The Republican Fortress

The first night of newly established French Republic — as of then, occupying little more than Paris itself, and even then largely the sans-culottes districts of city — was a chaotic one. Lafayette had never wanted a Republic in truth, and his posthumously published diaries would demonstrate a deep belief that constitutional monarchy was by far the best chance France had of stable democratic government (a belief that likely influenced his acceptance of the Treaty of London at the conclusion of the First Coalition War). However, his utmost ideal was protecting democracy and the Revolution, and now that Louis had made his choice abundantly clear, Lafayette made his own.

Quickly realizing that the Republic’s sole hope was the sans-culottes dominated National Guard that, just days before, he had been worried would be the source of an insurrection, he ordered Marat released from prison and allowed Robespierre and Barère to resume their seats in the much-depleted Assembly. The latter was an entirely symbolic gesture, of course, but the message was obvious: you are free, now protect your Revolution. Indeed, the conclusion of Lafayette’s famous saying to Danton — now in his capacity as Commandant in the National Guard — makes this abundantly clear:

“I am not your friend, and you are not mine. But we are both Frenchmen, and in defence of liberty, that is enough.”

Danton responded to this call of arms with near-fanatical enthusiasm. In a line oft-quoted by radicals, would-be revolutionaries and radical reformers, he sounded the call to arms in the Cordeliers and Jacobin Clubs:

“The tocsin bells we are about to ring are not an alarm, it sounds the charge on the enemies of liberty. We need audacity, then again audacity, always audacity, until the people are saved!” [1]

Audacity, however, would not be the word used to describe Lafayette’s first hours as President of the French Republic, for he promptly disappeared from view for several hours. Rumors abounded — perhaps he had fled with the Assembly, or been kidnapped or killed by royal agents, or even had defected to the King — and only the natural authority of Danton and, to a lesser extent, Robespierre prevented panic breaking out amongst the ranks of the assembling National Guard.

Years later, Lafayette would reveal in those critical hours in the dead of night that he had been consulting with the American Ambassador John Laurens. Why he did so at such a juncture, however, has never been fully explained — neither Lafayette nor the ambassador divulged any details of it before their deaths, nor were any notes taken of their meeting. However, based on what followed, historians have guessed that the Ambassador contained secret correspondence from the former American President, Samuel Kim, with advice on how to proceed in exactly such a juncture. Amongst many other things, Kim was one of the great military innovators known to history, had taken a keen public interest in Lafayette’s cause from the Revolution’s outset. It is thus understandable that some would conclude that Lafeyette, a gifted military commander and a fine leader of men but not otherwise known as an innovative tactician of note, would not be solely responsible for the urban warfare tactics used in the forthcoming battle many years before they would be widely employed. However, it is likely that the truth of this matter, one of the great unsolved mysteries of the French Revolution, followed Lafayette, [...], and (if involved) President Kim to the grave, and will never be recovered.

Nevertheless, the period of time in which Lafayette was apparently indisposed represented a mortal danger to the survival of the nascent Republic — or it would have, had his opponent grasped the urgency and gravity of the situation. Louis, still prone to indecision and temporizing despite Artois’ influence, did not dispatch the Army immediately, and — despite his later reputation — truly did not want blood spilled on the streets of Paris.

Besides, how could Lafayette possibly hope to resist? “The Assembly is but a pack of beggars,” he is quoted as saying dismissively, “and so beg they surely will.”

But the Assembly — at least, what was left of it — did not beg, and Lafayette did not back down. As night turned to morning, sunlight revealed that the streets of Paris themselves had been fashioned under Lafayette’s personal direction into a reply more effective than any words: across the city, on wide thoroughfares and narrow, twisting lanes alike, hundreds upon hundreds of makeshift barricades had been constructed of torn-up cobblestone, street rubble, bricks, ripped-out doors, and anything else the citizens of Paris and National Guard — the two were, by now, essentially synonymous — could get their hands on. Some of these were, reportedly, genuinely imposing structures in their own right, revealing a level of sophistication in conception and design that reveals exactly why some historians have theorized that the designs came from Samuel Kim himself. Above the largest of these barricades there flew the famous tricolor that had already come to symbolize the Revolution; red, white, and blue. Paris had been turned from a city into a Republican fortress.

It was not until late morning that news of this continued defiance reached Louis XVI. After a little more vacillation, and with enormous reluctance, he assented to Artois using the Army to put down the Revolution once and for all. At three o’clock in the afternoon, Artois led three columns of infantry, somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand in total, from Versailles to march on the city. Against them were, nominally, fifty thousand National Guard. However, even a desperate scouring of the city for arms only produced enough firearms and ammunition for twenty thousand, the vast majority of whom had never so much as held a gun before, let alone been trained to use one productively. Artois’ confidence that by the following morning the monarchy would be fully restored thus appeared well-founded.

What happened next would have been impossible for King Louis and Artois, overconfident and contemptuous of his enemies, to imagine.

