however, argued that war would open the door to counter-revolution. But he could not stop the Girondins from agreeing with the king to form a government and then declaring war on Austria and Prussia in April . National Convention The plan of Girondins turned out to be a disaster. The enraged members of the Jacobin Club stormed into the palace of Tuileries, the official residence of Louis XVI, and ransacked it.
They killed the guards and took the king as prisoner. A new assembly called Convention voted that the king should be imprisoned and a new election conducted to elect a leader for the country. In this election, every one above the age of got the right to vote, without any distinction in wealth, and status. September Massacres After the overthrow of the monarchy, the people believed that political prisoners in the jails were planning to join a plot of the counter- revolutionaries.
So the mob descended on the prisons and summarily executed those they believed to be royalists. Commencing on September , at Abbaye prison in Paris, it continued in the next four days in other prisons of the city. Formation of Clubs The common people continued to suffer even after the formation of the National Assembly. Majority of the people saw the assembly as a place for rich persons as commoners were excluded from voting.
The new armed power in Paris was in the hands of a National Guard recruited from the middle class. Lafayette, who acted as an official French adviser in the American War of Independence, was its chief. There was a general feeling of liberation and exaltation when the king, ex-aristocrats, the middle classes and the Parisian masses jointly commemorated the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille as a great festival. But this sense of unity did not last long.
Dissatisfied people started forming political clubs to discuss the problems they faced. One such club which attained popularity was the Jacobin Club in Paris. The members were from poor sections of the society – small scale business people, artisans, servants and