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Lafayette and Marie Antoinette (Part 2)

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At the start of the French Revolution, King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette were imprisoned with their children in their palace in Paris. The Marquis de Lafayette -- who had served as a general in the American Revolution -- supported the French Revolution, but he also wanted to maintain the monarchy. He had already saved Marie Antoinette once from death at the hands of an angry mob. Now he tried to moderate between the revolutionaries and the royals, and ended up pleasing neither side.

In 1791, Lafayette made a mistake that cost him all of his power when he ordered soldiers to fire into a crowd that had gathered to draft a petition calling for the king's dethronement. That same year, the royal family made a desperate attempt to escape from France in a coach, disguised as ordinary travelers. They were soon recognized and recaptured (no wonder, since Louis grandly announced to the first man who spotted him, "I am indeed your king"). The leaders of the revolution blamed Lafayette for the royal family's flight and threatened to behead him for it. Marie Antoinette's feelings toward the marquis were equally bitter. "Better to die than be rescued by Lafayette!" she is supposed to have said.

In the end it was all Lafayette could do to save his own life. No longer safe in France, he fled to Austria. The Austrians, who were at war with the French, threw Lafayette into prison for five years. Meanwhile the French government was confiscating the marquis's properties and sending several of his in-laws to the guillotine. Fortunately, Lafayette's wife and children survived the Revolution and the family was eventually reunited.

Finally freed from captivity by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Marquis de Lafayette returned to France in 1799. King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette were long since dead, having been executed in 1793 on charges of treason because they had appealed to the Austrians for help. The royal couple's young son, Charles Louis, had disappeared in prison, never to be heard from again, although the usual pretenders later came forward claiming to be the long lost dauphin. The real Charles Louis probably died of tuberculosis in 1795. The king and queen's daughter, Marie Therese Charlotte, lived to see the monarchy restored and two of her uncles crowned king. As an old man Lafayette participated in the July Revolution which dethroned one of those uncles, King Charles X.

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