The September Massacres

Sensitive souls, this post is not for you! This is one of the darkest episodes of the French Revolution!

France declared war to Austria early 1792 and for months, the French revolutionary armies were consistently defeated.

The fear of the nation being invaded and rumours of royalist plots got the tension rising in Paris and France. In the meantime, the Committees of "Public Safety" and "General Safety" had been arresting prisoners from aristocracy and church whom they suspected of being "against the revolution"...

The agitation reached a climax and from 2nd to 7th of September 1792, mobs stormed prisons and slaughtered prisoners using knives, or any weapons they could get their hands on. In Paris alone, an estimated of 1,300 prisoners were murdered without any form of trial.

My photos show the plaque where the "Prison de l'Abbaye" used to stand. On that location, some 326 victims perished during the September Massacres.