Events of Nancy

The National Assembly, on hearing of the agitation among the soldiers, passed, on August 6, 1790, a law, which diminished the effectives in the army and forbade the "deliberate associations" of the soldiers in the service, but at the same time ordered also the money accounts to be rendered without delay by the officers to their respective regiments.

As soon as this decree became known at Nancy on the 9th, the soldiers, chiefly the Swiss of the Châteauvieux regiment, made up mainly of men from the cantons of Vaud and Geneva, demanded the accounts from their officers. They carried off the pay-chest of their regiment and placed it in the safe keeping of their own sentinels; they threatened their officers with violence, and sent eight delegates to Paris to plead their cause before the National Assembly. The massing of Austrian troops, on the frontier helped to increase the disturbance.

The Assembly, meanwhile, acting on false reports sent from Nancy, and incited by the Commandant of the National Guard, Lafayette, in whom the middle class had full confidence, voted on the 16th a decree condemning the soldiers for their breach of discipline, and ordering the garrisons of the National Guard of the Meurthe department to "repress the authors of the rebellion." Their delegates were arrested, and Lafayette, on his part, ssued a circular summoning the National Guards from the towns nearest Nancy to take arms against the revolted garrison in that town.

At Nancy itself, however, everything seemed as if it were going to pass off peaceably, the majority of the men who had rebelled having even signed "a deed of repentance." But apparently that was not what the royalists wanted.5

Bouillé set out from Metz on the 28th, at the head of three thousand faithful soldiers, with the firm intention of dealing the rebels the crushing blow desired by the Court,

The double-dealing of the Directory of the department helped Bouillé, and while everything could yet be arranged peacefully, Bouillé offered the garrison quite impossible conditions, and immediately attacked it. His soldiers committed the most frightful carnage, they killed the citizens as well as the rebellious soldiers, and plundered the houses.

Three thousand corpses strewed the streets of Nancy as outcome of the fight, and after that came the "legal" reprisals. Thirty-two rebels were executed by being broken on the wheel, and forty-one were sent to penal servitude.

The King at once expressed his approval by letter of "the splendid behaviour of M. Bouillé"; the National Assembly thanked the assassins; and the municipality of Paris held a funeral service in honour of the conquerors who had fallen in the battle. No one dared to protest, Robespierre no than the others. Thus ended the year 1790. Armed reaction was uppermost.