544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is History, Episode 544 - The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)

Introduction

In Episode 544 of The Rest Is History, hosts Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland delve into one of the most harrowing episodes of the French Revolution: the September Massacres. Released on March 3, 2025, this episode provides a comprehensive exploration of the events, political dynamics, and enduring historical debates surrounding this period of intense violence and upheaval in Paris.

Political Context in 1792 Paris

The episode opens with Dominic Sandbrook setting the scene in 1792, a tumultuous year for France embroiled in war since April. Parisian politics is characterized by a fierce rivalry between two factions of the Jacobins: the Girondins, led by Brissot, and the more radical Montagnards, spearheaded by Maximilien Robespierre.

Tom Holland explains the political spectrum of the time, comparing it to contemporary left-right dynamics:

“People on the right now, on the far right, right, as we might anachronistically put it, is the default position that had existed three or four years before... on the hard left, you have Robespierre, the Montagnards.”
[03:20]

Sandbrook further elaborates, emphasizing that the conflict is essentially between left-wing groups, as the fall of the monarchy has effectively eliminated the traditional right:

“It's now a fight between the left and the hard left.”
[09:36]

Fear of Prussian Invasion and Internal Threats

The anxiety in Paris is palpable, fueled by the advancing Prussian army under the Duke of Brunswick, who threatens "exemplary vengeance against the people of Paris." This external threat exacerbates internal paranoia, leading to widespread rumors of conspiracies and planned uprisings within the city.

Dominic notes the pervasive fear:

“The atmosphere in Paris is haunted by fear and by a sense of coming catastrophe and apocalypse... the Duke of Brunswick... is coming west. He is now being pursued by a smaller French army under General Dumouriez.”
[10:03]

Initiation of the September Massacres

Amidst this climate of fear, the Girondin-led Provisional Government, with Danton as a prominent figure, issues proclamations warning of traitors within the prisons. This leads to organized raids on Parisian prisons beginning on September 2, 1792.

Tom Holland describes Danton's strategic approach:

“Danton gives his address. There are posters going up across the city. To arms. To arms. The enemy is at the gates.”
[17:58]

The hosts discuss how these raids transitioned from spontaneous mob actions to more structured death squads, known as the Septem Briseurs, led by figures like Stanislas Maillart.

Case Study: The Princess de Lamballe

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the brutal murder of the Princess de Lamballe, a close friend of Marie Antoinette. Her assassination becomes emblematic of the massacres' brutality and the anti-aristocratic fervor of the revolutionaries.

Dominic recounts her final moments:

“She receives a sabre blow behind her head... another sabre blow hits her eye. Blood gushed out. Her dress was stained with it... forced to walk over corpses.”
[36:16]

Tom adds vivid details from eyewitness accounts, highlighting the gruesome nature of her death:

“...the playwright Louis Sebastian Mercier wrote that the killers partook of her corpse, asserting cannibalistic acts...”
[40:07]

Historiographical Debates

The episode delves into the historical interpretations of the September Massacres. Sandbrook and Holland discuss how accounts of extreme violence, such as mutilations and cannibalism, are often viewed with skepticism by modern historians. They reference debates between historians like Pierre Caron, who downplays such atrocities, and Simon Sharma, who condemns the massacres as a precursor to 20th-century genocides.

Dominic critiques Pierre Caron's stance:

“Simon Sharma wrote his book Citizens and describes Caron’s work as a 'monument of intellectual cowardice and moral self-delusion.'”
[51:08]

Holland counters by agreeing that many of the most sensational accounts are likely propagandistic exaggerations, though they acknowledge the methodical and terrifying nature of the killings:

“It is murder done in the cause of virtue.”
[44:57]

Public Perception and Aftermath

Throughout the massacres, the general populace of Paris largely supported the actions, viewing them as necessary purges to protect the revolution. The hosts cite contemporary diaries and newspapers that justified the killings as essential for France's survival.

Dominic summarizes public sentiment:

“The people took the extreme measure, but the only appropriate one, of forestalling the horrors that were being prepared against them and of showing no mercy to those who would not have shown any to them.”
[48:31]

Conclusion and Cliffhanger

As the episode draws to a close, Sandbrook and Holland set the stage for the subsequent developments in the French Revolution. They hint at the approach of General Dumouriez, the potential for further bloodshed, and the looming National Convention’s decisions regarding the future of the monarchy. This sets up a compelling lead-in to the next episode, promising deeper exploration into the escalation towards the Reign of Terror.

“What happens next will change the course of European history.”
[57:53]

Notable Quotes

• Dominic Sandbrook:
  “The atmosphere in Paris is haunted by fear and by a sense of coming catastrophe and apocalypse.”
  [10:03]

• Tom Holland:
  “It is murder done in the cause of virtue.”
  [44:57]

• Dominic Sandbrook:
  “Simon Sharma wrote his book Citizens and describes Caron’s work as a 'monument of intellectual cowardice and moral self-delusion.'”
  [51:08]

Key Takeaways

• The September Massacres were a product of both external military threats and intense internal political rivalry in Paris.
• Organized death squads systematically eliminated perceived enemies, blending methodical justice with horrifying violence.
• Historical interpretations of these events remain contentious, with debates over the accuracy of reported atrocities.
• Public support for the massacres was high, influenced by pervasive fear and revolutionary zeal.
• The massacres set the stage for the subsequent Reign of Terror, fundamentally altering the trajectory of the French Revolution.

Conclusion

Episode 544 of The Rest Is History offers a nuanced and detailed examination of the September Massacres, balancing vivid narrative accounts with critical historiographical analysis. For those unfamiliar with the event, this episode serves as an essential primer, illuminating the complexities and brutal realities of revolutionary Paris.

Transcript

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Thank you for listening to the Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series and membership of our much loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club that is thereestishistory.com this episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile.

[Tom Holland]

Some of the great tussles and battles throughout history have been over money. After all, who doesn't love to have a little extra cash on hand? But you don't have to lead a cavalry or or storm a castle to bolster your bank account.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

You know, there's a much easier way of doing things. The single easiest thing you can do to save money is to switch to Mint Mobile. Because unlike other wireless carriers that drain everything they can from you, don't they, Tom? Mint Mobile have plans that start at just $15 a month and that's with high speed data and unlimited talk and text.

[Tom Holland]

That's amazing, Dominic. So if you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop [e-mail] history that' mintmobile.com history upfront.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 a month new customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Your data is like gold to hackers and they'll sell it to the highest bidder. Are you protected? McAfee helps shield you blocking suspicious texts, malicious emails and fraudulent websites. McAfee Secure VPN lets you browse safely and its AI powered tech scam detector spots threats instantly. You'll also get up to $2 million of award winning antivirus and identity theft protection. All for just $39.99 for your first year. Visit McAfee.com, cancel anytime. Terms.

[Tom Holland]

The homeland will be saved. Everything is in motion. Everyone burns to fight. While one part of the people goes with the frontiers. A second digs our defences and a third, armed with pikes, will defend our cities and towns. We ask that whoever refuses to serve or to give up his weapons shall be punished with death. The toxin that will wring out will not be a signal of alarm, but a call to charge against the enemies of the homeland, to vanquish them. Gentlemen, we need to dare. To dare and to dare again. And then France will be saved. So that Dominic was not Winston Churchill, although many people from the excellence of the impression may think it was. It was actually a Frenchman, Georges Danton, Minister of Justice in 1792. The Dominic Sambrook to my Robespierre.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, that's kind. Thanks, Tom.

[Tom Holland]

And he's addressing the assembly on 2nd September 1792. And people will be able to realize from this that we are back with the French Revolution.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

We are indeed, Tom.

