On This Day in Napoleonic History – 10 August 1792

21Napoleon witnesses the assault on the Tuileries Palace during the Revolution

Napoleon’s contempt for the king increased when the mob returned to arrest the royal couple and massacre their Swiss guards.

Napoleon left his lodgings and went to watch the events from a friend’s house on the Place du Carrousel. Seeing a well-dressed young officer, the crowd stopped him and ordered him to shout: ‘Vive la nación.’ Which, as he recalled decades later, ‘As you can imagine, I hastened to do.’

When he moved to the Tuileries Palace seven years later, he had the bullet holes of that day effaced form the building.

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