THE DEATH OF MIRABEAU meant the loss to the monarchy of its only second in the fight against the Revolution. Once more the court stood utterly alone. There were two plain possibilities, resistance or capitulation. As usual, the court wobbled, choosing the most unlucky course, the middle course of flight.
Mirabeau had already pondered the question whether it might not be well for the King, in the hope of re-establishing his authority, to withdraw from the defenceless position enforced on him in Paris. Prisoners cannot wage war. Those who wish to carry on an effective fight must have their arms free and a firm standing ground beneath their feet. But the tribune had insisted that if this expedient were adopted the King must not steal away in secret, for that would be to compromise the royal dignity. “A king,” he said, “does not run away from his people,” and, yet more emphatically, “a king must live in full daylight, in order to establish his kingship openly.” His proposal was that Louis XVI should go out driving into the suburbs, where a cavalry regiment which had remained loyal would await him. Then, on horseback, surrounded by these soldiers, he should join his army, and, as a free man, treat with the National Assembly. But for such a course a man in the full sense of the word was needed, and never had Louis XVI been one to adopt bold measures. He toyed with the idea, indeed, taking advice in this quarter and in that; however, in the end, he preferred immediate comfort to his throne and the chance of saving his life.
Now that Mirabeau was dead, Marie Antoinette, weary of perpetual humiliations, energetically adopted the notion. She was not alarmed by the risks the flight entailed, being only distressed because to abscond in such a fashion seemed beneath the dignity of a queen. Still, since the situation grew worse from day to day, she wrote to Mercy:
“There is no middle course. Either we must stay where we are beneath the sword of the ‘factieux’ (and, consequently, must be of no account any longer) if they retain the upper hand, or else must be fettered beneath the despotism of persons who declare themselves well intentioned, but who do and will continue to do us harm. Such is the outlook upon the future, and perhaps the moment which awaits us is nearer than I think, unless we ourselves take the initiative, unless we guide public opinion by our own strength and by the course we ourselves adopt. Believe me that what I am now telling you is not dictated by any fantastic notion, nor yet by disgust with our position or by an impatient desire to act. I am fully aware of the dangers and the various unpleasant possibilities which loom at this juncture. But I see on all hands such terrible eventualities that I would rather perish while seeking a means of salvation than allow myself to be crushed and annihilated in a condition of absolute passivity.” Since Mercy, sober-minded and cautious, writing from his safe retreat in Brussels, continued to offer objections, she expressed herself even more emphatically, in a clear-sighted letter which shows that this woman, formerly characterised by so much levity, had come to recognise how disastrous had been her fall: “Our position is horrible, so horrible that those who have not had it actually under their eyes cannot form any idea of it. If we remain here, we have no alternative but to do blindly all that the ‘factieux’ demand, or else to perish under the sword which is perpetually suspended over our heads. Believe me that I do not exaggerate our risk. You know that I have always done my utmost to exercise forbearance, trusting in time, and in the hope that public opinion may change, but today everything is different. If we would escape destruction, we must take the only path open to us. We are far from being so blind as to believe that this plan is free from danger; nevertheless, if we must perish, let us do so gloriously, and having done our best to fulfil our duty, to maintain our honour and to comply with the dictates of religion. I believe the provinces to be less infected by this corruption than the capital, but it is always Paris that gives the tone to the kingdom … The clubs and the secret societies lead France whithersoever they will. The decent folk and those who detest the present posture of affairs (there are plenty of them) have fled the country or are in hiding, because they are the weaker party and have no common platform on which to rally their forces. If only the King could show himself freely in a fortified city, the number of malcontents who would disclose themselves would be amazing—persons who, up till now, have done no more than groan almost inaudibly. The longer we wait, however, the less support we shall find. The republican spirit gains ground day by day among all classes; the troops are becoming infected, and it will be impossible to count upon them should we delay.”
Danger threatened from another quarter than the Revolution. The French princes, the Count of Artois, the Prince of Condé and the other émigrés—unheroic individuals, but full of braggadocio—were rattling sabres in their safe retreat across the frontier. Intriguing at all the courts, they were endeavouring, by brave words, which entailed no risk, to distract attention from their cowardice in taking flight. They travelled from place to place trying to spur on the Emperor and the Kings to make war against France, without considering that by these futile demonstrations they were involving the lives of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in deadly peril. “The Count of Artois is very little concerned about his brother and my sister,” wrote Emperor Leopold II. “He never seems to think of the danger to which his projects and his attempts expose them.” These ‘heroes’ disported themselves in Coblenz and in Turin, keeping a good table, and telling all and sundry how they thirsted for the blood of the Jacobins. The Queen was hard put to it to restrain their follies within bounds. Were it only to take the wind out of their sails, Louis and Marie Antoinette must escape from Paris. The King must be free to hold in check the extremists in both camps; the ultra-revolutionists and the ultra-reactionaries; the fanatics in Paris and the fanatics over the border. The King must be free, and his only way to freedom was a distressing one—flight.
