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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

9. When the Queen Finally Got Off Her Chest What She Really Thought About Her Subjects

Fersen - Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries Palace — Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries Palace. Wikimedia

The Marquis de Lafayette, who was in charge of the palace guard, arrived in a torch-lit carriage just as the queen was about to leave. She had to hide in the darkness until Lafayette went on his way, before she could join the rest of her family. Behind in the Tuileries Palace, the king left a document addressed to the National Assembly. In it, he declared his intention to roll the clock back to the royal concessions granted in 1789, before the French Revolution started. In private correspondence, Marie Antoinette took an even more reactionary line, and declared an intention to return to the old order, without any concessions at all. Von Fersen personally drove the carriage that contained his love and her family to a spot a few miles from Paris. There, the queen’s maids awaited, along with fresh horses to whisk the royals 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.