3.18- The Flight to Varennes

In June 1791 the royal family tried to escape from Paris, but they were busted while passing through Verennes. 

Direct Link: 3.18- The Flight to Varennes

Sponsor link: lynda.com/revolutions

[Update: Well that's a new one. Accidently selected last week's episode during the final mastering process. All good now. Sorry everyone!]

[Update 2: That was also an amazing run of improv storytelling in the comments. I should do this more often...]

Comments

[Joshua]

Hi Mike

It seems that the new episode (3.18) is the same audio file as the previous one. It might be my podcast client messing up.

Joshua

[Cindy]

Hi Mike -- I had the same problem. Somehow this is episode 3.17.

Thanks,
Cindy

[Fernando Campos]

Please tell me the real audio didn't get corrupted or something ><

[Danel]

Tried the direct link and the iTunes download, both are episode 3.17, with one extra ad before it. Also, it seems the quality is much worse than that of the real episode 3.17 .

[Cameron]

I'm having the same problem in overcast.

[Jeremy]

It is a dark day, indeed.

[Jiachen]

Hopefully, Mike is already on this @@

[Fernando Campos]

Very, very concerned ):

[Greg]

Say it isn't so...

[Jeremy]

Til then let's make it up as we go along. I'll start:

"In June of 1791, Emperor Palpatine I fled the Capitol of Coruscant, family in tow. With the Jedi Council and the Senate firmly aligned in their opposition, Palpatine was friendless, and forced to disguise his family as bilge droids to escape the planet. They hitched a ride aboard a Vogon destroyer, but - as Vogons are notoriously unsympathetic to hitchhikers - when the stowaways were inevitably discovered, they found themselves promptly returned to Coruscant, and Palpatine had a lot of awkward questions to answer."

[David]

Like "did I forget my towel again?"

[B. Minich]

At this point, Palpatine discovered that his options were very limited. He wasn't very well liked, and had completely vacillated on the question of whether or not to allow clones into the very broken army. This, in turn, had turned the Vorlons against him, because they had a stake in who the clones claimed they were, which they could not prove if they were, you know, left on the sidelines. General Kenobi was looking like he was in a great position. As head of the army, and a leader of the revolutionary ideals, his party was ascendant, while Anakin Skywalker was on the outside looking in. Little did anyone know that in a year's time, their relative positions would be completely different.

[mark]

Whimper.

[Steve Sc]

By the time Palpatine got to Arrakis, the Spicing Guild was ready to go to the line with Rico's Roughnecks against the Sardaukar. General Jack D. Ripper barked "take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure."

[p]

Hi Mike. It looks like this is an accidental duplication of the prior episode.

[Jeremy]

Of course, now we run into a common problem that plagued the Empire in later years: namely, some General would get a full head of steam and his troops would declare him Augustus. When both Kenobi and Ripper were thus declared, it appeared for a moment as if Palpatine would simply be forgotten in the shuffle. But those pesky Vorlons. Not content to simply let Palpatine off the hook, they leaked the whole story - along with incriminating documents and a few salacious limericks the good Emperor had composed while whacked on spice - to the Daily Bugle, where Marat was Editor-in-chief.
The revolution, you'll recall, had let the media off its leash...

[Jim Silk]

Meanwhile, Lt Bonaparte nudges Pvt Duncan asking "Vous dormir sur la poste? C'est le bebee, n'est ce pas?" Duncan replies "Oui, mais le pomme de iMelodie ne faut pas."
Or something like that. Thanks Mike!

[Steve Sc]

Once Marquis de Lafayette leaked the Pentagon papers to Brenda Starr, the jig was up. The Colonial Defense Forces showed up and kicked ass. Everyone got life in Crematoria or seppuku, their choice.

[Jeremy]

Yay, it's fixed! Thanks Mike! Good show everyone!

[Danel]

Salvation us upon us!

[Jimbo]

Another great episode

[Kang Daehan]

Hey, Mike! Glorious podcasts you're publishing, from the first "History of Rome" episode, to this latest "Revolutions" one. With you being a father and a husband, you're a modern day hero as far as I am concerned.

I've got a little question regarding this latest episode, if you can't or won't answer this question, that's all right. You mentioned that the postmaster guy recognized the king and the queen. That means they must have shown their faces in public while they were on the run. Whatever made them so careless? They go through great lengths to escape Paris in the middle of the night, but then show their faces to random people along their route? That's almost as if they meant to get caught.

Thanks for all your hard work, you're amazing!

[Joshua]

And I return from a full day (live in southern hemisphere) to find the new episode ready to go. Thanks Mike. We all forgive you.... this time. Loving the terrifying cultural mashup in the above comments.

[Richard Gadsden]

Interestingly, there was a competent escape the same day - the Comte de Provence, later Louis XVIII, made it successfully to the Austrian Netherlands with his wife, having taken the option of using a light, fast carriage that Louis XVI declined.

Louis's other brother, the Comte d'Artois (the future Charles X) was already outside of France, having left on 17 July 1789 in reaction to the Bastille.

[Svante]

Great epoisode! Like Kang Daehan, I am also curious about why the royals allowed themselves to be seen. It seems that one of the few advantages of a large, slow-moving carriage is that it would be easy to hide in. Why not let servants fetch food, and never emerge?