Two days before, the National Constituent Assembly issued a decree that King Louis XVI would retain his throne under a constitutional monarchy.

Jacques Pierre Brissot was the editor and main writer of Le Patriote français and president of the Comité des Recherches of Paris, and he drew up a petition demanding the removal of the king.

[1] When Louis XVI and his family fled to Varennes, it set off political turmoil: the people of France feeling betrayal and anger towards the king.

Ultimately the king and his family were brought back, and the assembly decided that he needed to be a part of the government if he agreed to consent to the constitution.

The Cordeliers proceeded by creating a more radical petition calling for a republic and planning a protest that would help gain more signatures.

[2][page needed] Based on records of the petition and of the dead bodies, the crowd was made up of individuals from the poorer sections of Paris, some of whom may not have been able to read.

[5][page needed] Lafayette, the commander of the National Guard, was previously long revered as the hero of the American Revolutionary War.

But, due to the discovery that his actions supported the King during the Storming of the Tuileries, he fled to Belgium where he surrendered to Austrian authorities on August 19, 1792.