The King Took Flight, By Timothy Tackett

In June 1791, King Louis XVI and his family snuck out of Paris during the night, hoping to escape from the French Revolution and its violence. He planned to escape the country and return with foreign assistance to reclaim control of France, but the people of Varennes stopped and detained him until authorities arrived and sent him back to Paris. Louis’ attempted escape, in addition to the letter he left behind denouncing the Revolution, “profoundly influenced the political and social climate of France” (223). His escape outraged many people and left the administration in shambles, and this caused tensions to break out. To control the situation, the people of France quickly organized

In Timothy Tackett’s When the King Took Flight, it’s explained how Louis XVI’s flight to Varennes resulted in escalating events to happen in the French Revolution that changed and shaped the history of France. In his flight to escape the revolution and upon his capture, he unintentionally created a domino effect that rippled throughout France with consequences that were far from his original plans when attempting to escape the country. This essay will explain how the flight to Varennes radicalized the revolution by further weakening the monarchy and its authority along with its image, that the most significant reaction was that it opened ideas to new forms of government, and that the seeds for this radicalism was already present.

King Louis XVI and Marie Antionette were two people that should not have been ruling a country. King Louis was always gone on hunting trips and Marie Antionette spent every dime of French money. Once the Monarchy ran out money, they started to tax the Third, and poorest, estate. The third estate took up 97% of the population. 97% of the population was starving and the royal family kept spending large amounts of money until the people revolted. The people of France tried to reason with King Louis, but he refused to change his ways and kept taxing the third estate. When the people revolted, they stormed the Bastille and took all of the weapons they could. The people then went to the King’s palace and demanded he fix the way he was ruling before they killed him. The King didn’t listen and was executed along with his wife. Of the three kids that Marie Antionette had, the two boys died of Tuberculosis in jail and the daughter was sent to live the remainder of her life in exile in Austria. It may seem as though the people of France had successfully overgrown their monarchy and could begin a life of freedom, however this is not the case. The French had rushed into combat too fast and did not have a plan for what to do after they had killed their rulers. The right of Terror begins where Maximilian Robespierre beheads 40,000 people in the span of ten months for speaking against the revolution. In the end, Robespierre ends up getting

After the death of King Lois and Marie Antoinette, there was a 10-month period of violence and rage; this was labeled the “Reign of Terror”. The French people became so lost in their rage that they forgot what they were fighting for. The Revolution became more about revenge than an improved resolution to the monarchy. We would see later that this eventually led them back into a monarchy with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte as he conquered France and its surroundings.

France was now under the rules of the National Convention and Louis XVI was put on trial for treason. He was later found guilty

The author explained how the French Revolution starts and also how choice made by the royal government affect the old regime which moved the country into different conflicts. For example, in chapter 1 “The

Flight behavior is an interesting read because it combines science and a story. There is a nice balance of the two where you do not feel like you are just reading a textbook. By combining the science and story in her book she gives the scientific aspect while also giving you characters that you can hang on to and imagine being in their shoes. It is different than how most biologists write because most of the time they do not include a story in their writing. I think that by being a biologist it impacts her writing because she uses scientific terms that are not just terms in a textbook setting. She uses terms that are more advance and it is almost like the author Barbara Kingsolver expects people to have background knowledge on the subject rather than just reading the book to learn the knowledge. It is also interesting because it seems as if she goes deeper than most writers do when it comes to explaining the nature and the scientific aspects in the story.

The published letter of the king’s reasoning for departure also served the public with rage, and, “equally significant for the future of the Revolution was the dramatic change in attitude toward the king…everything was transformed by the king’s flight.” (Tackett, 101) People in the streets of Paris were throwing out their portraits of the royal family and were seeing the king, the one they praised a week ago, as a deserter and conspirator to their newly-formed and praised government. The use of rumor and newspapers by members of The Cordelier Club also helped spread certain radical ideals in which prompted the idea of turning France into a republic, and of dissembling the monarchy and the king altogether. It was this power in the streets of Paris that would soon grow with every day after the king fled, as, “Outside the Legislative Assembly, however, the more radical revolutionaries had managed to hold the loyalty of most of the provincial club network, giving them a powerful propaganda tool.” (Popkin, 58) The National Assembly was still strong in its number of members favorable of this new constitutional monarchy, but it was in the streets and with the people that the actual aspect of the Revolution was shifting. Members of the National Assembly were getting restless