[Tom Holland]

Our ongoing series, aren't we? And can I just say why I chose to do it in a Churchillian tone?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Do yeah, please.

[Tom Holland]

Because I think there is a Churchillian quality to that, isn't it? That is a very, very famous speech. It's all about defense of the fatherland, defence of the nation, determination to fight on. And there is a Churchillian quality to it. And I thought it subtly evoked a sense for British listeners of perhaps the resonance it has in France.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, it does have a huge resonance in France. So those words in French, il no faut de l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace. We need daring, more daring, always daring. To dare, to dare, to dare again, or however you translate it, they're very famous. Lots of French schoolchildren will know those words. And that, I think, gives you a sense of the position that we're in as we begin season three of the French Revolution. This episode is very, very gory, so.

[Tom Holland]

Listeners should be warned. It is absolutely revolting, particularly if you have children.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Be warned, because in today's episode, we will be turning to, I would say, perhaps the most horrific episode of the whole revolution, the September Massacres. So to give people a sense, this is a moment when mobs are going to storm, basically burst into the prisons.

[Tom Holland]

Or are they mobs? I mean, we'll be discussing, won't we.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Mobs or death squads, and they are going to club or hack a thousand people to death, some of them in very gruesome circumstances. And we'll be debating all that later. But, Tom, perhaps first of all we should remind people where we have got to now. Obviously, by reminding people we don't need to do the whole previous two series.

[Tom Holland]

That would be too meta, but, yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Would we never get out of it? Okay, to give people a sense, we're in. 1792, Tuileries has been stormed. France is at war with. And it's been at war since April, and it's gone incredibly badly so far. So France has basically lost these little battles. So politics in Paris is defined by a feud between two rival groups of Jacobins. So the first faction are called the Girondins, and they're under Brissot, who you really liked, as I recall.

[Tom Holland]

Like Brisso.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, yeah, A dude. That's Brisso. Isn't he? He's an abolitionist. He likes a literary salon.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He likes dinner with metropolitan people.

[Tom Holland]

He's a good man.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. That's Brisso. And then on the other, another very Tom Holland figure, actually.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's like the battle for your soul list, Tom.

[Tom Holland]

I know. This is why I find it so fascinating.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's the Montagnard, the Mountain, as they're called. Under Maximilian Robespierre, the kind of bony Rousseau loving another Do Gooder.

[Tom Holland]

Bewigged.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, Bewigged.

[Tom Holland]

Do Gooder hates capital punishment.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. Like you, the streets of Paris are full of armed young men. So these are the Federers from Marseille and elsewhere. Tom, last time you talked about their importance in bringing the Marseillaise.

[Tom Holland]

Yes, that was the episode that we finished the last season on.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It was indeed, and people will remember that the episode before that was the story of how these guys, the Federate and the Sans Culottes, on the streets of Paris, people who wear trousers, the kind of artisans, the radicals, they stormed the Tuileries palace, they launched a second revolution, they slaughtered the Swiss Guard, they effectively toppled the King and Queen, who'd been carted off to a prison called the Temple Fortress. But they also, crucially, arrested about a thousand people who have since been crammed into the prisons of Paris.

[Tom Holland]

This is a key point, isn't it? Because it's important to emphasize that although it's the Swiss Guards who end up being massacred, the opinion across Paris, particularly among the Sans Culottes, is that they were the victims.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly right.

[Tom Holland]

That it was the Swiss Guard who are to blame for it. That the working people of Paris who were killed by the Swiss Guards as they were defending themselves, are martyrs to liberty. And that this is expressive of a kind of pernicious, royal attitude to the French masses. And therefore there is a need for citizens to be on guard against something like this happening again.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly right. That's exactly right. So to give people a sense of the politics with the stormy of the Tuileries, politics have been plunged into total chaos. The King and his family are in the temple. In their place, the Legislative assembly has set up this executive, which is basically dominated by the Girondin and by Danton, Minister of Justice. And they have said, listen, we are going to have to have yet another constitutional kind of reboot. We're going to call for a National Convention. Now. This will be elected for the first time in near universal male suffrage. And everybody knows this is basically going to call for a republic, that the monarchy is. Is finished. But the Girondins who dominate this committee and who really dominate the Assembly. It looks like they've got everything their own way, but they don't, because now they're having to kind of share power in Paris with this new body that's been set up called the Insurrectionary Commune, which is kind of the local council, which is dominated by much more radical people, and in particular by Robespierre. And if all this isn't confusing enough, Robespierre says the Girondin, who are the people who got us into the war, they're actually much too weak and too soft. They've been much too soft on the royal family and on the enemies within. And they may actually be part of the foreign conspiracy, which sounds bonkers, but that gives you a sense of the kind of the faction fighting, the paranoia that is around in this point in 1792.

[Tom Holland]

I think there is actually quite an easy way for people to get a handle on this, because this is the period where the notion of right and left comes in, because it depends on where people congregate in the National Assembly. And people on the right now, on the far right, right, as we might anachronistically put it, is the default position that had existed three or four years before. Royalists, then you have revolutionaries who have been trying to negotiate with the royalists and with the King and Queen, then you have the Girondins, and then on the hard left, you have the Robespierre, the Montagnard. And I think that's probably the easiest way to kind of get a sense of where all these various factions are. They are now on a political spectrum that we in the 21st century can recognize.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. Although really, actually, you could argue that the fight is between two left wing groups.

[Tom Holland]

Well, it is, yeah. Because the right is now, with the fall of the monarchy, is finished. So it's now a fight between the left and the hard left. You might put it like that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes, I guess you could make that point. And it's really important to say the atmosphere in Paris is haunted by fear and by a sense of coming catastrophe and apocalypse, because all the time, the Prussians, they've crossed the border, they are coming west. And the Duke of Brunswick, the Prussian commander, has issued a manifesto in which he says explicitly, there will be an exemplary vengeance against the people of Paris. Paris is in the firing line. I'm coming for you. And, you know, I'm basically going to wipe the floor with you.

[Tom Holland]

And so this is hence the Churchillian quality of Danton's defiance defying the German invasion.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tom Holland]

So.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. And all through Paris there are these mad rumours. People are saying there are loads of noblemen hiding in the sewers, they're poised to strike. They have hidden weapons caches in churches in the Pantheon. And particularly one of these rumors is that the criminals in the Paris prisons are going to break out. They're going to launch an uprising. They are in league with these, you know, foreign villains and the Commune, the Assembly, the neighborhood councils, which are called the Sections, they are meeting almost permanently around the clock. The city is lit up at night, There are surveillance committees, there are troops in the streets. It is an extraordinary atmosphere. You know, everybody is waiting for something to happen. If we pick up the story on the 26th of August. So on the 26th of August, 1792, terrible news reaches Paris from the Eastern front. The Prussians have been advancing for seven days and they have just taken the fortress at Lungi after barely a fight. Longy has surrendered and there's only one fortress left, which is Verdun.

[Tom Holland]

So it looks like treason.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It looks like treason, exactly. And it looks like the Prussians can't be stopped. Some of the Girondins at this point say, listen, you know, effectively, it's 1940, we need to evacuate the government to.

[Tom Holland]

Tours, which is a terrible. I mean, a fateful decision for them to push, because Tours is a very royalist and above all, Catholic city, isn't it? So not a sensible place for them to choose if they're in a life or death struggle with people on the. On the. Further to the left.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, it looks weak.

[Tom Holland]

Well, it looks royalist.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Looks like they're not invested, actually, in the defense of Paris. Robespierre says, no way we should stand and fight in the defence of liberty. And of course, the Minister of Justice, this sort of big, fleshy, sort of corrupt, but very charismatic revolutionary leader, another.

