The Count Who Cuckolded a King – and Tried to Save His Life
The French Revolutionary Wars, and later the Napoleonic Wars into which they seamlessly segued, roiled Europe and much of the world from the 1790s until the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The years after the French Revolution broke out in Paris were tough on the French king and queen. After a revolutionary mob stormed the Bastille in 1789, Louis XVI decided to go to Paris as a good will gesture towards the revolutionaries. Marie Antoinette went into hysterics when her husband left. It took plenty of work by Axel von Fersen and other close intimates to calm the queen down.
A few months after they stormed the Bastille, the unwashed masses burst into the Palace of Versailles in October, 1789, and forcibly transferred the royal family to Paris. Eventually, both were executed. However, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, helped by Count Axel von Fersen, had nearly avoided that fate. Von Fersen did not abandon his lover after revolution swept her country. The love of the French queen’s life tried to help her – as well as her royal hubby whom he had cuckolded – escape from revolutionary Paris to a monarchist stronghold. They almost made it.