Flight to Varennes
On the night of 20–21 June 1791, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the royal children, and the king's sister slipped out of the Tuileries in disguise, intending to reach the fortress of Montmédy near the Austrian Netherlands border, where a royalist army under the Marquis de Bouillé waited. The plan required military escorts to be positioned at relay points along the route, but delays — the king spent time examining maps of the escape route, his coach was larger than planned — threw the timetable off. A postmaster at Sainte-Menehould named Drouet recognised Louis from his portrait on the assignat note and rode ahead; at Varennes, he blocked the road and raised the alarm. The royal family was arrested at Varennes and escorted back to Paris over three days, passing through enormous silent crowds who had been ordered not to remove their hats or cheer. The National Assembly, needing to maintain the fiction of constitutional monarchy, announced that Louis had been 'abducted' rather than fled — a legal fiction almost no one believed. The flight shattered what remained of public trust in the king's commitment to the constitutional settlement: his secret correspondence urging foreign monarchs to invade and restore absolute monarchy was now publicly credible. Republican sentiment, previously marginal, grew rapidly, and the constitutional monarchy was effectively mortally wounded a year before the monarchy was formally abolished.
- Year: 1791 CE
- Category: Political
