#favras

Thomas de Mahy, marquis de Favras was executed on this day in 1790. 

Mahy was born in Favras, near Blois, France. He was from a poor family whose nobility could be traced to the 12th century. 

When he was 17, he was a captain of dragoons and served in the final campaign of the Seven Years' War. In 1772, he became a first lieutenant in the Swiss Guards of the Comte de Provence, Louis XVI's younger brother. He retired in 1775, unable to meet the expenses of his rank.

In 1776, Mahy married Victoria Hedwig Karoline, Princess of Anhalt-Bernburg-Schaumburg.

After Mahy's marriage, he went to Vienna to try to restore his wife's rights, and spent some time in Warsaw. In 1787, he was authorized to raise a patriotic French legion to help the Dutch against Stadtholder William IV and his Prussian allies. 

Mahy returned to Paris in 1789 and became involved in Royalist plans initiated by the Comte de Provence to save Louis XVI and end the French Revolution. Mahy began using one of his gentlemen, the Comte de la Chatre, as an intermediary to finance the venture. 

Mahy was eventually betrayed by several officers. A leaflet circulated throughout Paris on Dec. 23, 1789 stated that Mahy had been hired by the Comte de Provence to organize a 'plot' against the French people, in which Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and their children would be rescued from the Tuileries Palace, where they were being held prisoner, and sent out of the country. The Comte de Provence was reportedly then to be declared regent of France and given absolute power, and a force of 30,000 soldiers would encircle Paris. In the confusion that resulted, Paris' three main liberal leaders - Jacques Necker, the Finance Minister, Jean Sylvain Bailly, the mayor of Paris, and the Marquis de La Fayette, the commander of Paris' National Guard - were to be assassinated. Afterwards, Paris was to be starved into submission by cutting off its food supply. 

Mahy and his wife were arrested the next day and put in the Abbaye Prison. The Comte de Provence hastily disavowed him before the Commune of Paris and in a letter to the National Constituent Assembly. 

Two weeks after their arrest, Mahy and his wife were separated. He was moved to the Grand Chatelet, and put on trial for two months. Witnesses disagreed repeatedly about the facts, and even an anarchist editor of a republican newspaper said there was insufficient evidence against Mahy. 

On Jan. 26, 1790, some Royalists made an armed attempt to to free him, which La Fayette thwarted. On Feb. 18, 1790, Mahy was sentenced to be hanged. He refused to give any other information on the plot's details or its participants. He was executed the next day at the Place de Greve.