[Tom Holland]

Man with skin problems. And people who've listened to our first two seasons may remember that skin problems.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Feature throughout this, I think it's fair to say, of Donzo, he's got terrible skin and he's got a taste for a brown envelope. You know, he likes. He likes a backhander that he can spend on a lady. Yeah, he likes a backhander that he can spend on a mistress. And a massive selection of starters. That's Danton's modus operandi. Danton basically seizes the moment and he says, close the city gates at Paris, put up barricades, I want volunteers, I want recruiting stations everywhere. And his charisma, his Churchillian charisma is really important. I Think sort of steadying the nerves. I mean, he really rises to meet the moment. But there is a dark side to all these preparations because the Provisional Government, with Danton as its kind of leading light, issues an official proclamation at this point and it says, yeah, watch out for the Prussians, but also watch out for the enemies within. Citizens, you have traitors in your bosom, but for them the fight would already be over. Your active surveillance cannot fail to defeat them. Now, what do they mean by the traitors within? They mean corrupt former advisors to the King, ladies in waiting at the court who they say are all lesbians, speculators, hoarders, criminals, the old Swiss Guards, priests who have defied the civil constitution of the clergy, journalists who have written in defense of the monarchy. All these people, they think are in the pay effectively of the sinister Austrian Committee that is masterminded by Marie Antoinette and her friends in Vienna. I mean, that's pretty much the case, isn't it, Tom?

[Tom Holland]

And on the issue of Marie Antoinette and her friends in Vienna, I mean, they're not wrong because Marie Antoinette has been conniving with the Austrians. So that's the thing.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I mean, it's important to say that. So by 28 August, two days later, Danton has now ordered raids across the city, raids on people's houses. They're searching for guns, they're searching for enemy agents, stolen documents, letters. So if you've ever seen documentaries or films about the French Revolution, you've seen this sort of quite stereotypical image of a group of sans culottes with their kind of red hats and their pikes banging on people's doors. Thick stubble, right? You've got an aristo hidden in the cellar or something. That's where this is coming from. Lots of historians at this point cite a diarist called Rosalie Jullien. She's a brilliant diarist, actually on this period, because she is married to a Jacobin deputy. Now, she is somebody who really complicates your sense of the French Revolution. She's a very likable character, she's very well read, she's very educated, she's a big fan of Rousseau, a massive do gooder and a reformer. But she is always writing in her diary, the city is full of traitors and we have to root them out. Still more traitors, still more treason. And I think those words are really important to understand what's going to happen because she and so many other people are saying they're all in the prisons, all of the prisons are stuffed with traitors. And as soon as our troops, you know, these volunteers, march out to face the Prussians, the traitors will seize their moment. They will break out and massacre the women and children of Paris.

[Tom Holland]

About half a year ago, we did the Battle of Agincourt, and Henry V is facing the French army, but he's taken lots of prisoners, and when he thinks that he's being attacked from the rear, he orders the prisoners killed because obviously the enemy within is highly dangerous. And there's a slight, I mean, comparing the French Revolution to the Battle of Agincourt, not probably something anyone's ever done before, but there's a slight element of that to it, I think.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think it totally is, Tom. Yeah, I think there's a sense of the stab in the back is coming. And there are all these rumors about breakouts in the prisons. So all through August, actually, there had been rumors. The Paris police had been reporting rumors that people were about to break into the prisons and I quote, render prompt justice to the people inside them. And in fact, it's not surprising that the Paris police are reporting that because some newspapers and radical pamphlets and posters and things are very, very explicit about what they think we should do. And I'll just give you two examples. So one is a newspaper called the Orator of the People. It was edited by a guy called Freron, who's a friend of Camille Desmoulins, who we've talked about before. Freyron wrote this. The first battle we shall fight will be inside the walls of Paris, not outside. All the royal brigands clustering inside this unhappy town will perish in the same day. The prisons are full of conspirators. Let the world see how we judge them. I mean, that's ominous, but not as ominous as this. This is from a guy called Fabre d'eglantines, who was a friend, a great friend of Danton and who was a poet. He's not a great ornament, I think, to the poetic profession when you read his words. Let us clear the ranks of these vile slaves of tyranny. Let the blood of traitors be the first holocaust to liberty. I mean, he literally used the phrase le premier holocaust, so that in advancing to meet the common enemy, we leave nothing behind to disquiet us. And actually, Mara, one of the most outspoken of all these journalists and has the worst skin, not coincidentally, I think Mara says, like, basically, citizens should go to the Abbe prison, get the prisoners, and I quote, run them through with a sword. And some of Mara's kind of defenders in the historical profession say, oh, that's just Mara. You know, he talks, he doesn't really mean it. But as Simon Sharma says, you know, how do you know? How are people supposed to tell the difference? So this is the climate. On 29 August, the Prussians reach Verdun. And Verdun is the keystone of France's eastern defensive line. If you get past Verdun, you're into the Valley of the Marne, and once you go through that, you are heading towards Paris. And Verdun surrenders after three days to this impregnable fortress. Yeah. The garrison commander, who'd said he'd never surrender, either kills himself or is killed by the people of Verdun, who basically don't fancy a siege at all, were like, yeah, we'll let the Prussians in. Fine. So Verdun surrenders and the news arrives in Paris on Sunday 2nd September. The Prussians are broken through. And now you've got. I mean, it's an extraordinary scene. You have kind of church bells ringing, there are cannons on the River Seine sounding the alert.

[Tom Holland]

And this is when Danton gives his Churchillian address.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. Danton gives his address. There are posters going up across the city. To arms. To arms. The enemy is at the gates. Now, that afternoon, we can be pretty sure that something else happened, but we can't be exactly certain what because the documents were later destroyed. They were destroyed in the events of 1870-71.

[Tom Holland]

It's ironic, isn't it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Another Prussian day trip to Paris. So what seems to have happened is that some of the sections, these are the kind of neighborhood councils in Paris, discussed how we eliminate these people in the prisons. And there are a lot of people saying it's an unpleasant necessity, but basically somebody has to do it. Now, that's not to say the sections ordered it, but the tone has kind of been set about this point. The chief prison inspector comes to Danton, the Hotel de Ville in City hall, and he says, I'm genuinely worried about the safety of the people in the prisons. And Danton says, je meu fous bien des prisonniers. I don't give a damn about the prisoners. Like, basically let them fend for themselves.

[Tom Holland]

But to be fair to him, I mean, one of the reasons for that is that he can't spare people from the barricades. There's only a finite number of people. And obviously the main threat, from his perspective, is the approach of the Prussians.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Tom, I'm so surprised at this. I thought you were gonna be on the other side of this equation. But it's very clear to me now from the way you've conducted yourself in this whole episode, that you know you're gonna take a very. Dominic Sambrook Prince is in the Tower. Lying on this issue, are you?

[Tom Holland]

Well, no, but I do think that there are reasons why someone like Danton, people in charge of the revolution, might be unconcerned with prisoners and the security of the prisoners. That relates to the overall situation in Paris.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, fair enough. And also, don't forget, everybody thinks the prisoners are total villains and traitors and all of that stuff.

