THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES, THE MAD ESCAPE OF LOUIS XVI

Exceptional destinies

An episode from the series SECRETS OF HISTORY - PORTRAITS

Synopsis

On the morning of June 21, 1791, the people discovered that King Louis XVI was no longer in the Tuileries Palace, which he had left with Queen Marie-Antoinette and their children.

This tragic adventure would soon become known as "the Flight to Varennes". The royal coach was only a handful of seconds and a few hundred meters from its destination when it was caught, and the course of history would have been totally different.

Hesitations, blunders, discouragement, fatalism, and misjudgment led the coach to Varennes and stopped it there. Two years later, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette would climb the scaffold.