When the King Took Flight - Brief Article - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Oct, 2003

Timothy Tackett. Harvard University Press. 16.50 [pounds sterling]. 270 pages. ISBN 0-674-01054-X. The attempt of Louis XVI, his Queen, Marie Antoinette, and their children to escape the Parisian revolutionaries in 1791, and their subsequent capture at Varennes, has remained one of the most dramatic and moving episodes in the sordid history of the French Revolution.

In this account Prof. Tackett argues that to understand the changes that overtook what was, in his eyes, an idealist beginning to the Revolution and transformed it into a 'reign of terror', one needs to include 'the impact of a single event: 'the attempted flight of the reigning King ... on June 21, 1791'. The attempt and its failure 'set in motion an extraordinary chain of actions and reactions with profound effects on all elements of society and virtually every corner of the nation'. The author is right to say that the 'flight' warns historians of 'the contingent, unpredictable character of the Revolution' and to conclude that 'this single event ... helped set the nation on a new and perilous trajectory toward the future'. However, the prototype of a 'successful revolution', had the King not fled and had he accepted a new role, was not, surely, 'the path of events in the United States' but the constitutional, limited monarchy that existed under George III. Despite this criticism one may heartily recommend this book for its clarity, organisation and research. (P.H.Y.)