END OF THE 1500-YEAR-OLD MONARCHY

IN A CONTEXT OF WAR, LOOMING INVASION AND PROVINCIAL REVOLT, THE "SANS-CULOTTES" BRING THE MONARCHY TO AN END 

Sans culottes or "without breeches," that is, workers' trousers instead of elites' knee breeches and silk stockings. Highly politized craftspeople and shopkeepers take up the term to show their opposition to the privileged. 

 Lafayette and Washington in 1784 by Rossiter & Mignot, 1851/ zoom; Sans-culottes by J.B. Lesueur, 1793-1794  / zoom 

They will cause the Terror, but save the Revolution. 

("The Terror:" mass guillotining,  September 5, 1793-July 27, 1794)

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June 20, 1792 : Thousands of sans- culottes storm the Tuileries palace. Marie-Antoinette faces them from behind a table and Louis XVI drinks to the health of the people while wearing the phrygien cap.*

*The red bonnet of freed Roman slaves, which many sans-culottes wear (participants in today's demonstrations may still do so in their memory).

     Le Procès et mort du Roi ("The Trial and Death of the King)

• Royalists show the royals as self-controlled and courageous. (That is accurate.)

Nineteenth-century painting, probably by Thomas Falcon Marshall  / Internet, no source named

      The Demonstration of June 20, 1792 at the Tuileries by Jean-Baptiste Vérité after an unknown artist, 1796 / zoom

 Louis, right, holds a soldier's hand over his heart to show that he is unafraid. 

• Sans-culottes' view of the same event:

Zoom (please scroll down)

• Other examples of opposite visions

An actor poses; by Louis Bouilly, 1792 / zoom; The Radicals' Arms by George Cruikshank, 1819/ zoom

The class difference: sans-culottes, heroes who are associated with the Romans and carry a banner of fraternity, and Girondin* deputies in bourgeois dress.

*Opponents of Robespierre, backed by privileged supporters of the Revolution. 

Eliminating the Girondins on May 31,1793 by Jean-Fulchran Harriet, toward 1800 / zoom

Anonymous engraving, 1845 / zoom

The Girondins in prison

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On July 25 1792, the commander of the invading Prussian army threatens "ever-memorable vengeance" if the Tuileries are attacked. 

The sans-culottes find this proof that the king and queen are traitors: On August 10, they seize the Tuileries palace,  massacring the Swiss guards.

 

Storming the Tuileries on August 10, 1792 by Jean Duplessis-Bertaux, 1793 / zoom

The royals are imprisoned as crowds jeer. 

Nineteenth-century engraving / zoom

 The 15-hundred-year-old monarchy is dead.

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Next,

The "Temple," a prison that could have been worse