Thursday, March 3, 2016

The Favras Plot

From Geri Walton:
There were numerous plots afoot to save the royal family after the French Revolution began. One well-known plot involved Louis-Alexandre de Launay, Comte d’Antraigues, who was a French pamphleteer, spy, and political adventurer. D’Antraigues had been elected to the Estates-General in 1789 and initially supported the French Revolution. However, after Versailles was stormed and the royal family was taken to the Palais des Tuileries (essentially as prisoners), he switched sides and became a staunch defender of the monarchy.

As a counter revolutionary, d’Antraigues soon found himself aligned with the audacious Thomas de Mahy, marquis de Favras. Favras came from an impoverished but aristocratic family. At seventeen he became captain of the dragoons and later served as a first lieutenant in the Swiss Guard for Louis XVI’s younger brother, Comte de Provence (future Louis XVIII). It was because of Favras’s relationship with the Comte de Provence that Favras became drawn into a plot to save the royal family, restore the French monarchy, and end the French Revolution. (Read more.)
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