The details of the arrangements for escape were left in the Queen’s hands, and it was natural that she should entrust their practical working-out to one from whom she had nothing to hide and in whom she had absolute confidence, namely Fersen. Had he not said: “I live only to serve her”? He was the one friend left to her. It was his task, therefore, to undertake what would be possible only by the devotion, not solely of all his energies, but even life itself. The difficulties were wellnigh insuperable. The first step was hard enough, to escape from a palace round which the National Guards were posted as sentries, and where almost every servant was a spy. Next the refugees would have to traverse a hostile city, and for this stage of their journey various precautions were requisite. As for travel through the countryside, that would be rendered possible only by negotiation with General Bouillé, the one who had (in secret) remained loyal to the King. The plan was that squadrons of cavalry should be spread out along the road as far as Châlons, on the way to the frontier fortress of Montmédy, so that, should the royal carriage be recognised or pursued, the King and the royal family could instantly be protected. Since a pretext was needed for the strange-seeming movements of soldiers, an Austrian army corps had to be concentrated on the imperial side of the frontier to give Bouillé some sort of justification for what he was about. The requisite correspondence, a considerable amount, had to be conducted with the utmost caution, for most of the letters leaving France were opened, and, as Fersen said: “All would be lost if there were the tiniest breath of suspicion.” Another difficulty was that the flight would demand the expenditure of vast sums of money, and both the King and the Queen were almost penniless. Attempts to secure a few millions on loan from Emperor Leopold, from other rulers in England, Spain or Naples, and from the court bankers, proved fruitless. In this matter, as in the rest, Fersen, a foreigner, and a man of moderate rank, had to come to the rescue.
But Fersen’s passion for his mistress quadrupled his energies. He worked as it were with ten heads, twenty hands, though with only one self-sacrificing heart. In the daytime or after dark he spent hours with the Queen, making his way furtively into the palace that he might discuss details. He carried on a correspondence with the foreign princes and with General Bouillé; he selected the most trustworthy among the nobles, who, disguised as couriers, were to accompany the flight; and he also decided which among them were to carry letters to the frontier and back again. He ordered the carriage in his own name; he procured forged passports; he supplied funds by mortgaging his estate to two ladies, one Russian and one Swedish, for three hundred thousand livres in each case; and, in the last resort, he actually borrowed three thousand livres from his own steward. Piece by piece, he brought the necessary disguises into the Tuileries, and smuggled the Queen’s diamonds out of the palace. By day and by night, week after week, he wrote, negotiated, planned, travelled hither and thither, in continual peril, and that of the deadliest; for if one mesh of the net he was spreading over France were to break, if one of those in the plot were to turn informer, if a single letter were to be intercepted, his life would pay the forfeit. He did not count the cost. Bold, clear-sighted, indefatigable, an unobtrusive hero working behind the scenes, he played his part in one of the great dramas of history.
Even now there was hesitation. The King, always a procrastinator, continued to hope that some lucky turn in events would spare him the distress and the trouble of thus absconding. But it was of no avail. The carriage was ordered, funds had been laboriously gathered together; the escort provided by General Bouillé was posted in detachments along the route. Only one thing more was needed—a manifest excuse, a sort of moral justification for a flight which was, after all, not easy to provide with a seemly colour. In one way or another the world must be convinced that the King and the Queen had not (as a schoolboy would put it) run away in a blue funk, but had been actually compelled to leave by the Terror. To furnish this pretext, the King announced to the National Assembly and to the town council of Paris that he wanted to spend Easter week at Saint-Cloud. Instantly, as the court had hoped and expected, the Jacobin press raised a clamour that the proposed visit to Saint-Cloud must be to hear mass read and to receive absolution from a priest hostile to the Revolution. Furthermore, said the papers, there was grave danger that the palace outside the fortifications of Paris would be the starting point for an escape of the royal family. The inflammatory newspaper articles had their due effect. On 19th April 1791, when the King was about to enter his carriage for the drive to Saint-Cloud, huge crowds assembled, whipped up by Marat and the clubs, and he was forcibly restrained from leaving the Tuileries.
The public exhibition of the fact that the King was a prisoner in his own palace was precisely what the Queen and her advisers had wanted. It was now made plain to the world that Louis XVI, alone among Frenchmen who had not been in due form sentenced as criminals, was not granted the liberty of driving a few miles in order to enjoy a breath of fresh air. Ostentatiously, therefore, the members of the royal family seated themselves in the carriage, and waited for the horses to be put to. The mob, however, with which the National Guards had fraternized, would not allow the beasts to be taken out of the stables. At length the professional ‘saviour’, Lafayette, appeared upon the scene, and, as commanding officer of the National Guard, ordered that the King should be allowed free passage. No one heeded the general. He commanded the mayor of Paris to hoist the red revolutionary banner as a warning; Bailly laughed in his face. Then Lafayette tried to address the populace, and was shouted down. Anarchy had entered into its own.