[Tom Holland]

Of course. But I think that saying, you know, we can't bother with them.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

It's justified by military exigencies.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Fair enough. Listeners can make up their own minds, can't they? I have to say, Theo agrees with you. He's written in the chat. Well said, Tom. So that's nice. So let's get into the story. Sometime about 2:30 that afternoon, the 2nd of September, the news has come in from Verdun. There is a group of prisoners being escorted through the city from the Palais de Justice to the Abbe prison. And they are royal officials, they're courtiers and they're Catholic priests. The streets are obviously packed with people because of the war panic and a lot of people shout abuse at them as they pass in these kind of carriages. As they get towards the Abbe prison, which is in St. Germain des Pres. It's a former abbey, hence the name. A group of people stop them. These people are National Guardsmen, sans culottes, a mixture of characters. They stop the carriages, they drag the prisoners out and they drag them into the nearby section headquarters, which is a convent, and there's a great crowd of people there and the people are shouting, these are enemies of the people, you know, why take them to the prison? Why not just get rid of them? Now, two or three of those prisoners try to break out, try to get away or fight for their lives or whatever. There's a scuffle, they're beaten up and they are hacked to death with knives. And their bodies are left in the courtyard. The rest of the prisoners are just 20 people or so are just standing there, absolutely traumatised, in shock, wondering what's going to happen. An impromptu tribunal is set up and it declares them guilty. Then, one by one, in a very methodical way, they are led down the steps into the garden and there Abbotts group of men has assembled with knives, axes, hatchets. There's a guy who's like, clearly carpenter because he's brought his saw and one by one they are hacked to death. It's important to say right from the beginning, this is the first incident. It is not a mad frenzy. It's not an orgy of violence. It is quiet. It's considered the guys take their time. It takes about half an hour to kill all these men and then it is done. And upstairs, the people who are still there, the room is absolutely full of people and they are debating now that we've killed these people, why don't we just go into the Abbe prison and do the same with everybody who is in there.

[Tom Holland]

But again, not necessarily to kill them, to sit in judgment on them.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

As we'll see, not everybody is killed. You're absolutely right. While that crowd is all debating and arguing about how they're going to do it, a separate group breaks into another prison about a mile away called the Carme. It's a former Carmelite convent. So a lot of these prisons are convents and abbeys and religious houses that have been converted. In this prison there are about one hundred and sixty priests. This crowd again organizes a kind of improvised tribunal. They call out the prisoners names one by one, they take them out into the garden. Some of them are shot. Most of them they were hacked to death. Again, some of them try to climb over the walls or they even climb trees to get away, but they are dragged back and finished off with knives.

[Tom Holland]

Again, just to say, I mean, a quarter of them are spared.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, hold on. 115 people out of 160 are killed in this.

[Tom Holland]

Absolutely. Because I think it's easy to think that it is a total massacre.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, you wouldn't take your chances with that.

[Tom Holland]

Of course not. It's just really supporting what you were saying, that this isn't a kind of frothing at the mouth mad mob frenzy. It's much more considered and therefore I think actually much more frightening than that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Agreed. And by the way, we both gave different figures. That's not because one of us is right and the other is wrong. It's because every history book gives different figures on this. So, yeah, there is a lot of confusion about the figures. Now meanwhile, the death squad has got started in the Abbe prison and also in some of the other prisons. And in all of them it is the same kind of routine. I think actually death squad is better than mob. They're often described as mobs, but these are kind of organized teams of men. They almost always hold this kind of tribunal. They bring people out into the courtyard. Once they've been found guilty and then they stab them or hack them to death. And we only know one of the names of the people who organized this, a guy called Stanislas Maiar, who was a clerk, he'd been at the Bastille, he'd been a big figure in the Women's March on Versailles. And he seems to have been one of those people who's thrown up by these periods of revolution and kind of chaos. So a bit of a bully, you know, you could say he's the kind of person who would be a paramilitary leader, and he loves all this. And he's. Obviously, this is his. His moment.

[Tom Holland]

But it's interesting, isn't it, that actually so few names are known. And in large part that is because in due course to be a Septem Briseur, as they come to be called, is highly dangerous because it comes to be seen as a terrible blot on the reputation of the revolution. Not immediately, though, and I think that that reflects the fact that this is genuinely not being organized by the big names, by Danton or Robespierre or whatever. It's coming probably from the sections, and the people who are organizing it are not people who will go on to great things to become kind of famous names.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think they're absolutely right, Tom. I think he is being organized insofar as there is a sense of organization. It's at a very, very sort of low level. It's these kind of neighborhood councils, the Commune, we know that they talked about that insurrectionary council that's taking control of Paris. We know they talked about it and they said, your point? There weren't enough men to protect the prisons. We need them on the barricades. One of the Communist committees issued a statement signed by Mara. The prisoners are brigands who will slaughter our children and our women. These acts of justice are indispensable to deter, through the use of terror, these legions of traitors.

[Tom Holland]

But it's not like Marat is being named as a guy who's leading it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, no, he's not going in.

[Tom Holland]

He's inspired it. But I think these are basically the people who had attacked the Tuileries, right?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, I think that's right.

[Tom Holland]

It's people from the working class areas of Paris. They are representative figures from the working population of Paris.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, I think so. I mean, and we'll talk about in the second half about what the population of Paris think of it. But I think you're absolutely right that basically they are pretty representative of the city and of the streets, I guess. It is the vengeance of the streets. That's what historians who are more sympathetic to the September mass say on the bigwigs. The bigwigs know this is happening, but they don't do anything about it. Danton says to Brissot, Girondin leader, the deaths are an indispensable sacrifice to appease the people of Paris. The Interior Minister, Jean Marie Roland, the husband of Madame Roland, the great sort of linchpin of the Girondins sort of social circle, he says the people, terrible in its vengeance, is exercising a kind of justice. You know, they're making excuses for it and kind of. I mean, they do nothing about it.

[Tom Holland]

That association of terror with a kind of justice, I think, is exactly what's happening.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, I think, oh, it's very French Revolution, isn't it? So that's the first day, but of course, it's just the first of several days. The next day you get to Monday the 3rd. The men at the Abbaye prison, the first prison to be targeted, they're there for about 24 hours, working away. And meanwhile other men have moved on to other prisons. There's a seminary called St. Famin, which holds priests. There's a convent called St. Bernard. There's an asylum at Bicetre which holds petty criminals. Perhaps most shockingly, the Saupetriere Women's Hospice, which holds prostitutes. And people have been joking, hadn't they, we should send Marie Antoinette to the Saupetriere. So there, we're not talking about priests or courtiers or, you know, royalist journalists. These people are actually poor petty criminals, prostitutes and so on. And this is, I think, where it gets particularly shocking. So be set. They killed probably 150, 160 people. A lot of them are very young. About 40 of them are probably under 18. One of them is 12, two of them are 13, three of them are 14, and so on. St. Bernard, the people who are killed there, perhaps 70 of them, they're forgers. And the Sans Culottes hate forgers because of the paper money. They think the paper money is all a plot. They think that the forgers have been working with counter revolutionaries to undermine it and to drive up grain prices. So if you're a forger, you've got to go.

[Tom Holland]

So David Andress is written a wonderful book on the terror. He. He comments on this laconically. September 1792 was not a good time to be a captured forger, and that is putting it mildly, and not a.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Good time to be a prostitute. So Saul Petriere Probably 40 prostitutes or.

[Tom Holland]

Indeed a criminal generally. Right, because you were talking about how throughout the revolutionary period people have been assuming that criminals are in association with counter revolutionary forces. And this basically seems to be why people are targeting people who are in for criminality rather than for political crimes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, I think actually, Tom, since 1789, maybe I don't know enough about pre revolutionary Paris, but I think certainly since 1789, you know, we talked about the grand pear, the great fear in the countryside. And that's a huge fear of brigands, isn't it? Who are gonna ride over the horizon and trample your crops and burn cause they're working with the local aristocrats. Well, I think in Paris there has been the same thing with criminals. You know, an anxiety about street crime and a belief that crime in some obscure way is connected with the court.

