Louis XVI’s Escape Ends in the Town of Varennes

Around midnight on the night of June 20 to 21, 1791, the French royal family slipped out of the Tuileries Palace in Paris under assumed identities. The household had resided there under severe constraints ever since October 1789, when crowds compelled the court to abandon the Palace of Versailles. Tensions sharpened in the spring of 1791 after a crowd halted the royal carriage as the family tried to leave Paris for Easter at the Château de Saint-Cloud, convincing the King that he had become a virtual prisoner of the capital. Seeking safety and political leverage, the royal party planned an overland journey of about two days by carriage to Montmédy, a fortified stronghold near the eastern border.

At Montmédy, General François Claude Amour, marquis de Bouillé, was gathering loyal troops near the border to protect the royal party. Royalist organizers, including the Swedish nobleman Axel von Fersen and the baron de Breteuil, hoped this concentration of forces would allow the monarch to negotiate from strength without immediately resorting to civil war or outside invasion. In a declaration left behind in Paris, the King repudiated much of what he had appeared to accept since 1789.