Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution

On the royal family's failed Flight to Varennes, the new Constitution, and the first inklings of the Reign of Terror.

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Posthumous Portrait of Marie Antoinette, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun ca. 1800. Via Christie’s.

On the summer solstice of 1791, a woman dressed as a governess snuck out of the Tuileries Palace on foot.

As the sun set on the longest day of the year, the woman walked from the palace in the direction of the Petit Carrousel, where a carriage would be waiting for her. But she had lived virtually as a prisoner in the Tuileries for the past year, and this was many decades before Baron Haussmann would give Paris a modern makeover. The streets surrounding the palace were still a medieval maze.

Inevitably, she grew lost, walking toward the Seine and back, praying desperately for the sight of the Carrousel. At one point, a familiar carriage passed by her, and she pressed herself against the wall of the nearest building. Her heart pounded. She closed her eyes.

But the carriage belonging to the Marquis de La Fayette rolled past her. No one had spotted the woman.

She would finally reach the Carrousel, where her safe harbor waited. The driver of the two-horse carriage was Axel von Fersen, disguised in simple attire to obscure his noble status. His eyes filled with relief upon seeing her, but he didn’t dare pull his lover into his arms, not when there were enemies at every corner who might recognize them. Instead, he opened the door for France’s queen, and Marie Antoinette climbed inside.

Within minutes, the carriage was on the move, away from the city that had held her hostage for months.

Marie Antoinette was not alone. Within her carriage sat her husband, Louis XVI, dressed as a steward, along with their two living children. The dauphin was disguised as a girl. The children’s actual governess, Madame de Tourzel, posed as the Baroness de Korff.

The Baroness de Korff was not an imaginary person invented for their escape plot. She was the Swedish widow of a Russian colonel, and a prominent figure in the Swedish community in Paris. A Swede himself, Fersen was a good friend of Korff, and he ordered the carriage and passports in her name (though he paid for the bill).¹ The plan was for the royal family to escape to Montmédy, where a loyal army regiment was stationed, and the king could once again govern at a distance from Paris.

But how to get there?