[Tom Holland]

Well, again, David Andress, he makes the comment in his book on the terror that there were always 30,000 of them for some reason that again and again is this figure. There are 30,000 brigands, there are 30,000 criminals. They're all plotting. And clearly it's just part of the temper of the time. It's what people are obsessed about and terrified of.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, absolutely. Now actually you made a really good point earlier on. You were keen to emphasize that not everybody is killed. The single most famous kind of insider account, the one that was best known in 1790s France, came from somebody who did survive. He was an army officer and a royalist journalist called Francois Journiac Saint Maillard. And he was in the Abbey of Saint Germain, a prisoner. And he wrote a book afterwards with the brilliant title my agony of 38 hours.

[Tom Holland]

I'd buy that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And he says in that basically he was in the prison and he was in his cell and his cell had a little window and he couldn't see into the courtyard, but he could hear. And he said basically that was the execution ground. And for hours he was just sitting there in his cell listening to people being murdered. And he said the killers worked in silence. And that made him even more terrifying. He could hear people being led out and then the kind of grunting and the, the hacking of the blows and all that kind of thing. And he said all that he would hear was the only speech was that basically after everybody was killed, the killers would shout, vive la nation, Long live the nation. And then they would move on to the next. Now a guard, he'd made friends with a guard. And the guard said to him, I'll let you watch some of the interrogations before the tribunal, so you can work out the right answers. So eventually, 4th of September, at 1:00 in the morning, it's his turn. Imagine that. I mean, that's terrifying. Somebody shouts out your name and you're led down the corridor and then you go into this room which is packed with people, a lot of stubble, a lot of sweat, and a group of men at the end, and you have to answer these questions. And he said the men who took him in had blood all over their shirts. So he goes in and if his account is remotely true, and of course it may be exaggerated, he did really well. He was very calm. He said, listen, I used to be a royalist, but I'm not anymore. The circumstances have changed and of course I've changed my mind, as we all have. I've never plotted and conspired with anybody. I've never been interested in politics. You know, I was just a journalist and, you know, it's bad luck that I'm here. And they acquitted him and they sent him home with an escort of sans culottes. And when he got back to his boarding house, his landlord, who saw him coming with his men covered in blood, got out his pocketbook to give these men money to basically pay them off. And the men said, oh, we don't do this for money, because they see.

[Tom Holland]

Themselves as agents of justice. And I mean, just to emphasize this, that actually of the prisons in which the killings are taking place, over half of those who are detained in the prisons do survive this experience, which isn't in any way to underplay, you know, I mean, almost half population of a prison being slaughtered is hideous, but it's a glass half empty, glass half full perspective. I suppose.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So it depends. I mean, it's so interesting. It depends which book you read. I can tell you've been reading David Andrus's book because he's very much of the class, class half full, isn't he? He's like, well, look at all the prisoners who survived. Nobody talks about them anyway. So this guy gave the right answers. But of course, there are some people who cannot bring themselves to give the right answers. And after the break, let's come to the most celebrated of all of those. And that's somebody you've talked about before, Tom. And I know you have a bit of a tendress for this unfortunate lady.

[Tom Holland]

I do.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's Marie Antoinette's friend, the Princesse de Lamballe. So we'll be coming to her story after the break. And be warned, things are going to get ugly.

[Tom Holland]

And that is A very serious warning. She received a sabre blow behind her head, which took off her cap. Her long hair fell onto her shoulders. Another sabre blow hit her eye. Blood gushed out. Her dress was stained with it. She tried to fall down to let herself die, but they forced her to get up again to walk over corpses. And the crowd, silent, watched the slaughter. So that is one of numerous accounts. And we'll be looking at the range of what is reported about this death, describing probably the best known of all the victims of the September massacres, who is the Princesse de Lamballe, who, as you mentioned just before the break, Dominic, we've talked about before, in our very first episode, episode one of season one, in our episode on Marie Antoinette, that she was a very close friend of Marie Antoinette. She's of impeccable background, a princess of the House of Savoy. She was notorious for being a bit dumb, was said to have a tendency to repeat clever things that she'd heard people say and then pretend that she'd made it up herself. But against that, there are other people who rated her intelligence quite highly. She was a friend of Benjamin Franklin. So, again, a bit like Marie Antoinette. I mean, she's not entirely opposed to the kind of traditions of sentiment and fondness for the poor that are feeding into the revolution. But she becomes, like Marie Antoinette herself, a symbol of everything that is most rotten and putrid of the ancien regime. She is seen as kind of a vampire like Marie Antoinette. She's assumed to be having a lesbian affair with her. And this reflects the fact that the Princess de Lamballe, unlike save Madame de Polignac, another of Marie Antoinette's great friends who had fled the Princess de Lamballe had stayed with Marie Antoinette and had served her as her mistress of ceremonies in the Tuileries. And it is this loyalty to her which will doom her.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, that's right, Tom. So just to give people a sense of what is coming, we had a big debate, didn't we, about what reading we would come in with. This half that is actually one of the less bloodthirsty, one of the least horrible of all the potential readings that we could have chosen, because nothing good is going to happen to her. She's 42 years old at this point. I'd always imagined her as being quite young. But of course, Marie Antoinette herself is not terribly young at this point. She's been with Marian Toinette all this time. She'd had a pretty terrible life. The Princess de Lamballe, married at 16, widowed at 19. Her husband probably gave her Syphilis. So she couldn't have children and her father in law had banned her from remarrying. So she's sort of stuck hanging around Marie Antoinette. And as you say, she is extremely loyal. She's perceived as very haughty, isn't she?

[Tom Holland]

I think that's because she's shy.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. She's a nervous person. Sickly.

[Tom Holland]

Socially maladoir.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, absolutely. But as you've, as you've said, and as you brilliantly described in those episodes about Marie Antoinette at the very beginning of the whole French Revolution, she has always played a very prominent part in the kind of pornographic demonology of the court.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is so important for understanding the things that will come to be written about her death is that Paris has been saturated in appalling pornographic fantasies about Marie Antoinette and about her female attendants and friends. And this provides a kind of terrible context for what will happen to her and what will be reported about her fate.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So on the 3rd of September, which is the second day of the massacres, the killers came to a prison called La Force, where she has been taken with the other ladies in waiting and with the royal children's former governess, Madame de Tourzel. And there's a tribunal set up. There are seven people. The most famous of them is a radical journalist called Jacques Hebert. He basically makes Marat look like a columnist for the Guardian. He's kind of very extreme.

[Tom Holland]

He's a bit trumpesque, isn't he? He has nicknames for his opponents.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, yes, incredibly aggressive. So this tribunal has been working its way through the prisoners of the force. They have a very strange sort of code. If they say at the end of your hearing, vive la nation, then you are spared, you're free to go. If they say you're free to go, you are killed. So it's slightly confusing. Anyway, the Princess to Lambert is brought out and it's all actually very quick. They say, did you know anything about the plot to kill the people by the Swiss guards at the Tuileries?

[Tom Holland]

So again, harking back to the sense that it's the guards who are at fault and it's a royal conspiracy against the people.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And she says, no, I knew nothing about this. Will you swear to liberty and equality and hatred of the King and Queen? She says, yes, I'll happily swear to liberty and equality, but I cannot swear hatred to the King and Queen. It's not in my heart. Now at that point, by some accounts, there was a friend or an agent of her Father in law or something like this, who was in the room, who whispered to her, just said, say your swear it and. And they'll let you go. And she said, I have nothing more to say. It's indifferent to me if I die earlier or later. I have made the sacrifice of my life. And the tribunal says, very well, let Madame be set at liberty, which means you're for the chop. And then she is led outside into the courtyard. And now what happens next is the subject of innumerable, undoubtedly sensationalized, exaggerated, and probably entirely fictional accounts. Many of them exaggerated and many of them, frankly, probably fictional. What do we actually know? What we know is that the same day the third, a group of sans culottes, delivered her body, sans head, to one of the sections. Later the head was retrieved and these were buried privately by servants of her family. That's what we actually know.

