War and the fall of the monarchy

By 1792, revolution and Europe's monarchies eyed each other with fear. In April, France declared war on Austria. Some revolutionaries wanted war to spread their ideas and expose traitors; the king privately hoped defeat might restore his power.

The war began badly. Foreign armies pushed toward Paris. Then came the Brunswick ManifestoA 1792 threat by the enemy commander to destroy Paris if the royal family were harmed — which enraged Parisians instead of cowing them., in which the enemy commander threatened to destroy Paris if the royal family were harmed. Instead of frightening the city into obedience, it enraged it — and seemed to confirm that the king was in league with France's enemies.

On 10 August 1792, crowds and citizen soldiers — many of them sans-culottesThe working people of the cities — named for the plain trousers they wore instead of aristocratic breeches — who became a powerful radical force., the working people of Paris — stormed the TuileriesThe royal palace in Paris, stormed on 10 August 1792, ending the monarchy's power. palace. The monarchy was suspended. The king, once the sacred centre of the nation, was now a prisoner, and France would soon have no king at all.

The pattern of this stage is important: outside war and inside fear fed each other. Suspicion of betrayal, real and imagined, drove the Revolution toward more radical and more violent solutions.