Thomas de Mahy , marquis de Favras Thomas de Mahy , marquis de Favras ( March 26 , 1744 – February 19 , 1790 ) was a French aristocrat and supporter of the House of Bourbon during the French Revolution . Biography . Activities . Born in Favras near Blois , he belonged to an impoverished family whose nobility dated from the 12th century . At seventeen he was a captain of dragoon s , and saw some service in the closing campaign of the Seven Years ' War . In 1772 he became a first lieutenant in the Swiss Guard s of King Louis XVI ' s younger brother , the Comte de Provence . Unable to meet the expenses of his rank , which was equivalent to that of a colonel in the army , he retired in 1775 . Favras married in 1776 Victoria Hedwig Karoline , Princess of Anhalt - Bernburg - Schaumburg , whose mother , after being deserted by her husband Karl Louis , Prince of Anhalt - Bernburg - Schaumburg - Hoym in 1749 , had found refuge with her daughter in the house of Charles de Rohan , prince de Soubise . After his marriage , Favras went to Vienna to attempt the restitution of his wife ' s rights , and spent some time in Warsaw . In 1787 he was authorized to raise a patriotic legion to help the Dutch against the Stadtholder William IV and his Prussia n allies . Returning to Paris in 1789 , he became involved in Royalist plans initiated by his former employer , the Comte de Provence , to save the King and end the French Revolution . In order to finance this venture , Provence ( using one of his gentlemen , the Comte de la Chàtre , as an intermediary ) commissioned Favras to negotiate a loan of two million franc s from the bankers Schaumel and Sartorius . Arrest , trial , and execution . Favras took the unfortunate step of taking into his confidence certain officers by whom he was betrayed . It was stated in a leaflet circulated throughout Paris on December 23 , 1789 that Favras had been hired by the Comte de Provence to organize an elaborate plot against the people of France . In this plot , the King , Queen and their children were to be rescued from the Tuileries Palace and spirited out of the country . Then the Comte de Provence was to be declared regent of the kingdom with absolute power . Simultaneously , a force of 30 , 000 soldiers was to encircle Paris . In the ensuing confusion , the city ' s three main liberal leaders ( Jacques Necker , the popular Finance Minister of France , Jean Sylvain Bailly , the mayor of Paris , and the Marquis de La Fayette , the commander of the city ' s new National Guard ) were to be assassinated . Afterwards , the revolutionary city was to be starved into royal submission by cutting off its food supplies . As a consequence of the leaflet , Favras and his wife were arrested the next day , and imprisoned in the Abbaye Prison . Terrified of the consequences of the arrest , the Comte de Provence hastened to publicly disavow Favras , in a speech delivered before the Commune of Paris , and in a letter to the National Constituent Assembly . A fortnight after the arrest , Favras and his wife were separated , and Favras was removed to the Grand Châtelet . In the course of a trial that lasted nearly two months , witnesses disagreed about the facts concerning the case and evidence was lacking . Even Sylvain Maréchal , the anarchist editor of the republican newspaper " Révolutions de Paris " , admitted that the evidence against Favras was insufficient . However , an armed attempt to free him by some Royalists on January 26 , which was thwarted by La Fayette , aroused the suspicion of the Parisians , and on February 18 , 1790 , in spite of a notable defense plea , Favras was sentenced to be hanged . Although he had previously implicated others in the conspiracy ( most notably , the Comte d ' Antraigues ) , Favras refused to give any further information to the authorities on the plot ' s details or participants , and his sentence was carried out in the Place de Grève the next day - a measure which was received with enthusiasm by members of the Parisian population , since it was the first instance when no distinction in the mode of execution was allowed between noble and commoner . Purportedly , upon the reading of his death sentence , he remarked , " I see that you have made three spelling mistakes . " Legacy . Favras was generally regarded as a martyr to the Royalist cause for his refusal to implicate the Comte de Provence , and Madame de Favras was pensioned by Louis XVI . She left France , and her son Charles de Favras served in the Habsburg and the Imperial Russia n armies . Under the Bourbon Restoration , Charles received an allowance from Louis XVIII . Her daughter Caroline married Rudiger , Freiherr von Stillfried und Rathenitz , in 1805 . The official dossier of Favras ' trial for high treason against the nation disappeared from the Châtelet , but its substance is preserved in the papers of a clerk .