The Champ de Mars Massacre: How France Turned on Its Own Revolution

On July 17, 1791, a peaceful petition for the abolition of the monarchy ended with the National Guard firing into a crowd on the Champ de Mars in Paris. The massacre shattered the revolutionary consensus, radicalized the sans-culottes, and set the stage for the Terror. This episode walks through the day itself — the petition, the martial law, the shots — and what it reveals about the fragile hope of 1791. Why did the National Assembly turn on the people who had stormed the Bastille just two years earlier? How did Lafayette, the hero of two worlds, end up commanding the troops who fired? And how did the Cordeliers Club use the massacre to push for a republic? We trace the tension between the revolutionary elite and the radical street, the flight to Varennes just weeks before, and the final fracture between the monarchy and the popular movement. A turning point that France has often preferred to forget. #ChampDeMarsMassacre #FrenchRevolution #1791 #Lafayette #Marat #Danton #Robespierre #NationalGuard #Jacobins #Cordeliers #SansCulottes #FlightToVarennes #Republic #LouisXVI #RevolutionaryParis #History #FexingoHistory #18thCentury Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo