Flight to Varennes (1791): Louis XVI's Failed Escape from Paris

The Flight to Varennes was the failed attempt by King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette and their family to escape from Paris on the night of 20 to 21 June 1791. Travelling in disguise towards the eastern frontier, they were recognised and stopped at the small town of Varennes-en-Argonne and brought back to the capital under guard. The episode shattered the belief that Louis could be a loyal constitutional monarch and gave a major boost to republicanism in France.

Background: a king in the Tuileries

Since the Women’s March on Versailles in October 1789, the royal family had lived in the Tuileries Palace in Paris, closely watched by the National Guard and the city’s population. Louis XVI publicly accepted many reforms, but privately he came to reject the direction the Revolution was taking.

The decisive issue for the devout King was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790, which reorganised the Catholic Church in France and required priests to swear an oath to the new order. When Louis tried to leave Paris for Saint-Cloud at Easter in April 1791, apparently to take communion from a priest who had refused the oath, a crowd stopped his carriage. The incident convinced the royal couple that they were effectively prisoners.

Plans for an escape had been discussed for months. The aim was to reach Montmédy, a fortress near the border with the Austrian Netherlands, where troops under the royalist general François-Claude-Amour, marquis de Bouillé, could protect the King. From there Louis hoped to negotiate a revised constitution, with the possibility of Austrian support in the background.

The escape

The plan was organised largely by the Swedish count Axel von Fersen, a devoted friend of Marie Antoinette, with help from the King’s former minister the baron de Breteuil. Fersen arranged false passports and a large, comfortable travelling coach, a berline, which was conspicuous and slow.

Late on the night of 20 June the family slipped out of the Tuileries one by one. The royal children’s governess, the marquise de Tourzel, posed as a Russian noblewoman, the baroness de Korff; the King played her valet and the Queen a governess. The party included the two royal children, Marie-Thérèse and the young Dauphin Louis-Charles, and the King’s sister, Madame Élisabeth. Fersen drove them out of the city himself before leaving them to continue east.

The journey ran late from the start. Delays in leaving Paris, slow progress and minor accidents put the coach hours behind schedule. Detachments of cavalry that Bouillé had posted along the road to meet the King waited, attracted local suspicion and in some cases withdrew before the coach arrived.

Recognition and arrest

At Sainte-Menehould, while horses were being changed on the evening of 21 June, the postmaster Jean-Baptiste Drouet recognised the King. According to a long-standing tradition, he compared Louis’s face with his portrait on an assignat, the revolutionary paper money. Drouet rode ahead by a shorter route to Varennes.

The coach reached Varennes at about eleven at night. Drouet alerted the local authorities, who blocked the bridge over the river Aire. The town’s procureur, the grocer Jean-Baptiste Sauce, examined the passports and lodged the travellers in his house. A local judge who had lived at Versailles confirmed that the traveller was the King.

As the night went on, alarm bells brought armed National Guards and villagers into the town, and Bouillé’s hussars who arrived were too few, and too uncertain, to free the family. On the morning of 22 June two envoys arrived from Paris carrying a decree of the National Assembly ordering the King’s return. Bouillé himself arrived too late and fled across the border.

The return to Paris

The return journey took four days through hostile crowds. The Assembly sent three deputies to escort the family: Antoine Barnave, Jérôme Pétion and Charles-César de Latour-Maubourg. Barnave, a leading moderate, was impressed by the Queen during the journey and later corresponded with her secretly.

The family re-entered Paris on 25 June. Placards had warned the public not to applaud or insult the King, and tens of thousands of Parisians watched the procession in a heavy silence, many keeping their hats on as a sign of disrespect.

Key people

• Louis XVI left behind a declaration criticising the Revolution’s work since 1789, which made his opposition public.
• Marie Antoinette was central to the planning and was widely blamed for the attempt.
• Axel von Fersen, a Swedish officer, organised the escape and its logistics.
• Jean-Baptiste Drouet, postmaster of Sainte-Menehould, became a revolutionary hero and was later elected to the National Convention.
• The marquis de Bouillé commanded the troops meant to protect the King and emigrated after the failure.

Consequences

The King’s written declaration, discovered in the Tuileries, revealed that he disowned much of what he had accepted. The Assembly suspended him from his functions on 25 June. Yet most deputies wanted to keep the constitutional monarchy, so they adopted the claim that he had been “abducted” and, by mid-July, confirmed his position.

This decision split the political world. Radicals in the Cordeliers Club demanded the King’s removal, and their petition led to the Champ de Mars massacre on 17 July 1791. Abroad, the Emperor Leopold II and King Frederick William II of Prussia issued the Declaration of Pillnitz in August, warning of possible intervention.

Louis accepted the new constitution in September 1791, but trust had been destroyed. Within fourteen months the monarchy fell in the storming of the Tuileries, and the King was tried and executed in January 1793.

Myths and facts

• The King was caught because he stopped to eat. Stops for meals and rests contributed to the delays, but historians attribute the failure mainly to late departure, poor coordination with the troops and the vigilance of local people.
• Drouet recognised Louis from a coin or banknote. This is the traditional account; it is plausible but cannot be fully proven.

Legacy

Historians often treat Varennes as one of the great turning points of the Revolution. In his study When the King Took Flight, Timothy Tackett argues that the episode spread fear of conspiracy and invasion across provincial France and pushed many ordinary citizens, for the first time, to imagine a country without a king.

The flight also hardened attitudes towards Marie Antoinette, who was widely seen as the moving spirit behind it, and raised suspicion of the nobles and officers who had helped. Many army officers emigrated in the months that followed, weakening the French army on the eve of war.

The story of a king undone by a late coach and a watchful postmaster has fascinated writers and filmmakers ever since. Varennes-en-Argonne, about 240 kilometres east of Paris and only some 50 kilometres short of Montmédy, still marks the place where the royal family’s journey ended.

Timeline

• 1791, 18 April: A crowd prevents the royal family from leaving Paris for Saint-Cloud.
• 1791, 20 June, night: The royal family leaves the Tuileries in disguise.
• 1791, 21 June, evening: Drouet recognises the King at Sainte-Menehould.
• 1791, 21 June, about 11 pm: The coach is stopped at Varennes.
• 1791, 22 June: Envoys of the Assembly arrive; the family begins the journey back.
• 1791, 25 June: The royal family re-enters Paris; the King is suspended.
• 1791, 17 July: The Champ de Mars massacre follows protests over the King’s reinstatement.
• 1791, 27 August: Austria and Prussia issue the Declaration of Pillnitz.
• 1791, 14 September: Louis XVI swears to uphold the new constitution.

Why it matters

The Flight to Varennes revealed that the King did not support the constitutional settlement he had publicly accepted. It turned many French people against the monarchy, strengthened the republican movement and helped set the Revolution on the path to the fall of the throne in 1792.