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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

4. The Royal Executions

The trial of Louis XVI by the French National Convention. Meta

After Louis XVI rejected von Fersen’s escape plan, the Swedish count departed France. His and the French emigres’ efforts to instigate war between Europe’s monarchies and revolutionary France finally bore fruit in the summer of 1792, when hostilities commenced between France and Austria. Rather than help von Fersen’s love and her family, however, the war doomed them. That September, the French National Assembly abolished the monarchy and declared a French Republic. Louis XVI was tried for treason in December, 1792, convicted, and guillotined a month later. Von Fersen proposed a cavalry raid to try and snatch his love Marie Antoinette from Paris, but the generals he pitched the plan to rejected it as hopeless. The French queen met the same fate as the king, and was guillotined in October, 1793.

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.