September Massacres

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The September Massacres were a wave of mob violence which took place in Paris in late summer 1792, during the French Revolution.

On September 2 1792, news reached Paris that the Duke of Brunswick's Prussian army had invaded France, that Verdun had quickly fallen, that perhaps its aristocratic officers had capitulated too easily, and that the Prussians were advancing quickly toward the capital. On July 25 Brunswick had circulated his bombastic manifesto from Coblenz: his avowed aim was

"to put an end to the anarchy in the interior of France, to check the attacks upon the throne and the altar, to reestablish the legal power, to restore to the king the security and the liberty of which he is now deprived and to place him in a position to exercise once more the legitimate authority which belongs to him."

Additionally, the manifesto threatened the French public with instant punishment should they resist the Imperial and Prussian armies, or the reinstatement of the monarchy. Such information fuelled this first wave of mob hysteria of the Revolution. By the end of August rumours circulated that many in Paris - such as non-juring priests - who secretly opposed the Revolution would support the First Coalition of foreign powers allied against it. Furthermore, Paris lacked extensive food stocks.

During this time the Legislative Assembly had almost collapsed, and its successor, the Convention, had just come into being. This left the municipal government of Paris, at this time under the control of some of the most radical revolutionary elements, including the sans-culottes, who became almost a de facto government of France. When news of the collapse of defenses at Verdun reached the Convention, they ordered the tocsin rung and alarm guns fired, which doubtless added to the sense of panic. An army of 60,000 was to be enlisted at the Champ de Mars, the British ambassador reported;

"A party at the instigation of some one or other declared they would not quit Paris, as long as the prisons were filled with Traitors (for they called those so, that were confined in the different Prisons and Churches), who might in the absence of such a number of Citizens rise and not only effect the release of His Majesty, but make an entire counterrevolution."

The first attack occurred when twenty-four non-juring priests being transported to the prison of L'Abbaye, were attacked by a mob that quickly killed them all as they were trying to escape into the prison, then mutilated the bodies, "with circumstances of barbarity too shocking to describe" according to the British diplomatic dispatch. On September 3 and September 4, crowds broke into other Paris prisons, where they murdered the prisoners, who some feared were counter-revolutionaries who would aid the invading Prussians.

Most notably, the crowds are said to have raped, killed and grotesquely mutilated the Princesse de Lamballe, friend of Marie Antoinette and sister-in-law to the Duc d'Orleans. It was said that her head was paraded atop a pike under the captive Queen's windows at the Temple. Religious figures also figured prominently among the victims: the massacres occurred during a time of great and rising resentment against the Roman Catholic Church, which eventually led to the temporary dechristianisation of France. Over a forty-eight hour period beginning on September 2, 1792, as the French Legislative Assembly (successor to the National Constituent Assembly) dissolved into chaos, angry mobs massacred three bishops, including the Archbishop of Arles, and more than two-hundred priests.

Restif de la Bretonne saw the bodies piled high in front of the Châtelet and witnessed atrocities that he recorded in Les Nuits de Paris (1793).

By the time the mob fury was spent, half the prison population of Paris had been killed, some 1200 trapped prisoners. Sporadic violence against the Roman Catholic Church throughout France would continue for nearly a decade to come.

September Massacres

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