École de Mars

The Plaine des Sablons once held a temporary military camp built of wooden barracks, tents, and kilometers of red, white, and blue palisades. Established in June seventeen ninety-four, the École de Mars functioned here as a revolutionary academy for over three thousand teenagers selected from across France. These students, mostly sons of sans-culottes, lived in isolation while receiving military and civic instruction under a massive tent where revolutionary scientists taught them chemistry, physics, and fortification.