10 August (French Revolution) - The Aftermath

The Aftermath

The aftermath was to be six weeks of chaos, resulting in the end of the monarchy and the replacement of the Legislative Assembly by the new Convention. During this six weeks, the insurrectionary Paris Commune held more actual power than the Assembly. It demanded and received custody of the royal family, obtained indefinite powers of arrest, and instigated the September Massacres, in which over 1400 of those arrested were killed in the prisons. Among those killed on the 10th were the comte de Clermont-Tonnerre and the marquis de Mandat.

The ad hoc executive council of the Assembly had no root in law and little hold on public opinion. When Lafayette's troops would not follow him to Paris to defend the Constitution of 1791, he chose to surrender himself to the Austrians.

The elections to the Convention were by almost universal suffrage, but indifference or intimidation reduced the voters to a small number. Many who had sat in the National Constituent Assembly and many more who had sat in the Legislative Assembly were returned. The Convention met on 20 September and became the new de facto government of France. One of its first acts was to abolish the monarchy.

Mignet writes that the 10 August "marked... the insurrection of the multitude against the middle classes and the constitutional throne, as the 14 July had seen the insurrection of the middle class against the privileged class and the absolute power of the crown. On the 10 August began the dictatorial and arbitrary epoch of the revolution... The nature of the question was then entirely changed; it was no longer a matter of liberty, but of public safety; and the Conventional period, from the end of the Constitution of 1791, to the time when the Constitution of the Year III established the Directory, was only a long campaign of the revolution against parties and against Europe."