Meanwhile, what time the unhappy commander was imploring his troops to obey him, the King, the Queen and Princess Elisabeth sat quietly in the carriage amid the shouting mob. The yells and the coarse invectives left Marie Antoinette unperturbed. In truth she was pleased to see how Lafayette, the champion of freedom, the darling of the people, was now disgraced before his own spoilt children. She would take no part in this dispute between the rival factions, both of which she loathed. It was agreeable to her to watch the tumult raging around her, for it gave unmistakable proof that the authority of the National Guard no longer counted, that anarchy was supreme in France, that the canaille could insult the royal family without punishment, and that therefore the King was morally entitled to flee from Paris. For two hours and a quarter the farce endured, until at length Louis ordered that the carriage should be wheeled back to the coach house, explaining that the excursion to Saint-Cloud had been abandoned. Thereupon, as usual in moments of triumph, the crowd which had just before been spewing abuse underwent a sudden change of mood, acclaimed the King and the Queen and expressed its delight with its ‘rulers’, while the National Guard promised to protect the royal pair. Marie Antoinette, however, knew how much this protection was worth, and answered, so loudly that she could be heard far and wide: “Yes, we count on your devotion. Still, you must admit that we are no longer free.” She had good reason for speaking in a loud tone. Ostensibly addressed to the National Guard, the words were really meant for Europe at large.
If, next evening, action had followed inconspicuously upon attention, if effect had speedily followed cause, then insult and indignation, thrust and counterthrust, would have occurred in natural and successful sequence. If two simple, light, inconspicuous carriages, one of them bearing the King with his son, the other the Queen and her daughter with presumably Madame Elisabeth as well, had driven away, no one would have paid any attention to these ordinary vehicles conveying to all appearance ordinary persons. The royal family would have made its way to the frontier without attracting remark. The King’s brother, the Count of Provence, departing without ostentation, made good his escape.
Even when only a finger’s breadth separated life from death, the royal family would not infringe the sacred laws of the royal household; even when a journey was so hazardous an adventure, immortal etiquette must come as travelling companion. Here was the first vital error—it was decided that the five principal persons in the drama should occupy one of the carriages, the whole royal family, the father, the mother, the sister and the two children, the very group which was known even in the smallest of French villages thanks to a hundred copperplate engravings. But this was not enough. Madame de Tourzel, mindful of her oath never to let the royal children out of her sight for a moment, must form a sixth member of the company. In a carriage thus grossly overloaded, it was naturally impossible to drive fast, although every quarter of an hour, perhaps every minute, counted. Then came a third mistake—it was inconceivable that a Queen should dress and undress herself, so there must be two ladies-in-waiting in a second carriage, this swelling the tale of the escapees to eight persons. Since, moreover, the coachman, the outriders and the lackeys must be persons of trust, and, no matter whether they knew or did not know the road, must be of noble birth, the six were more than doubled, and the number was yet further increased by Fersen and his coachman. A goodly company for a secret journey! Fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh mistakes—fine clothes must be brought along, so that the Queen and the King could appear at Montmédy in gala dress and not in travelling rig. Consequently a couple of hundredweight, packed in brand-new trunks, was piled upon the already overburdened carriages, this meaning, not merely a further slackening of pace, but an additional means of making the procession conspicuous.
What should have been a secret flight had become a royal progress.
But the greatest of all the mistakes was this. If the King and the Queen had to drive for four-and-twenty hours, even to get out of hell, they must drive comfortably. A new carriage was ordered, exceptionally wide, exceptionally well-sprung; a carriage which stank of fresh varnish and of wealth; a carriage which, whenever the horses were changed, could not fail to arouse the curiosity of postilions, posting masters and ostlers. Lovers are not apt to be far-sighted when the comfort of the women they love is at stake, and Fersen naturally wanted Marie Antoinette to have everything as gorgeous, as beautiful and as luxurious as possible. According to his specifications, reputedly for a certain Madame la Baronne de Korff, a monumental structure was built, a sort of little warship on four wheels, to provide accommodation, not only for the six members of the royal family together with the governess, the coachman and the servants, but in addition for all thinkable conveniences—a silver dinner service, a clothes press, a cupboard for comestibles and a close-stool for the bodily needs from which not even kings are exempt. A wine cellar was built into the framework and duly stocked, for everyone knows that monarchs are thirsty souls. To crown the absurdity, the vehicle was lined with a light-coloured damask. One wonders, in fact, that the designer had omitted to have the fleur-de-lis conspicuously embossed upon the carriage doors. Being equipped as heavily as a hoplite, so ponderous and luxurious an equipage needed, if it were to be driven at a reasonable pace, at least eight and usually twelve horses. This signified that, whereas a light post-chaise with two horses would be delayed only five minutes at a posting station, here the supply of a new relay occupied about half an hour, so that four or five hours were wasted on the stages of a journey when every few minutes counted for life or for death. To compensate the blue-blooded ‘servants’ and outriders for having to be clad as menials for four-and-twenty hours, they were decked in brilliant, perfectly new and therefore conspicuous liveries, which contrasted markedly with the plain attire deliberately chosen by the King and the Queen. Attention was further drawn to the affair by the fact that in every little town the carriage was about to traverse there suddenly appeared—in peace-time—a squadron of dragoons, ostensibly on the look-out for a ‘monetary convoy’. Then, to crown all, as the supreme folly, the Duc de Choiseul had chosen as liaison officer between the various contingents the most impossible of creatures, Figaro in person—the King’s hairdresser, the divine Léonard, an excellent man at his own job, which was not that of diplomacy, and who, even more than the King, true to his lifelong role, was eminently calculated to complicate an already hopelessly involved situation.
