Synopses & Reviews
What becomes of leaders when absolute power is wrested from their hands? How does dramatic political change affect once-absolute monarchs? In
The Road from Versailles, acclaimed historian Munro Price confronts one of the enduring mysteries of the French Revolution: What were the true actions and feelings of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as they watched their sovereignty collapse?
Dragged back from Versailles to Paris by the mob in October 1789, the king and queen became prisoners in the capital. They were compelled to publicly approve of the Revolution and its agenda, but, in deep secrecy, they began to develop a very different and dangerous strategy. The precautions they took against discovery, and the bloody overthrow of the monarchy three years later, dispersed or obliterated most of the clues to their real goals. Much of this evidence has until now remained unknown.
The Road from Versailles reconstructs in detail, for the first time, the king and queen's clandestine diplomacy from 1789 until their executions. To do so, it focuses on a vital but previously ignored figure, the royal couple's confidante, the baron de Breteuil. Exiled from France by the Revolution, Breteuil became their secret prime minister, and confidential emissary to the courts of Europe.
Along with the queen's probable lover, the comte de Fersen, it was Breteuil who organized the royal family's dramatic dash for freedom, the flight to Varennes. Breteuil's role is crucial to understanding what Louis and Marie Antoinette secretly felt and thought during the Revolution. To unlock these secrets, Munro Price draws on highly important unpublished and previously unknown material.
Meticulously researched and utterly fascinating, The Road from Versailles provides fresh insight into some of the most controversial events in modern history.
Review
"Important and engrossing."
--Antonia Fraser, bestselling author of Marie Antoinette
"Truly riveting reading."
--Michael Hochedlinger, International History Review
"Resurrecting a wealth of historical documentation, [Price] has scrupulously detailed the previously unknown underground diplomacy of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, creating a significant contribution to the analysis of the French Revolution."
--Booklist
"This exhaustively researched study should be the definitive diplomatic history of the fall of Louis XVI."
--Publishers Weekly
"The most important book written on the subject for a very long time."
--T.C.W. Blanning, author of The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture
"Through brilliant detective work, Price has uncovered documents that shed a definitive light on the French Crown's policy toward the revolution. This definitive study moves well beyond such works as Michel Vovelle's The Fall of the French Monarchy."
--Library Journal
"Fascinating and genuinely groundbreaking....a truly revolutionary book."
--Andrew Roberts, Sunday Telegraph (U.K.)
Synopsis
To revolutionary France and the rest of the world, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette presented a face of accommodation. They had to, they knew their lives depended upon it. Yet, they also realized that they were living on borrowed time, so they decided to act. Using their mysterious ambassador, Baron de Breteuil as go-between, they secretly tried to arrange an invasion of France by the Allied Powers. Through previously undiscovered documents, historian Munro Price sheds new light on the true motives of the royal family and provides answers to questions that have beguiled historians for centuries.
About the Author
Munro Price was born in London and educated there and at Cambridge, where he received his Ph.D. He specializes in eighteenth-century France and the French Revolution and has lived and taught in Lyon and Paris. He is currently a Reader in History at the University of Bradford.
The Road from Versailles is his third book.