The September Massacres were a wave of killings in Paris (2–7 September 1792) and other cities in late summer 1792, during the French Revolution. There was a fear that foreign and royalist armies would attack Paris and that the inmates of the city's prisons would be freed and join them. Radicals called for preemptive action, especially journalist Jean-Paul Marat, who called on draftees to kill the prisoners before they could be freed. The action was undertaken by mobs of National Guardsmen and some fédérés; it was tolerated by the city government, the Paris Commune, which called on other cities to follow suit. By 6 September, half the prison population of Paris had been summarily executed: some 1200 to 1400 prisoners. Of these, 233 were nonjuring Catholic priests who refused to submit to t