The Champ de Mars massacre took place on 17 July 1791 in Paris at the Champ de Mars against a crowd of republican protesters amid the French Revolution. Two days before, the National Constituent Assembly issued a decree that King Louis XVI would retain his throne under a constitutional monarchy. This decision came after Louis and his family had unsuccessfully tried to flee France in the Flight to Varennes the month before. Later that day, leaders of the republicans in France rallied against this decision, eventually leading royalist Marquis de Lafayette to order the massacre. Jacques Pierre Brissot was the editor and main writer of :fr:Le Patriote français|Le Patriote français and president of the Comité des Recherches of Paris, and he drew up a petition demanding the removal of the king. A crowd of 50,000 people gathered at the Champ de Mars on 17 July to sign the petition, and about 6,000 signed it. However, two suspicious people had been found hiding at the Champ de Mars earlier that day, "possibly with the intention of getting a better view of the ladies' ankles"; they were hanged by those who found them, and Paris MayorJean Sylvain Bailly used this incident to declare martial law. Lafayette and the National Guard under his command were able to disperse the crowd. Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins led the crowd, and they returned in even higher numbers that afternoon. The larger crowd was also more determined than the first, and Lafayette again tried to disperse it. In retaliation, they 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 50 dead.
Context
When Louis XVI and his family fled to Varennes, it set off political turmoil: people felt betrayed and had anger towards the king. Earlier, information had been received by the assembly that there was potentially a plan for the king to flee. The idea that Louis planned on fleeing the Tuileries palace began in early 1791 and was one of the causes of the Day of Daggers on 28 February 1791. The escape event was not subtly planned, and enough suspicions were aroused in those working in the palace that the information trickled down to newspapers. The Marquis de Lafayette promised on his own life that such a thing was untrue, and was proven wrong when the king did try to escape. Lafayette and the Assembly created a lie that the king had been kidnapped. Ultimately the king and his family were brought back, and the assembly decided that he needed to be a part of the government if he agreed to consent to the constitution. At the time of the massacre, divisions within the Third Estate had already begun to grow. Many workers were angered by the closing of various workshops, which took away jobs, leaving some unemployed. Higher skilled journeymen were also angered due to a lack of increase in wages since the beginning of the Revolution. The attempted flight of the king only increased the tensions between groups. 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 initially backed by the Jacobins, though support was withdrawn at Robespierre's suggestion. The Cordeliers proceeded by creating a more radical petition calling for a republic and planning a protest that would help gain more signatures. Based on records of the petition and of the dead bodies, the crowd was made up of individuals from the poorer sections of Paris, some of whom may not have been able to read. The organisers seemed to desire representation of Paris as a whole, rather than any specific section.
Results
After the massacre, the republican movement seemed to be over. Two hundred of the activists involved with the movement were arrested after the massacre, while others had to go into hiding. Organisations stopped meeting and radical newspapers no longer published. However, they were not deterred for long. Lafayette, the commander of the National Guard, was previously long revered as the hero of the American Revolutionary War. Many French looked up to Lafayette with hope, expecting him also to lead the French Revolution in the right direction. One year before, on the very same Champ de Mars, he played a prominent ceremonial role during the first Fête de la Fédération, in memory of the 1789 Storming of the Bastille. However, Lafayette's reputation among the French never recovered from this bloody episode. The people no longer looked towards him as an ally or supported him after he and his men fired deadly shots into the crowd. His influence in Paris diminished accordingly. He would still command French armies from April to August 1792, but then fled to the Austrian Netherlands where he was taken prisoner. In 1793, Bailly, the former mayor of Paris, was executed, with one of the charges against him being the instigation of the massacre.
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
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:
