Flight to Varennes

The route from Tuileries Palace to Varennes-en-Argonne (approximate distance 250 km)

The royal Flight to Varennes (French: Fuite à Varennes) during the night of 20–21 June 1791 was a significant event in the French Revolution in which King Louis XVI of France, Queen Marie Antoinette, and their immediate family unsuccessfully attempted to escape from Paris to Montmédy, where the King wished to initiate a counter-revolution by joining up with royalist troops. They escaped as far as the small town of Varennes-en-Argonne, where they were arrested after being recognized at their previous stop in Sainte-Menehould.

This 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 charges of treason that ultimately led to his execution in 1793.

The escape failed due to a series of misadventures, delays, misinterpretations and poor judgments.[1] The King's decisions on a number of matters, including the means and timing of the journey, allowed seemingly small matters to escalate. Furthermore, he overestimated popular support for the traditional monarchy, mistakenly believing only Parisian radicals supported the revolution and that the populace as a whole opposed it. He also mistakenly believed that he enjoyed particular favor with the peasantry and other commoners.[2]

The King's flight was traumatic for France, inciting reactions ranging from anxiety to violence and panic. Everyone was aware that foreign intervention was imminent. The realization that the King had effectually repudiated the revolutionary reforms made up to that point came as a shock to people who had seen him as a well-intentioned monarch who governed as a manifestation of God's will. Republicanism quickly evolved from being merely a subject of coffee-house debate to the dominant ideal of revolutionary leaders.[3]

Louis XVI and his family, dressed as bourgeois, arrested in Varennes. Picture by Thomas Falcon Marshall (1854)

The King's brother the Count of Provence also fled on the same night, by a different route. He successfully escaped, and spent the French Revolution in exile, later returning as King Louis XVIII.

  1. ^ Thompson, J. M. (James Matthew) (1943), The French Revolution, Oxford, retrieved 5 April 2017
  2. ^ Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003) ch. 3
  3. ^ Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003) p. 222