Insurrection of 10 August 1792
Storming of the Tuileries and suspension of Louis XVI
View full image ↗ How was this image made?
The creative brief sent to the image model. These are instructions, not a record of what actually happened.
Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The king got out of the palace only to seek protection from an Assembly that the insurgents were also pressuring and threatening.
10 August 1792: the palace besieged
On 10 August 1792 the insurrectionary Paris Commune, the Paris sections, and armed fédérés from Brittany and Marseille besieged and attacked the Tuileries Palace. During the night of 9–10 August the Commune had displaced the existing municipal authority and organised the rising.
Louis XVI and the royal family left the palace before it was taken and placed themselves under the protection of the Legislative Assembly. They were not seized inside the building; they had already reached the deputies.
The Swiss Guards
The palace's professional defenders were the Swiss Guards. National Guard units were present but divided and unreliable.
The Swiss resisted the attackers, and many were killed in the fighting or massacred after surrendering. Published casualty totals vary widely and often mix combat deaths with later killings, and accounts differ over who fired first and over how quickly the king's order to stop fighting reached the defenders.
Suspended, not deposed
Under pressure from the victorious insurgents, the Assembly unanimously suspended Louis XVI. It chose that narrow constitutional formula even as the insurgents demanded dethronement, and it did not abolish the monarchy that day.
The same sitting called for a National Convention and established a provisional executive council of six ministers. The royal family was placed in custody, and on 13 August imprisoned in the Temple.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
What the sources leave uncertain
- Published casualty totals vary substantially and often combine combat deaths, killings after surrender and Swiss prisoners murdered during the September Massacres; no casualty total is included here.
- Contemporary and later accounts differ on precisely who fired first and how quickly the Swiss received or followed the king’s order to stop fighting.
Checked against
- French National Assembly: Journée insurrectionnelle parisienne – Abolition de la royauté
- French History: Provincial opposition to the revolution of 10 August 1792
- Cambridge University Press: The Journée du Dix Août as Witnessed by a Yankee Merchant
- Contemporary proceedings: Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée Nationale, 10 août 1792
- BnF catalogue: Brunswick Manifesto