The Champ de Mars is a vast, open rectangle of grass reaching toward the Eiffel Tower. On July seventeenth, seventeen ninety-one, a crowd gathered here to sign a petition demanding the removal of King Louis the Sixteenth. As the tension boiled over, the Marquis de Lafayette ordered the National Guard to fire into the petitioners. Dozens died on this lawn. This was the moment the French Revolution turned against its own people, breaking the fragile alliance between the moderate reformers and the radicalized public.
Champ de Mars massacre
event
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