on the petition on the Champs de Mars massacre on the 17th July 1791.  Taken from Memoirs of Bertrand Barère Volume 1, H. S. Nichols, London (1896) p275-276

The mob was very excited, and collected in the Champ de Mars in order to sign, on the altar of the country, a petition to the National Assembly in order that the abdication of Louis XVI. might be proclaimed. The royal party in the Assembly had elected as president for the fortnight M. de Lameth, an old and crusted aristocrat in a democratic mask. He it was who received from that section, which had been termed by Mirabeau the Thirty Voices (in allusion to the Thirty Tyrants of Athens), the secret authority to give Bailly, the mayor of Paris, and Lafayette, the commandant of the National Guard, orders to expel the petitioners of the Champ de Mars by armed force and to fire on the people.  The National Assembly would not have permitted this; any such measure would have been rejected with indignation. It knew nothing about such a step, and only learned of its existence by its results and by the yell of public indignation. So, in order to palliate this step, false and exaggerated reports were made on the hidden intentions of this meeting, which was represented as a fanatical onslaught on the republican form of government. This sanguinary event on the Champ de Mars M. Charles Lameth has been so strangely naive as to boast in the tribune of the Chamber of Deputies, in 1832, of having given an order in July, 1791, as President of the National Assembly, to fire on the people. the cause of the outcry raised against the Constitutional Act since its birth ; an outcry which caused much trouble, and brought about the events of the loth of August, 1792.