[Tom Holland]

So we know that her head was cut off and was not there to be taken with the rest of her body to the section notary.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Correct. So there are a couple of issues, and how she was killed, which is the subject of an enormous sort of very prurient, frankly pornographic speculation in the 1790s. And afterwards. And then there is what happens to her head afterwards, which becomes a very, very famous part of the French Revolutionary story.

[Tom Holland]

So the detail that you just mentioned about what happens to her head, which I think does happen, the story is it gets put on a pike and it gets taken to the prison, the temple fortress where the royal family are being kept. And of course, Marie Antoinette, the friend, and in the opinion of the crowd, the lesbian lover of the murdered princess. And there are various accounts of what then happened. Some say that Marie Antoinette looked out of the window, saw it, screamed and fainted. This seems an exaggeration. The likelihood is it's that she didn't see it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

She wasn't actually there at the time. I think she wasn't in the room.

[Tom Holland]

Right.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There's a story that the governor of the prison's wife sees it and faints. And people thought that was Marianne. I think it's possible they put the head on the pike, by the way, to the Temple prison. I think that sounds like something they might have done.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I agree. And I think that, as we'll probably explore later in the episode, it's partly because parading heads on pikes has become a part of revolutionary justice. So the beheading of enemies of the revolution, the parading of their heads, this is part of the language of justice on the streets. So you would almost expect that to happen. There's also. There's a terrible story about the Duke of Orleans, isn't there? As was, who's now become Philip Egalite.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

One of the worst people who's ever lived.

[Tom Holland]

But again, I don't believe this story.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There was a story that he's at the Palais Royal and he's having dinner with some English friends, English guests, and somebody brings in the head, and he looks at her and he says, oh, that's Lomba. I know her by her long hair. Anyway, let's have dinner again.

[Tom Holland]

I don't think that happened.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think he's such a terrible man that I'd like to believe it did happen, because it reflects very badly on him.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, the question of whether the stories are true and won't go into all the details. But there is one particularly notorious account of what happened that I'm going to quote, and anyone listening who maybe has children or who. He doesn't want to hear it, just block out the next couple of minutes. But this is a detail that was reported by a playwright. And again, it's intriguing how often playwrights and fiction writers crop up in these stories. He'd been sympathetic to the revolution, but seven years on, when he wrote this, he turned radically against it, become a counter revolutionary. He's a man called Louis Sebastian Mercier, and he wrote when the Princess de Lamballe was mutilated in a hundred different ways. So already there we have, you know, the escalation of the kind of torture porn, if you like, and the murderers had partaken of the bleeding morsels of her corpse. So he's saying they're eating her. I mean, the charge of cannibalism there is being overt. One of the monsters cut off her virginal part and made it into a moustache. And the reason for quoting this specifically, partly it reflects the way in which counter revolutionaries are drawing on the kind of the libertine pornography of which the Marquis de Sade is the exemplar. But it also, I think, points to one of the ways in which the September Massacres will be understood and have been understood, which is as an efflorescence of literal demons from hell, monsters who have lost all trace of humanity and can perpetrate the most revolting atrocities. And this will be a way in which, in the wake of the revolution, throughout the 19th into the 20th century, counter revolutionary traditions in France and beyond will interpret the September Massacres as being not a kind of clinical, patient, methodical elimination of people who they see as Criminals, but as an orgy of destruction and murder.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. Like the stuff of a Gilray cartoon.

[Tom Holland]

Yes, or something like that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So. So my take on this is these stories are incredibly controversial among historians. And as we will see, because we'll get into that in a little while, my view is a lot of these stories are clearly made up. You know, the stories of the most grotesque torture, the stories of cannibalism, people drinking blood, all of that kind of stuff. It's part of a tradition of kind of political invective to invent these stories. But I think it's implausible to imagine that a thousand people were killed without, as it were, people overstepping them up, you know, without mutilations, without rape. Because there were suggestions that some of the prostitutes, for example.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. In the Serpent. Yeah, yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Were abused or raped. So is that inherently implausible? No, I think a lot of these. These are horrific killings. They're not entirely surgical. However, I do agree with you that a mad frenzy is the wrong way to think about it, that it is pretty clear from a lot of these accounts, like that account that we quoted before the break of that guy who let go, there is a kind of semblance of justice. We know that the killers took these tribunals, that they're not all just sort of dancing around wearing people's body parts as hats or whatever, covered in blood. That they are actually trying to take these tribunals quite seriously. We know that the crowds listen to the evidence, and we do know that the killings were carried out in silence because so many people talk about somber.

[Tom Holland]

Somber.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Solemn, yeah. Solemn atmosphere. Like people. I mean, some people have talked about it. They've said it was almost like they were ritualistic killings, that there was a kind of. I dare I say to him, I don't want to give you, you know, a massive gift, but it's kind of sacral dimension to it, that it was a purge. It was a kind of purge of sin.

[Tom Holland]

So it's often said, I think correctly, that there is a presaging here of the notion of cleansing a state of disease that we see in the 20th century totalitarian states, whether it's the fascists or the communists. But I genuinely think it is also drawing on those Christian traditions. Because you talked about a holocaust. A holocaust is a burnt offering to the gods. That's originally what it was, transmuted into a Christian context because these are all happening in abbeys, in convents, and the sense the inquisitors had that they were doing God's work when they burned the diseased limb of the tree. This is very similar to the language that you were having with the September massacres. And I think that, I mean, I agree, I'm sure that there must have been some kind of sexual sadism going on, maybe particularly at the Saul Petriere. But just to say on that issue, it's a salpetriere where the fewest prisoners are killed. I think it's something like 40. Did we say 35 to 40? But there are 280 or 90 there. So relatively speaking, I mean, it's not like they're breaking into a prison full of prostitutes and going mad in the way that rakes in a sad novel would. So I think that is for me the most chilling thing about it. It is murder done in the cause of virtue.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, I totally agree with that. I think that the people who do it think they're doing the right thing. They think it's a necessary purge.

[Tom Holland]

But that is also why it's important for counter revolutionary propagandists to frame it as pornographic, because that undermines the claim of those who perpetrated these executions to be virtuous.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think actually the pornographic kind of moat is the one that people instinctively reach for because it is. Paris is awash with it. I think it's the. It's the natural genre to pick, but.

[Tom Holland]

I think it is natural for those who repudiate the notion that this has anything to do with virtue.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay, let's just sum up the story. So takes four days. The massacres in the prisons last for four days. They die down on the morning of the 6th of September. To give you a sense of what Paris looks like, the place is absolutely full of bodies. There are bodies in the streets, there are bodies in the courtyards, there are bodies in the kind of corridors of the prison. The rest of the prisoners, of course, have been saved free. So the prison's empty. And the Commune eventually sends in people and says, please scrub them down and wash them with vinegar. Get rid of the stench, get rid of the stains. But in some of the prisons, La Force, for example, there's so much blood, they can't shift the blood stains. Of course, a Tom Holland would say some of the rooms are stained with blood, but some of them are pristine and perfectly clean. Why not talk about those rooms? Anyway, we'll get onto this in a second, Tom, because we're going to talk about the historiography. There are copycat killings elsewhere in France. So there are 44 people, for example, that are killed in Versailles. A Horrendous atrocity, actually. They are lynched, they are beheaded in public, and their heads are stuck on the spikes of the palace gates. So probably about 100 people are killed across France. But then in the next few weeks, things die down. In the future episodes, we'll talk about why that happens. The political transformation in Paris and a very dramatic change on the battlefield. Just to move towards a close on the September massacres, one question is, what did people in Paris think of them? And we know people in Paris thought they were fine. They were completely fine. David Andress, who you've mentioned before, he makes a very good point that Parisians are used to public violence. I mean, you talked about it, Tom, in that excellent episode you did on the guillotine. The hideous rituals of the public executions. The idea of humiliating, degrading and destroying somebody in public.

