On August 10, 1792, the Tuileries fell, and Louis XVI sought refuge with his family within the walls of the Assembly. The crisis had seen its first act on June 20, when the mob forced a red cap upon the king’s brow.
This initial intrusion had been orchestrated, according to Champagnac, by agitators who had harangued several sections of the faubourgs. On June 20, an armed concourse marched through the Assembly before forcing its way into the palace. It demanded the sanction of decrees and the reinstatement of three Girondin ministers. The petitioners were announced as numbering eight thousand, yet the procession swelled as it advanced. They carried placards bearing the Declaration of the Rights of Man, olive branches, weapons, and devices that mingled peace with overt menace. The men passed beneath the king’s windows, surged up the staircases, and broke down the inner doors.
Louis XVI at last appeared. His officers urged him to show himself, pledging to shield him with their lives; he commanded that the doors be opened and stood directly before the crowd. A petition was read. Demands followed in swift succession, and the red cap was thrust before him upon the point of a pike. He permitted it to be placed upon his head. A bottle was likewise proffered to him. A member of his retinue whispered that it might be poisoned; the king drank nonetheless. Champagnac portrays this conduct as a manifestation of steadfast resolve. After more than three hours, Pétion succeeded in persuading the demonstrators to quit the premises. The king, the queen, Madame Élisabeth, and the royal children were reunited, still reeling from the shock.
In the weeks that followed, the crucible of the crisis shifted from the palace into the heart of the city. The war against the European princes, the schisms within the Assembly, and the movements of the fédérés stoked widespread fear. Proponents of the king’s deposition depicted the court as an ally of the foreign invader; the king’s defenders viewed the gatherings as a concerted enterprise aimed at his ruin. Champagnac presents these allegations through the prism of his own political sympathies. He reports that on August 9, the president of the Cordeliers announced that this was no longer to be a mere civic promenade. The garrison of the Tuileries, for its part, was meager: eight to nine hundred Swiss Guards, little more than a single battalion of the National Guard, according to the chronicle, and domestic servants hastily armed for the fray.
In the dead of night, the tocsin sounded. The newly formed municipality at the Hôtel-de-Ville summoned Mandat, commander of the forces charged with defending the palace, to appear before it. He was at a loss to discern precisely which authority had summoned him. Prior to his departure, he entrusted to his son an order signed by Pétion commanding him to repel force by force. Mandat arrived at the Hôtel-de-Ville around four in the morning. There he encountered a new authority, was interrogated concerning his orders, and was then dismissed. No sooner had he stepped outside than he was seized, dispatched with a pistol shot, stripped of his garments, and cast into the river, so the chronicle relates.
At the palace, Pétion had likewise been summoned. He had signed the order to repel force with force, and some had wished to retain him as a hostage. Louis XVI opposed the measure. Champagnac further records that a preemptive strike against the first insurgents had been contemplated, only to be cast aside out of deference to legality. The signed order thus existed; yet the commander whose duty it was to ensure its execution had just perished.
The news of his death threw the defense into disarray. At daybreak, the avenues surrounding the Tuileries were overrun. Cannons were trained upon the palace, and shouts rose from the adjoining thoroughfares. The ranks of the National Guard fractured: a contingent of its men defected to the assailants. The queen moved among the defenders, addressing them with fervent resolve. Champagnac relates that she took a pistol from a Swiss officer and presented it to her husband, exhorting him to show himself. The chronicler contrasts the courage he attributes to the monarch when confronting the mob with his irresolution when called upon to launch an attack.
Rœderer arrived to advise the royal family to seek asylum in the National Assembly. Marie-Antoinette vehemently objected; Rœderer laid before her the mortal peril hanging over her husband and her children. The king at last made up his mind. “Let us go,” he said to his family. It remained necessary to traverse the battalions massed between the palace and the Salle du Manège. Rœderer invoked the law; the ranks parted, though several men sought to allow the king alone to pass. A voice cried out to spare the prince and abandon the queen. Rœderer held firm. The family made their way through the throng and took their seats in a journalist’s box, whence they were to hear the debates that would determine their fate.
The silence was short-lived. A discharge of artillery shook the Tuileries, followed by a heavy, sustained fusillade. After the departure of the king, the outer gates had been left undefended. The fédérés and the battalions from the faubourgs poured into the courtyards; several gunners and National Guardsmen had gone over to their side. The Swiss were parleying and returning their bayonets to their scabbards when a shot rang out from the palace. Champagnac states that none knew who had fired it. Each camp cried treason. The Swiss seized artillery pieces and fired upon the fédérés, driving them back for a time with rolling volleys. The crowd returned in overwhelming numbers. Nearly all the Swiss defenders were cut down in the fray or slaughtered in the violence that ensued.
The palace was overrun; the barracks were set ablaze. The royal apartments were ransacked; the servants were seized or hunted down. A company of Swiss had taken refuge in the chapel alongside several women. Bourdon de l’Oise forced the door and opened fire, the chronicle records. Those within were massacred. Champagnac also notes that one man cried for mercy on behalf of the women and succeeded in sparing several ladies of the court.
At the Assembly, the deputies suspended the king and summoned a National Convention. The monarchy would not be formally abolished until September 21. Louis XVI and his family had found a sanctuary, yet they no longer commanded the gates of the palace they had forsaken. The day had claimed Mandat, then the Swiss defenders, and consigned the royal family from their ancestral residence to the strict surveillance of those whose decrees they were henceforth compelled to await.