France Becomes Republic: Monarchy Ends in 1792

Three years after a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille, the French Revolution reached its most radical turning point. On September 21, 1792, the newly assembled National Convention formally abolished the monarchy and declared France a republic, ending over a thousand years of royal rule stretching back to the Frankish kings. The path to this moment ran through escalating violence and political upheaval. King Louis XVI, who had reluctantly accepted a constitutional monarchy in 1791, fatally undermined his position by secretly corresponding with foreign powers and attempting to flee the country. The botched escape to Varennes in June 1791 destroyed whatever public trust remained. When Austria and Prussia invaded France in the summer of 1792 to restore royal authority, Parisians responded by storming the Tuileries Palace on August 10, massacring the Swiss Guards and effectively deposing the king. The Convention, dominated by radical Jacobins, moved quickly. Delegates voted unanimously to abolish the monarchy, and the date was reset to Year One of the French Republic. The republic adopted the motto "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" and began remaking every aspect of French society, from the calendar to the system of weights and measures. Louis XVI was put on trial for treason in December 1792 and guillotined on January 21, 1793. His execution horrified European monarchies and triggered the War of the First Coalition, as Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands joined Austria and Prussia against revolutionary France. The First French Republic survived foreign invasion and civil war but consumed itself through the Terror, the Thermidorian Reaction, and the instability of the Directory. Napoleon Bonaparte's coup in 1799 ended the experiment, though the republic's ideals of popular sovereignty and individual rights permanently reshaped European politics.