[Tom Holland]

But, Dominic, also what we talked about in that episode was how the revolution equates itself with humanitarian impulses. And it may seem mad to talk about humanitarian impulses in the context of the September massacres, but I suspect that, I mean, maybe a majority of the people doing the executions would say that actually they're not kind of publicly tearing people apart with horses or anything like that. They're doing it expeditiously. And the whole tradition of hanging people from lanterns and then parading their heads is seen as revolutionary justice, but is already starting to be phased out. It's clearly a court of embarrassment for the revolutionary authorities. And that is why exactly as this is going on, the guillotine is starting to be introduced and is becoming more and more the emblem of how criminals should be dispatched. And the September masses, I'm sure, must play a key role in that process. That people in the revolutionary authorities think, okay, fine, I mean, it's cruel necessity, but it would be better to do it with the guillotine.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, it's interesting that the papers at the time, they're not embarrassed about it at all. This is a moderate paper, the Courier Francais. The people made it their duty to purge the city of all the criminals to prevent a prison breakout that would have fallen on the women and children. More radical paper, Revolution de Paris. The people took the extreme measure, but the only appropriate one, of forestalling the horrors that were being prepared against them and of showing no mercy to those who would not have shown any to them.

[Tom Holland]

But if you have a machine that can just slice a head off, you don't need courtyards full of peoples with butcher's knives.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of course, I mean, we have diarists, we have letter writers. There's a brilliant example of a guy, a Merchant Son, an 18 year old, in Peter McPhee's book on the French Revolution. And he wrote home and he said, there has been a horrible massacre. He says, wherever you go, you see the bloody remains of mutilated bodies in open graves. And then in the next line, he says, but it was the right thing to do. The prisoners were plotting with the Prussians. We had to do it. And that diarist, Rosalie Jullien, she said, again, an atrocious necessity. The people, terrible in their fury, are avenging the crimes of three years of vile treachery. And she talks in her diary, she says, people have had their heads cut off, priests have been eviscerated. But it's the right thing to do because, you know, we had to save France. Now, the thing is, historians have grappled with this ever since, because, of course, most historians, by and large, I would say, who write about the French Revolution, especially in France, have been sympathetic to the Revolution. And here you have an episode which is for me much more shocking than the Terror. I mean, the victims and the Terror, a lot of them are people involved in politics, players in the games. They're players. These people are often young, very poor, the criminals, the petty thieves, the women, the prostitutes, the Prince de Lambert. So, you know, from the 21st century perspective, I know Theo says, oh, you're always harder on French exponents of violence than you are when the British do it. But I think even with that said, it's hard to contemplate this and to say, oh, yeah, they had to go, as Theo clearly thinks.

[Tom Holland]

I think you're being a bit harsh on Theo there. You say that it's not comparable to the Terror. I mean, lots of innocent people die in the Terror. And the difference is that death by the guillotine is more clinical than being hacked to death by people armed with knives and choppers. That you think.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I suppose so. I mean, I probably would choose the guillotine over being hacked, Seth, by a.

[Tom Holland]

Carpenter with a saw at 1 o'clock in the morning.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So the definitive French historian of this was a guy called Pierre Caron, and he was writing in the 1930s, he was the head of the National Archives in France. And he said, you have to understand it in the context of two things. One, the fighting at the Tuileries and the thirst for vengeance. And the other is the mood of panic and hysteria as the Prussians advanced on the capital. And that you have to understand, you know, the war, the Pressure and all of this kind of thing. And Caron, for years everybody said he's the top man in the September massacres. He knows what's What. And then 50 years later, our old friend Simon Sharma wrote his book Citizens. Have you read the passage where he talks about Caron?

[Tom Holland]

I have.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He says his book is, and I quote, a monument of intellectual cowardice and moral self delusion. And he said, carol is being far too kind. This is basically anticipating the genocides of the 20th century. The same themes, we have to get them before they get us. The same emphasis on a kind of what Sharma calls an armed sanitation, on purging France of crime and sin. And you can see why Sharma, writing in the 1980s, very conscious of what had happened in Europe 40 years earlier, why he looks September massacres and says, hey, don't make excuses for this. This is unbelievably horrible and bestial. And he doesn't deny that there's a kind of efficiency and a clinical nature to it, but he says that's what makes it all the more frightening.

[Tom Holland]

But equally, he literally is repeating counter revolutionary propaganda. So to quote him from Citizens, when he's writing about Caron, some accounts, including that of Mercier. So that's the playwright whose account of the fate of the Princess de Lamballe we quoted insist on the obscene mutilation and the display of her genitals. A story which Caron dismisses with the cloistered certainty of the archivist as intrinsically inconceivable. But we know that didn't happen, and we know that because of research that has happened since he wrote Citizens. So French historian Antoine de bac, you know, he's the guy who went through all the records of the sections and found that the body of the Princess de Lamballe was given to the notary of the local section and he recorded what had happened and none of these mutilations had happened.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

So we know for a fact that that is counter revolutionary propaganda and that when Caron dismisses it, it's not because he's some cloistered archivist, but because actually he's right about that. That wasn't happening.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So in this case. Right, I agree with you. It didn't happen. The thing is, do you take all the revolutionary sources on trust and say the counter revolutionary ones are propagandistic exaggerations, or do you say that the truth probably lies in between the two and that both of them are parti pri? And actually the truth is that we'll never really know. And this is the frustrating thing about this story, it's a classic example of historians projecting onto it their own political preconception. So you give these. We talked about David Andrus. David Andrus is very much a man of the left. In his book on the terror, you know, he says the September massacres are terrible. But then in the next breath he has a sentence like this. This is how he introduces the September massacres. The people in arms exercised their right of self defense against those they felt were betraying them to the counter revolution. You cannot imagine Simon Sharma writing that sentence, can you?

[Tom Holland]

No, you can't. But I think that's slightly to misrepresent what he's saying. I mean, he is saying that that is precisely the horror. You know, they think that they're doing justice and that is precisely why it is terrifying. You know, he's saying, I guess in the way that a Christian would say about what the Inquisition did. And I think that there is an absolute continuity there, as I've said, that it's the realisation that you can launch a pogrom, execute people in cold blood and feel that you are doing it in the cause of what is right. That's what's frightening.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, but I don't think that excuses it. I think that makes it all the more terrifying.

