Flight to Varennes
The Royal Flight to Varennes (night of June 20/21, 1791) was a significant episode in the French Revolution during which King Louis XVI of France, his wife Marie Antoinette, and their immediate family attempted unsuccessfully to escape from Paris in order to initiate a counter-revolution. They desired to hide in Austria due to Marie's heritage, and hoped they would find safety in their newly found French Austrian agreement. Their escape only led them as far as the small town of Varennes, where they were recognized and immediately arrested.
The incident was a turning point after which popular hostility towards the French monarchy as an institution, as well as towards the king and queen as individuals, became much more pronounced. The king's attempted flight provoked the charges of treason which ultimately led to his execution in 1793.
At the microscopic level, the failure of the escape plans was due to a series of misadventures, delays, misinterpretations, and poor judgments.[1] In a wider perspective, the failure was due to the King's indecision-- he repeatedly postponed the schedule, allowing for smaller problems to become severe. Furthermore, he totally misunderstood France's political situation. He thought only a small number of radicals in Paris were promoting a revolution that the people as a whole rejected. He thought, mistakenly, that he was beloved by the peasants and the common folk.[2]
The king's flight in the short term was traumatic for France, inciting a wave of emotion that ranged from anxiety to violence to full-scale panic. Everyone realized that war was imminent. The deeper realization that the King had in fact repudiated the revolution, was an even greater shock for people who until then had seen him as a good king who governed as a manifestation of God's will. They felt betrayed. Republicanism then burst out of the coffee houses and became a dominating philosophy of the rapidly radicalized French revolution.[3]
Contents |
Attempt to flee Paris [edit]
Louis XVI's indecision on how to deal with revolutionary demands was one of the causes of the forcible transfer of the royal family from the Palace of Versailles to the Tuileries in Paris on October 6, 1789 after Versailles had been attacked by an angry mob. Henceforth the king seems to have become emotionally paralyzed, leaving most important decisions to the politically untrained queen. Prodded by the queen, Louis committed himself and his family to a disastrous attempt to escape from the capital to the eastern frontier on June 21, 1791. With the dauphin's governess, the Marquise de Tourzel taking on the role of a Russian baroness, the queen and the king's sister Madame Élisabeth playing her maids, the king her butler, and the royal children her daughters, the royal family made their escape. The escape was largely planned by Count Axel von Fersen and the Baron de Breteuil. Due to the cumulative effect of a host of errors which in and of themselves would not have condemned the mission to failure, the royal family was thwarted in its escape when the king was recognized in the town of Sainte-Menehould, by a postmaster named Jean-Baptiste Drouet. The king and his family were eventually arrested in the revolutionary town of Varennes, 50 km from their ultimate destination, the heavily fortified royalist citadel of Montmédy. One rumor suggests that the king was recognized because his face appeared on French assignats, though this story's validity is contested.
Consequences [edit]
When the royal family finally returned under guard to Paris, the revolutionary crowd met the royal carriage with uncharacteristic silence and consequently, complete shock rippled throughout the crowd at the sight of their loathed King. The royal family was confined to the Tuileries Palace. From this point forward, the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic became an ever increasing possibility. The credibility of the king as a constitutional monarch had been seriously undermined by the escape attempt.
From the autumn of 1791 on, the king tied his hopes of political salvation to the dubious prospects of foreign intervention. At the same time, he encouraged the Girondin faction in the Legislative Assembly in their policy of war with Austria, in the expectation that a French military disaster would pave the way for the restoration of his royal authority. Prompted by Marie Antoinette, Louis rejected the advice of the moderate constitutionalists, led by Antoine Barnave, to fully implement the Constitution of 1791, which he had sworn to maintain, and committed himself instead to a policy of covert counter-revolution.
At the same time, the king's failed escape attempt alarmed many other European monarchs, who feared that the revolutionary fervor would spread to their countries and result in instability outside France. Relations between France and its neighbors, already strained because of the revolution, deteriorated even further with some foreign ministries calling for war against the revolutionary government.
The outbreak of the war with Austria in April 1792 and the publication of a manifesto by the Austrian commander, Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, threatening the destruction of Paris if the safety of the royal family was again endangered, led to the storming of the Tuileries by Parisian radicals on August 10, 1792. This attack led in turn to the suspension of the king's powers by the Legislative Assembly and the proclamation of the First French Republic on September 21. In November, proof of Louis XVI's secret dealings with the deceased revolutionary politician, Mirabeau, and of his counterrevolutionary intrigues with foreigners was found in a secret cupboard in the Tuileries. It was now no longer possible to pretend that the reforms of the French Revolution had been made with the free consent of the king. Some Republicans called for his deposition, others for his trial for alleged treason and intended defection to the enemies of the French people. On December 3 it was decided that Louis, who together with his family had been imprisoned since August, should be brought to trial for treason. He himself appeared twice before the National Convention (December 11 and 23).
Convicted, Louis was guillotined on January 21, 1793. Later, Marie Antoinette was also convicted of treason and beheaded nine months after her husband on October 16.
Notes [edit]
- ^ J.M. Thompson, The French Revolution (1943) identifies a series of major and minor mistakes and mishaps, pages 224-227
- ^ Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003) ch 3
- ^ Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003) p 222
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Further reading [edit]
- Thompson, J. M. The French Revolution (1943) 206-27, detailed narrative with expanation of what went wrong
The article also draws material from the out-of-copyright History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 (link no longer working), by François Mignet (1824), as made available by Project Gutenberg.
- Lindqvist, Herman (1991). Axel von Fersen. Stockholm: Fischer & Co
- Loomis, Stanley (1972). The Fatal Friendship. Avon Books – ISBN 0-931933-33-1
- Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003)
External links [edit]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Flight to Varennes |
