La Grande Évasion: The royal blunder with regicidal consequences

On the evening of the 20th of June 1791, five inconspicuously dressed figures exited the Tuileries Palace. These individuals claimed to be Madame de Korff, her two little girls, their governess, and the Baroness’s Steward. In truth, the group consisted of the French Royal family, with its head, Louis XVI, embittered and determined to break his family free from an incarceration enforced by his own subjects. They were headed for Montmédy, a town bordering France and the Austrian Netherlands, where the family planned to rendezvous with loyal Swiss and German troops. Little did Louis know, this ill-fated flight would plunge France into further upheaval, dissolving the monarchy and establishing the first French Republic.

The gilded cage that the French aristocracy called Versailles, had housed the royal family for much of Louis XVI’s reign. That was the case up until the October days, in which the starving Parisian population stormed the palace and forced Louis to relocate to the Tuileries; allowing the people to keep a closer eye on their king. Life at Versailles had shrouded Louis’ judgement, he believed much of France was in fact loyal to the king and Paris had simply become a hot bed for dissatisfaction with the regime. The plans’ poor execution was key to the escape's failure as Louis assumed, as once they had escaped the surrounding villages of Paris, the family's journey to the border would be devoid of complication.

This, alongside the family’s choice of getaway vehicle, exemplified the royal’s naivety. The Berline, a carriage fitted with ‘padded seats’, a ‘bottle rack’ and a ‘leather-covered chamber pot’, made the journey, indeed, fit for a king. Once the group had made it twenty-six miles outside of Paris, Louis exclaimed “once I am firmly in the saddle, I shall be a very different person to the one you have seen”, suggesting the king had full confidence in the escape plan. This lack of caution continued for the duration of the journey, with his nonchalant attitude, in addition to the flashy carriage, and accompanying bodyguards (wearing yellow uniforms, resembling the livery of the Prince de Condé, a staunch royalist), drew much attention to the Royals. The family were recognized at the towns of Chaintrix, Châlons, and finally, at Saint-Menehould. Here, Jean-Baptiste Drouet, the town’s postmaster, and a previous member of the king’s horse guards, recognized Louis and gathered the necessary support to arrest the King at Varennes, just thirty miles from sanctuary in Montmédy.

So why did the royal family’s recapture revitalize the revolution, and catalyse the nation’s transformation into a republic? The people of France were generally fond of their king, when Louis XVI swore to uphold the new constitution during the September of 1790, festivals were held across the country in celebration. It was the royal family's decision to flee their subjects that elicited the irreparable shift in public opinion. The note Louis left to be found on the night of his escape, made it clear the king objected to the revolution. Louis XVI was no longer the people’s ‘Bon Père’, he had become a traitor and a risk to national security.

In Paris, from the National Assembly to the layman, the royal escape ignited anxieties over foreign invasion. People feared foreign troops would invade France and stamp out the revolution in its infancy, which heightened unease and upended any kind of political stability. The moderate wing of the Assembly, under Antonine Barnarve, suspended the king but could not bring themselves to dethrone him. For many, the Assembly had done too little; the king had proven himself disloyal, and their attempts to reinstate Louis XVI as monarch were unpalatable. This discontent erupted on the 17th July at the Champ de Mars, where a protest led by the pro-republican, ‘Cordeliers club’, escalated. Culminating with the National Guard firing into protestors, killing fifty.

Following the incident in July, most of the deputies that made up the National Assembly were replaced, now under the leadership of the longer named and more radical Girondins-Jacques Pierre Brissot. Louis XVI’s position on the throne could no longer be certain. The government now saw war as the best route for the revolution’s survival, voting ‘overwhelmingly’ in April of 1792 to bring war to Austria. In focusing on issues of citizenship and external threats, the Assembly had neglected the fundamental issues of taxation and food shortages. Something which would push the populace’s dissatisfaction with the regime to its limit. In June, Louis continued to impede government, vetoing a decree to deport all non-jurors before dismissing many of the Assembly’s ministers.

This failure of constitutional monarchy culminated on the 9th of August, when an ‘insurrectionary general staff’ led battalions of the National Guard to the Tuileries Palace. Here, the king’s Swiss guard were defeated, and Louis was ‘detained’, with the monarchy officially abolished in September. Finally, on the 21st January 1793, Louis XVI was executed nineteen months after the attempted flight.

The Royal escape undermined any attempts to shape the French Revolution into a constitutional monarchy. Louis had proven himself an enemy of the revolution, legitimizing talks of republicanism and enabling more radical members of the National Assembly to take the reins, supported by a spiteful populace. With the benefit of hindsight, attempting to flee from your own subjects might not be the best idea if you want to stay in charge.

Bibliography

Caiani, Ambrogio, Louis XVI and the French Revolution, 1789-1792, (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Clarke, Stephen, The French Revolution and what went wrong, (Arrow Books, 2019)

Hardman, John, Marie-Antoinette: The Making of a French Queen, (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2019)

Holland, Sandbrook, 482. The French Revolution: The Royal Family Escapes (Part 8), The Rest is History, 2024, [Accessed: 17/09/2024]

Jones, Peter, The French Revolution, 1787-1804, 4th ed, (Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group, 2022)