On a June night in 1791, King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette fled Paris in disguise, hoping to escape the mounting turmoil of the French Revolution. They were arrested by a small group of citizens a few miles from the Belgian border and forced to return to Paris. Two years later they would both die at the guillotine. It is this extraordinary story, and the events leading up to and away from it, that Tackett recounts in gripping novelistic style.
The king's flight opens a window to the whole of French society during the Revolution. Each dramatic chapter spotlights a different segment of the population, from the king and queen as they plotted and executed their flight, to the people of Varennes who apprehended the royal family, to the radicals of Paris who urged an end to monarchy, to the leaders of the National Assembly struggling to control a spiraling crisis, to the ordinary citizens stunned by their king's desertion. Tackett shows how Louis's flight reshaped popular attitudes toward kingship, intensified fears of invasion and conspiracy, and helped pave the way for the Reign of Terror.
Tackett brings to life an array of unique characters as they struggle to confront the monumental transformations set in motion in 1789. In so doing, he offers an important new interpretation of the Revolution. By emphasizing the unpredictable and contingent character of this story, he underscores the power of a single event to change irrevocably the course of the French Revolution, and consequently the history of the world.
Timothy Tackett is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Irvine.
Table of Contents
Prologue
1. Sire, You May Not Pass
2. The King of the French
3. The King Takes Flight
4. Our Good City of Paris
5. The Fathers of the Nation
6. Fear and Repression in the Provinces
7. To Judge a King
8. The Months and Years After
Conclusion: The Power of an Event
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
What People are Saying About This
A meticulous work, combining smooth-flowing narrative with cogent analysis. He thereby demonstrates how far the Revolution had progressed by June 1791, and how the king's flight helps to explain its subsequent radical and repressive turns.
Isser Woloch
A meticulous work, combining smooth-flowing narrative with cogent analysis. He thereby demonstrates how far the Revolution had progressed by June 1791, and how the king's flight helps to explain its subsequent radical and repressive turns. Isser Woloch, author of The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820s
Donald Sutherland
Timothy Tackett has written a superb book. Not only is this a spellbinding story well-told, Tackett restores the centrality of Louis XVI to the history of the Revolution and shows how the royal betrayal had incalculable consequences for the monarchy and for the tragedies that lay ahead. Donald Sutherland, author of The French Revolution and Empire: The Quest for a Civic Order
John Merriman
The royal family's attempt to flee France in 1791 was one of the defining events of the French Revolution. Timothy Tackett, the most accomplished historian of the Revolution now writing, tells the story of the great flight memorably. The reader will feel that he or she is accompanying the disguised royal family out of the Tuileries in Paris and riding along with them in the big black coach as it falls further and further behind schedule. This is the story, brilliantly told, of how the decision to flee Paris changed the course of the Revolution. John Merriman, author of The Stones of Balazuc: A French Village in Time