MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · June 21 · 1791
ON THIS DAY · 21 JUNE 1791
Flight to Varennes
21 Jun 1791 — The royal family flees toward the frontier and is recognized — from the king’s face on the new money. Trust in a “citizen king” dies overnight.
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
Switch to Europe: an unbroken charcoal of monarchies, and France the grandest of them — 28 million people, the continent’s language of civilization, and a state that cannot pay its bills. The arithmetic is brutally simple: the American war was funded entirely by loans, interest now eats half the budget, and the privileged orders — nobility and Church, owning perhaps 40% of the land — are largely exempt from tax. When a run of bad harvests doubles the price of bread (a laborer’s family already spends half its income on it), fiscal crisis and hunger arrive together. In desperation the king summons the Estates-General for May 1789 — the first since 1614 — and thereby invites the kingdom to state its grievances in writing. Forty thousand cahiers do exactly that.
From Chapter 3 — The French Revolution of The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848 (JUL 1789).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — The bill for two empires’ wars. France fought Britain for a century and paid for America’s liberty last; unlike Britain, it had no parliament to legitimize taxes and no Bank of…
- The turn — The Bastille, 14 July 1789. Militarily trivial — seven prisoners, a hundred dead. Politically absolute: the king’s soldiers would not fire on Paris, and everyone saw it. Power…
- What it changed — Sovereignty changes its address. “The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation” — Article 3. Once stated, no throne in Europe is safe from the question, which…
Then ask the room: Could Louis XVI have saved the monarchy — and if so, when was the last exit? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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