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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

6. A Disastrous Attempted Escape

Fersen - Count Hans Axel von Fersen — Hans Axel von Fersen. British Museum

The revolutionaries had initially accepted Louis XVI as a constitutional monarch, and took his assurances that he agreed with them at face value. His flight, coupled with the documents that he and Marie Antoinette had left behind that expressed what they really thought, changed their minds. Until then, abolition of the monarchy and the declaration of a republic had been a fringe position pushed only by radicals. Now, it quickly gained in popularity. On September 21^st, 1792, the monarchy was abolished and the French Republic was declared. As to von Fersen, his role in the royal family’s flight came to light, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He fled France, and got in touch with aristocratic French exiles led by Louis XVI’s younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, who wanted to roll back the French Revolution and restore the Ancien Regime.

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.