Timothy Tackett’s book When the King Took Flight focuses on arguably the most consequential event in the French Revolution. King Louis XVI and his family’s attempt to escape France would influence an atmosphere of violence that would only continue to worsen. King Louis XVI regretted signing and accepting the Civil Constitution of the Clergy earlier in July 1790. Deciding to flee the country he assumed that through foreign intervention or negotiating he could change parts of the constitution he disagreed with. However he would be recognized and captured in Varennes. The king underestimated the true meaning and appeal of the revolution (87). His misunderstanding of the revolution led the way for the destruction of kingship and the monarchy itself. This decision had given power to the sans-culottes and the idea of a republic. While the kings flight to Varennes had many unintended consequences it serves as a crucial turning point for the revolution.

Estates-General into the government in May 1789. This was a group of peers and deputies

The Royal Family of France’s attempted escape on June 20th, 1791 made many people very unhappy with the King. The mob, ever ready to exercise the uncontrolled Rights of Men, made a mock parade of the King’s Arms in the market places, and, dashing them and the figure of a crown to the ground, they trampled upon them, crying out, “Since the King has abandoned what he owed to his high situation, let us trample upon the ensigns of royalty” (Ascherson 48)! The Royal Family not only lost many of its followers through their attempted escape, but also because King Louis XVI kept making bad decisions, ones that had no benefit to France or its people. The people wanted someone who would lead them into a revolution and change France for the better, not because they wanted the power, but because they believed in France and wanted it to become a great nation. That man was Robespierre, who after the flight of the King followed the Jacobin club in its move toward republicanism. He called for universal male suffrage and the end of property qualifications for voting and office holding (Blumberg 290). Robespierre wanted to make France a republic, a government for the people and by the people, a country where everyone had the freedoms and rights they deserved. In January of 1793, Robespierre voted on whether or not he thought that King Louis should be executed for his actions. At the Convention on the trial

Title- The road from Versailles: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the fall of the French Monarchy

The meeting of the Estates-General was called by Louis in 1789. It marks the start of change and Revolution in France, and many factors affect the calling of this meeting. Arguably, it was the actions of the Paris Parlement that caused the meeting to be called; as they began to turn on the third estate and become the enemy. However, other factors did affect the calling of the Estates-General, such as the financial crisis in France- they were bankrupt and locked up in the old ancien regime system. I will also be looking at how the revolt of the nobles and the weakness of Louis XVI caused the calling of the meeting. There are many other factors than just the Paris Parlement’s actions, and ultimately I would argue that we cannot say this is the only reason or the most predominant reason for the calling of the Estates-General.

Flight is categorized into many different types. Most people immediately think of being airborne when they hear the word flight, but flight can be achieved through other means. There is literal flight where people fly, metaphorical flight, and flight in which people are running from danger. No matter what type of flight is experienced, flight is usually signified by an escape or by freedom from a forced predicament. In The Return Of The King by J.R.R. Tolkien, Frodo and Sam experiences flight in the sky by eagles, symbolizing their newly gained freedom not only from the burden given to them from the beginning of their journey, but also from their trapped position between lava and from constant danger and worry.

During the French Revolution, King Louis XVI was in charge of the monarchy and was deposed in 1792 and later executed in 1793 (The French Revolution (1789-1799)). King Louis XVI fell into massive debt which forced him to give into the Parlement of Paris and the Estates-General, this then leading to the Revolution. After the absolute monarchy was disbanded, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was adopted. As reported by The French Revolution by history,com, the declaration proclaimed the Assembly’s commitment to replace the old system with one that was based on equal opportunity, freedom of speech, popular sovereignty, and representative government. The National Assembly soon learned that it wasn’t easy to govern or be in charge of a country, this shown by the months it took to draft a constitution for France (The French Revolution). According to this article, many questions were asked when it came to creating the constitution such as “Would the clergy owe allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church or the French government?” or “Who would be responsible for electing delegates?”