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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

8. The Flight of von Fersen’s Lover

The French royal family’s escape. Look and Learn

Outside of Paris, the escape party broke up. The royals took a post route, while von Fersen continued on via a different route. They planned to meet again at Montmedy, but the reunion never took place, thanks to a change of plans. To spirit away the royal family and their close intimates, von Fersen had arranged for two fast light carriages, that could have made it to Montmedy swiftly. However, to make that work, the royal family would have had to split up and travel in two separate carriages, and the king and queen refused to accept that. Instead, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette decided on a different ride at the last minute: a bigger and more conspicuous carriage drawn by six horses that could accommodate everybody. It was a bad choice.

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.