[Tom Holland]

No, but I don't think David Andress thinks that either. I mean, I think that I'm no expert in the historiography of the French Revolution, but the reading I've done of writers who are on the left about this is that they do acknowledge that that is what is frightening.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

You can commit atrocities and feel that you're doing it in the cause. Right. And as I say, it's like a Christian having to face up to, you know, the executions that have been done in the name of Christ.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, are you not the person who did an episode about how the Nazis thought what they were doing was right and they. On the right side of history and on the right side of kind of morality.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. And that's where the analogy, I suppose, Sharma's point about the sanitation kicks in.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's absolutely the right one. So there's another brilliant book on the French Revolution, the most recent English Language Survey. It's by a guy called Jeremy Popkin, American historian, professor at the University of Kentucky. And he is much more positive about the revolution. The Sharma is. And he says in his section on this, he says, listen, if you think the French Revolution is better than the experiments of the 20th century, for example, communism, or indeed Nazism, if you think the French Revolution is more progressive, as he clearly does. He says you should have a massive problem with the September massacres because he says the thing that is so frightening about them is that they are so cold bloodedly political that they are people sitting down in committee rooms and saying, yeah, these people have got to go, go ahead and do it. Somebody organized the death squads. I mean, of course they were bottom up to some degree, but there were people who led them, there were people who condoned it, there were people who didn't intervene, all of that kind of thing. And his version, and indeed in Timothy Tackett and other historians, they say this is a key step towards what we call the Reign of Terror. You know, the idea that you, maybe you'll make some mistakes and some innocent people will be rounded up and killed accidentally, but it's actually better to purge than to allow the evil as they see it, to fester in your midst.

[Tom Holland]

I agree, and that is, I think what is frightening about it. But I think that historians of all political persuasions would now see that as being what's frightening about it, I think.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, because obviously we're gonna be talking about this an awful lot when we get the Terror itself. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The elections to the National Convention have been happening all this time and all the big names are standing. Brisseau, Robespierre, Danton, Marat. This new convention is going to meet on the 20th of September and it is going to decide the future of France and in particular, something I know you'll be talking about in a couple of episodes time, the future of the Royal family. But the question is, will this convention even get the chance to do that? Because all this time the Prussians have been coming closer and closer and closer. So Verdun fell, the Duke of Brunswick is coming on. He's got 80,000 men. Every day he is coming closer to Paris. He is now being pursued by a smaller French army under General Dumouriez, who is the Foreign Minister who got France into the war in the first place. And by the third week in September, the Prussians reach a place called Valmy, which is in the Argonne forest. It's about 120 miles from Paris and rain is falling, the skies are overcast, and it's against this very kind of turbulent backdrop that the Duke of Brunswick and the Prussians turn to finish off the French and to clear the battlefield for their final assault on the capital. And Tom, what happens next will change the course of European history?

[Tom Holland]

Thank you, Dominic. Brilliant. What A cliffhanger. So much more to come, lots more drama. And of course, if you are a member of the Rest is History Club, you can listen to the next three episodes of this epic journey to the climax of the French Revolution. Right now we will be discussing in our next episode, Olympe de Gouge, the first feminist, the author of the Rights of Woman. We will be discussing the fall of the French monarchy and the climax will be the guillotining of Louis xvi. So it's one of the great stories not just of French history, but of history, full stop. And if you're not a member of the Rest is History Club, then you can listen to the next episode on Olympte Gouge this coming Thursday. Thank you so much for listening. Goodbye.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Bye bye.

[C]

Hi there, I'm Al Murray, co host of we have ways of making you talk, the world's premier Second World War history podcast from Goal Hanger.

[D]

And I'm James Holland, best selling World War II historian. And together we tell the best stories from the war. This time we're doing a deep dive into the last major attack by the Nazis on the west, the Battle of the Bulge.

[C]

And what's so fascinating about this story is we've been able to show how quite a lot of the popular history about this battle is kind of the wrong way round, isn't it, Jim? The whole thing is a disaster from the start. Even Hitler's plans for the attack are insane and divorced from reality.

[D]

Well, you're so right. But what we can do is celebrate this as an American success story for the ages. From their generals at the top to the gis on the front line, full of gumption and grit. The bold should be remembered as a great victory for the usa.

[C]

And if this sounds good to you, we've got a short taste for you here. Search we have ways wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Yeah.

[D]

Anyway, so who is Overstock Van Fuhrer? Joachim Piper.

[C]

What I see is jaunty hat and I just think skull and crossbones. Well, I see his reputation and I think, you know, you might be a handsome devil, but the emphasis is on the devil bit rather than the handsome.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, be that is May. He's 29 years old and he's got, he's got a very interesting career. Really because he comes from a, you know, a pretty right wing family. Let's face it. He's joined the SS at a pretty early, early stage. He's very. International socialism. He's also been Himmler's adjutant. Yeah, he took A little bit of time off in the summer of 1940 to go and fight with, with the 1st Waffen SS Panzer Division.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[D]

Did pretty well. Went back to being Himmler's adjutant, then went off and commanded troops in, in the Eastern Front. Rose up to be a pretty young regimental commander. I mean, there's not many people that age are no Besturm Banfuhrer, which is sort of. Colonel.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes.

[Tom Holland]

I.

[C]

You see, what must it have been like if you're in, if, if Himmler's adjutant turns up and he's been posted to you as an officer, do you think? Well, he only got that job because of, because of his connections. For Piper, it must have been always. He's always having to prove himself, surely, because he has turned up. He's not worked his way through the ranks of the Waffen ss. He's dolloped in, having come from head office, as it were. It must be a peculiar position to be in. Right. He's got lots to prove. Right, that's what I'm saying.

[D]

Yeah. And he's from a sort of middle class background as well.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

But he's got an older brother who's had mental illness and attempted suicide and never, never really recovers and actually has died of TB eventually in 1942. He's got a younger brother called Horst who's also joined the SS&TOTEN cop Verbanda and died in a never really properly explained accident in Poland in 1941. Right. Piper gains a sort of growing reputation on the Eastern Front for being kind of very inspiring, fearless, you know, obviously courageous, you know, all the guys love him, all that kind of stuff. But he's also orders the entire. The destruction of entire village of Krasnaya Polyana in a kind of revenge killing by Russian partisans. Yeah. And his unit becomes known as the Blowtorch Battalion because of his penchant for touching Russian villages. So he's got all the gongs. He's got Iron Cross, second Class, first Class Cross of Gold, Knight's Cross, did very well at Kursk, briefly in Northern Italy actually, then in Ukraine, then in Normandy. He suffers a nervous breakdown.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[D]

And he's relieved of his command on the 2nd of August. And he's hospitalized from September to October. So he's not in command during Operation Lutech. And then he rejoins 1st SS Panzer Regiment as its commander again in October 1944. It's really, really odd.

[C]

I mean, but isn't that interesting though, because if you're a lancer, if you're an ordinary soldier, you're not allowed to have a nervous breakdown. You don't get hospitalized, you don't get time off. How you could interpret this is. This is a sort of Nazi princeling, isn't he? Is Himmler's adjutant. He's demonstrated the necessary Nazi zeal on the Eastern front and all this sort of stuff. It comes to Normandy where they. Where they're losing. Why else would he have a nervous breakdown? He's shown all the zeal and application in the Nazi manner up to this point, and they're losing, you know, and because he's a knob, you know, because he's well connected, he gets to be hospitalized. If he has a nervous breakdown, he isn't told like an ordinary German soldier. There's no such thing as combat fatigue, mate. Go back to work.

[Tom Holland]

Yes.

[D]

And it's a nervous breakdown, not combat fatigue.

[C]

Well, yes, of course, but.

[D]

But you know what SS soldier said of him? Piper was the most dynamic man I ever met. He just got things done.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

You get this image I have of him of having this kind of sort of slightly manic energy. Yeah, kind of. He's virulently National Socialist. He's got this great reputation. He's damned if anyone's going to tarnish it. You know, he's a. He's a driver, you know, all those things.

[C]

He's trying to make the will triumph, isn't he? He's working towards the Fuhrer. He's imbued with. He knows what's expected of him. Extreme violence and cruelty and pushing his men on. I mean, he's sort of. He's the Fuhrer Princip writ large, isn't he, as a. As an SS officer.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Which is why cruelty and extreme violence are bundled in to wherever he goes, basically.