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Axel von Fersen, the Tragic Romance of a Count Who Loved a Queen but Couldn’t Save Her

Khalid Elhassan April 16, 2025 16 min

Fersen - Hans Axel von Fersen — Hans Axel von Fersen. Wikimedia

11. The Royal Prisoners

Revolutionaries place a Phrygian cap, symbol of liberty, on Louis XVI’s head. Meister Drucke

Von Fersen did not abandon the French queen after revolution swept France. The love of Marie Antoinette’s tried to help her – as well as her cuckolded husband – escape from revolutionary Paris to a monarchist stronghold. They almost made it. Ever since they had been taken to Paris by a revolutionary mob, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lived as virtual prisoners of their subjects. They felt humiliated as they were forced to adjust to the role of constitutional monarchs, so the royal couple decided to flee Paris. Von Fersen began to arrange plans for the king and queen’s flight in the spring of 1791, and that June, he secured a type of light carriage known as a Berline to whisk them away to safety.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.