A kidnapping no one believes in, or How to end the Varennes crisis?

Despite the obviously voluntary character of the flight of Louis XVI and his family on the night of 20-21 June 1791, the Constituent Assembly sought to pass it off as a kidnapping. This article retraces the evolution of that fiction, from its origins to its discreet disappearance, in order to better understand why the Assembly wanted to promote it and the reasons for its failure, which would oblige the Assembly to have recourse to royal inviolability to keep Louis on the constitutional throne.