There was one excuse for this absurdity. State ceremonial in France had no precedent for a King’s flight. A royal baptism, a coronation, how the King or the Queen went to the theatre, His Majesty’s clothing at the hunt, which shoes and which buckles he and his gracious spouse should wear at receptions or parties, at mass, or at the card table—such details, and a hundred others of equal importance, were prescribed by ceremonial routine. But precisely how a king and a queen should flee in disguise from the palace of their ancestors was not mentioned in the tables of the law. Here, free improvisation was necessary. Precisely because the court had never come into touch with the realities of life, at its first contact with them it was perforce impotent. When the King of France had to dress as a menial in order to escape from his people, he could no longer be lord of his own destiny.
After interminable delays, 19th June was fixed upon for the flight—not too soon, for a net of secret negotiations, spread so wide and held by so many hands, may tear somewhere at any moment. Like the crack of a whip there sounded amid ominous whispers an article by Marat in L’Ami du Peuple, announcing a plot to carry off the King. “The idea is to remove him forcibly into the Low Countries, on the pretext that his cause is that of all the kings of Europe … Are you imbeciles, that you take no steps to prevent the flight of the royal family? Parisians, stupid that you are, I am weary of saying to you over and over again that you should have the King and the Dauphin in safe keeping; that you should lock up the Austrian woman, her brother-in-law and the rest of the family. The loss of one day might be disastrous to the nation, might dig the graves of three million Frenchmen.” A remarkable prophecy, uttered by a man whose morbid suspicion endowed him with keen insight, and only in this respect was he wrong, inasmuch as “the loss of one day” was to be disastrous, not to the nation, but to the King and the Queen. Disastrous to them because, once again, at the last moment, Marie Antoinette postponed the flight of which the minutest details had already been prepared. Vainly had Fersen tired himself out in order to have everything ready for 19th June. For weeks and months in succession, he had concentrated his energies upon this undertaking. Not only, in his nightly visits to the Queen, had he brought hidden under his cloak the various articles of clothing that were needed for the escapees’ disguise, but, in countless letters to General Bouillé, he had specified the various points at which the dragoons and hussars were to wait for the King’s carriage. Himself taking the reins, on the road to Vincennes he had made trial of the post-horses engaged for the flight. All those concerned had been allotted their parts; the mechanism had been perfected down to the tiniest cog wheel.
But, at the last moment, the Queen countermanded the arrangements. One of her ladies of the bedchamber, who had a liaison with a revolutionist, was suspect. As it happened, on 20th June this woman was to have a day off, so Marie Antoinette thought it essential to wait twenty-four hours longer. A sinister delay! Fresh orders had to be sent to Bouillé, the cavalrymen must be instructed to unsaddle their horses, and there was a superadded nervous tension for Fersen and for his beloved, whose sensibilities were already strained to breaking point. At length, however, this last day of waiting had gone by. To avert suspicion, in the afternoon the Queen with her two children and her sister-in-law Elisabeth went for an expedition to the pleasure gardens of Tivoli. On her return, with her usual dignity and precision she gave the commandant her instructions for the ensuing day. There was no sign of excitement in her behaviour, nor, of course, in that of King Louis, for he was one of those who are said to have ‘no nerves’. At eight in the evening, Marie Antoinette retired to her own apartment and dismissed her ladies. The children were put to bed, and then the elders of the royal family, unconcerned to all seeming, assembled for supper in the great salon. A shrewd observer might perhaps have noticed that the Queen was continually looking at the clock, as if she was tired out and wanted to go to bed. In reality, she had never been more wakeful, more fully in possession of her senses and ready to meet her fate, than on this momentous evening.