A bust of the famous Queen of France, whose marble original sculpted by Lecomte in 1783 is kept at Versailles, now reigns among the memories of the battle of Marquain in 1792 and the battle of Chin in 1794.
He reminds us that in the weeks following the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, the revolutionary unrest in Paris and the ravages of a wave of castle fires in the provinces trigger the "Great Fear" which throws entire families of the French nobility into exile, fearing for their lives.
Tournai, at the time a possession of Emperor Leopold II of Habsburg, welcomed a large number of emigrants who fled France; they remained there until the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands after the French victory at Jemappes on 6 November 1792.
The Republic is then proclaimed and the King of France Louis XVI sentenced to death by the Convention is guillotined on January 21, 1793. The queen met the same fate on October 16, 1793 after a sham trial and their son Louis, the Dauphin, died tragically in the prison of the Temple in 1795, at the age of 10.
Since 1844, each year, a mass is said on January 21 in the cathedral of Tournai in memory of the royal family assassinated.