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Shocking Marriage Details from History that Really Take the Cake

Khalid Elhassan September 12, 2022 39 min

The End of a Royal Flight

The French royal family’s flight came to an end when King Louis XVI was recognized. The British Museum

Unfortunately for the French king and queen, the heavy carriage that carried them was slow. Worse, it had to stop for repairs when its traces broke. The royal couple’s disguises were also flimsy, and they were recognized by many along the route. The royal flight ended at the small town of Varennes, just thirty miles shy of safety. The local postmaster recognized Louis XVI from currency that bore his likeness, and the royal family were arrested and returned to Paris. It was an unmitigated disaster.

Path of the royal family’s flight. Grey History

Before his flight, the revolutionaries had accepted Louis as a constitutional monarch. They 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 told them what they really though, changed their minds. Until then, abolition of the monarchy and the declaration of a republic was a fringe position, advocated only by radicals. Now, it quickly gained in popularity. On September 21^st, 1792, the monarchy was abolished, and the French Republic was declared.

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.