The Battle of Paris [2]

The first sign of trouble came before they had even reached the city. Since the 17th century under Louis XIV, Paris had been lit by candle and oil lamps that illuminated the city after dark — the original source of Paris’s famous descriptor, the “City of Lights”. On Lafayette’s orders, those lights had all been smashed. The three columns thus found the city rapidly darkening upon their arrival shortly before sunset, with any and every known cache of weapons in the city had been raided and cleared out. Artois’ men were said to have been visibly unnerved by the prospect of fighting an unruly mob in unlit streets after dark, but Artois pressed on without calling for reinforcements (despite having no experience whatsoever in urban warfare). They were, after all, just an unruly mob.

Artois’ plan was to have the three columns split up, control the major thoroughfares of the city, and steadily root out the revolutionaries street by street. The first column would march for the Place Joachim-du-Balley in the centre of the city. The second would march to the Hôtel de Ville (the City Hall). The third would occupy the Place de la Bastile, although the hated fortress had been demolished months earlier.

It is difficult to imagine a more misguided strategy than the one Artois chose, nor a more fateful outcome.

The first column marched up the Rue Saint-Honoré to the Place Joachim-du-Balley, taking only light fire on the way. As is the case today, the square itself has merely four streets leading in and out — and upon arrival, three of these streets had been blocked by large, imposing rubble barricades. It was only then that the column — cold, lacking food, water, ammunition, and now caught in an open space surrounded by barricades and tall buildings — realized the depth of its predicament. Sensing the risk of being trapped the column tried to back out the way they had come, but it was too late. The National Guard rapidly converged on the surrounding buildings and started raining heavy fire on the near-helpless column, with only a fountain and stray rubble as cover, and the Rue Saint-Honoré itself was quickly barricaded. The first column was now trapped.

The second column, commanded by Artois personally (as he had believed Lafayette would be at the Hotel de Ville), fared little better. The entrance to the square in front of the Hotel de Ville had been barricaded, and Artois ordered the few cannon he had brought along wheeled up and the barricade destroyed. This quickly bore fruit — but poisoned fruit, as upon entering the square, this second column found itself in a similar predicament to the first: caught in an open space, surrounded by tall buildings, and taking heavy fire from three directions, with the majority of exits still barricaded. Artois was quickly shepherded back the way he had come, although in this case, the presence of cannon ensured that the second column had far more of a fighter’s chance than the first. This was just in time because the barricade that had been smashed on the way in was soon repaired by National Guards — under heavy fire, it should be noted.

The third column, on the other hand, had proceeded to the Place de la Bastile by a circuitous route around the north of Paris, in the process largely avoiding the main barricades and the bulk of the fighting. They reached their destination without significant incident, beyond the sporadic exchange of fire with small groups of National Guards. Finding their destination largely deserted and thus “pacified”, they heard word that the second column — that personally led by Artois — had run into heavy fighting, and they resolved to reinforce their comrades. However, they soon found that the streets had been barricaded behind them, and they could no longer go out the same way they had come in. They were thus trapped deep in the restive eastern districts of Paris, home of the most radical sections of the sans-culottes, including those whose leadership was dominated by Danton and the Cordeliers Club. The commander of this third column attempted to send out small detachments to find an alternate route, but the interior streets of Paris, then as now, are narrow and twisting, and in the dark these detachments soon got lost — or worse, in some cases, trapped behind barricades and taking heavy fire.

Somehow, all three columns were now in virtually the same hell: stuck in open spaces, surrounded by tall buildings filled with ferociously angry National Guards armed to the teeth, trapped by barricades — some ten feet fall — and lacking food, water, ammunition, lighting, and warmth. The results were inevitable. Many defected straight to the National Guards, taking their weapons joining the very same “unruly mob” they had been sent to crush. Others surrendered, mostly those whose officers who believed in Lafayette, thought Artois and the King a fool, the expedition foolhardy, and had no intention of losing their lives in their name. Some of these officers would soon join the newly raised Republican Army, facing off against their former brothers-in-arms.

Most, though, were led by hard-headed royalists and would hold out through the night, taking grievous casualties (while inflicting many of their own). The remnants of the first column tried to fight its way down the Rue Saint-Denis to join the second column, and the third column continued its attempts to do the same, but beyond adding to the eventual body count, such actions had no impact on the result of the battle. By dawn, the last of the surviving soldiers in Paris had surrendered or defected. Just over a thousand of their number lay dead, with a similar number wounded. Casualties for the National Guards ran over fifteen hundred dead and two thousand wounded, mostly sustained around the Hotel de Ville and the Rue Saint-Denis as the three columns desperately attempted to blast their way through the barricades even as more were constructed amidst the fighting. However, these figures were of little consequence beyond the creation of martyrs. The Republic had faced its first and most dire test, and it had passed with flying colors.

Artois did not stick around to see the fruits of his labor. Once it was clear that the situation in Paris was irretrievable and his army was melting into the night, he took those officers and soldiers still at hand and retreated to the relatively of the south bank of the Seine, and then ran like the wind itself back to Versailles once it became incontestable that the battle was lost. From there, with the National Guard bearing down on them, the King, his family, and his entourage fled.

They would not stop until they reached Marseille, hundreds of miles to the south...

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[1] Very similar to the famous OTL quote that was blamed by the Girondins (probably incorrectly) for instigating the September Massacres of 1792 which brought down the monarchy OTL.

[2] This entire battle is basically a flat-out rip-off of what happened on Day 2 of the Three Glorious Days during the 1830 July Revolution.