1792 Imperial election 21 at Varennes-en-Argonne. On August 27, Leopold and Frederick William II of Prussia, king of Prussia, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, calling for the release of Louis and Marie Antoinette and promising that, if his safety was threatened, and with the support of the other monarchs of Europe, they would go to war to restore him. The National Assembly interpreted the declaration as a declaration of war against the revolutionary government. On April 20, 1792, it declared war on Leopold's son Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, his successor as king of Hungary, king of Croatia and king of Bohemia. The
Francis II of the Two Sicilies by his first wife, Maria Christina of Savoy, Francis II was the last of the Bourbon kings of Naples, where he was born in 1836. His education had been much neglected and he proved a man of weak character, greatly influenced by his stepmother Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria, whom he feared, and also by the priests, and by the camarilla, or reactionary court set. On 3 February 1859 in Bari, Francis married princess Duchess Maria Sophie in Bavaria, of the royal Bavarian house of Wittelsbach (a younger sister of Empress Elisabeth "Sissi" of Austria). Maria Sophie, along with Elisabeth,