Ed Helms

I believe Robespierre had warned everyone, if you cheer for the king, you'll be punished, or if you jeer or ridicule the king, you'll also be punished.

So people were...

We're dead quiet, which is spooky, right?

You're rolling into town.

It's just like, are you looking out the window like...

Are we good or is this... Are you guys mad or, like, are we chill?

It is.

Yeah.

A group of royal supporters at this point were trying to kind of like spin the story to help the king save face.

And they came up with this story that he'd been kidnapped by sinister foreign agents who actually wanted to invade France.

Yeah, and it's a good try.

It doesn't really pass the smell test because the biggest problem with the foreigners kidnapped the poor king story is that before they left the palace, King Louis had written a manifesto of sorts.

He had said that all of his earlier agreements with the National Assembly that supported the Constitution, that all of that stuff was a lie.

And that, uh, he had really just been buying time while he planned to retake the throne and retake the country from the revolutionary government.

So he basically like laid out all, you know, thinking that he would be free.

Well, he thought he thought he was escaping.

And so he basically was, was leaving his, uh, his kind of like thoughts behind so that people would understand.

And that hopefully maybe he might rally some support, I guess, uh,

And he thought he would be coming back from a position of power to say like, hey, I'm here.

It's time to negotiate with me.