CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DEPARTURE AT MIDNIGHT
“Departure at midnight from Paris . . . at Varennes-en-Argonne at eleven o’clock in the evening.”
Journal OF LOUIS XVI, 21 JUNE 1791
It was seven o’clock the following morning, Tuesday, 21 June, when Lemoine and Hubert went into the King’s bedroom as usual and drew back the curtains; Lemoine dealt with the bed and the boy Hubert with the windows. To Lemoine’s amazement, the royal bed was empty. Passing on to the Dauphin’s room, they found that to be empty too. When Hubert suggested anxiously that they should inform the Queen, Lemoine was taken aback and pointed out that it was not yet the designated hour to draw Her Majesty’s curtains . . . The mystery deepened when it was discovered that Madame Royale had asked to be left to sleep for an extra half-hour, while the maidservant of Madame Brunier reported that her mistress was not there either.1
At a quarter to eight, the ritual awakening of the Queen began. Here too there was an empty bed behind the curtains. Very soon the cry was all over Paris: “They’ve gone! They’ve gone!” By eleven o’clock a huge and angry crowd was assembled outside the windows of the Tuileries, shouting insults of the grossest sort concerning the family who were no longer apparently in residence. The only portrait of the King that could be found was torn to shreds. It was La Fayette who summed up the situation when he rushed round to see his friend Thomas Paine: “The birds are flown!” The republican Paine merely replied, “Let them go,” but the National Assembly took the opposite line. It was now on full and furious alert. In Brussels, the news was broken to Count Mercy d’Argenteau by the arrival of a chest from the Queen containing a little red morocco box for “the sister” (Marie Christine), letters of exchange worth 600,000 or 700,000 livres and about 20,000 livres in cash. There was no note or letter.2 But there was no need; Mercy, who had opposed the escape up to the last minute with Cassandra-like warnings, knew that the die was cast.
As to the King’s intentions in this flight, these were made quite clear by the declaration that he left behind him, dated 20 June and signed as customary with the simple name “Louis.”3 This extensive document rehearsed the events of recent years including the King’s reasons for remaining in France after the violence of October 1789. He could certainly have departed, but preferred not to evoke civil war. Instead he had then taken up residence at the Tuileries as requested, and surrendered his own bodyguards, a painful loss. All these sacrifices had been made in vain; under the new order, the King was deliberately sidelined, stripped of the right to agree or refuse constitutional measures. In these circumstances, “What remains to the King except the empty sham of royalty?”
A recital of the affronts that Louis had endured followed, prominent among them being the 1789 plan to take the King and his son away to Paris “and shut the Queen up in a convent.” Then there were the efforts to stop Mesdames Tantes going abroad, and his own experience of being barred from travel to Saint Cloud when the National Guard sided with the mob; he had been condemned in consequence to hear “the Mass of the new curé” at Saint-Germain at Easter. Was it surprising that the King should now seek to recover his liberty, putting himself and his family in safety? Louis ended by addressing all “Frenchmen and above all Parisians” and reminding them that the King would always be “your father, your best friend.” How happy he would be to return to a proper constitution, which he could accept of his own free will, one in which “our ancient religion” was respected! A postscript forbade the King’s ministers to sign any order in his name, until they had received his latest instructions.
While this declaration was being read and while the crowd howled outside the Tuileries, a respectable party of travellers were trundling happily through the roads of north-western France. It consisted of Monsieur Durand, a valet; Madame Rochet, a waiting-woman; Rosalie, a children’s nurse; Aglä ié, a girl of about twelve; and her little sister, Amélie, around six years old. Also present was the Baronne de Korff, a middle-aged woman who was the owner of the coach.
To the casual observer, these people were dressed appropriately enough for their degree; for example, the waiting-woman and the nurse wore plain dark clothes, mantles and big shady hats, while the girls were in simple cotton dresses and bonnets.4 It was only a closer inspection, perhaps by one who was familiar with the scene at Versailles in the old days, that would reveal the characteristic features of Louis XVI, the heavy face, strongly marked eyebrows and beaked nose, seen for example on the new paper currency, the assignats, followed by those of Marie Antoinette, Madame Elisabeth, Marie Thérèse, Louis Charles in girl’s clothing—and the Marquise de Tourzel. Also disguised as servants were the Comte de Valory, Monsieur de Moustier and Monsieur de Malden. All had been appointed three days earlier when the Queen graciously enquired what their first names were, since she would have to address them as such in their menial capacity. The answers turned out to be François, Melchior and Saint-Jean respectively.5
Everything so far had really gone very smoothly, given that the actual escape from the well-guarded Tuileries had always been the danger point. At the last poste (posting-station) before Châlons-sur-Marne, the Queen observed to Valory: “François”—as he had become—“it seems to me that things are going well and if we were going to be stopped, it would have been before now.”*80 Believing himself safe, even the taciturn King opened up a little to the Marquise de Tourzel. How happy he was to be free of all the bitter experiences of Paris! He told her jovially: “Now that I have my backside in the saddle [cul sur la selle] I intend to be quite a different person from the one you have known up until now.”6
It was true that the exact schedule of departure had not been kept. But some delays were to be anticipated, were they not, in such a delicate operation and would surely be factored into the equation by those at the other end. Actually the escape of the royal children went like clockwork. The Marquise de Tourzel awakened Louis Charles at ten-thirty. Increasingly militaristic in his play and loving to dress up as a knight in specially made miniature armour, the little boy on awakening was convinced that he was going to command a regiment. He began to shout: “Quick, quick! Give me my sabre and boots and let’s be on our way.” Imagining that he was his hero Henri IV, Louis Charles was somewhat put out now to be dressed in the girl’s clothing prepared by Pauline de Tourzel but he still believed that he must be taking part in some kind of play. His sister, however, thought that the sleepy Louis Charles, with his long fair hair, made a very pretty little girl.7
Marie Thérèse described herself later as having been bewildered, in spite of her mother’s warning. Nevertheless a procession of adults on foot (the children were carried) now filed unchecked out of the Tuileries. They used the ground-floor apartments of the departed Duc de Villequier as an exit, since they were not guarded. The party included the two waiting-women, Madame Brunier and Madame de Neuville, who were to go ahead. The Royal Governess and her charges, escorted by Malden, easily reached a plain carriage waiting in a side courtyard on the north side of the Tuileries, known as the Petit Carrousel. This courtyard beyond the Cour des Suisses connected to the outside world by the rue de l’Échelle, leading to the rue de Rivoli; a passageway went back to the Grand Carrousel. Here they found Fersen, sitting on the box in coachman’s garb, whistling and smoking tobacco for the sake of verisimilitude.8
A wait was expected at this point; the Dauphin snuggled down on the floor beneath the Marquise de Tourzel’s skirts and went to sleep. In order to avoid suspicion by remaining stationary for so long, Fersen took the carriage for a drive round the nearby streets. Further enlivenment was provided by the sight of La Fayette’s carriage, passing into the Tuileries on the way to the King’s official coucher. After “a long hour” had passed, according to Marie Thérèse, a woman was seen lurking in the shadows of the Petit Carrousel. It was Madame Elisabeth. Stepping hastily into the carriage, she trod on Louis Charles but he bravely stifled his cries.
The presence of Mayor Bailly as well as La Fayette at his coucher meant that the King had to be careful not to hurry matters. But when he did eventually slip out past the guards, escorted by the Comte de Valory, he did so easily enough thanks to a ruse. These guards had become accustomed to seeing the Chevalier de Coigny, who bore a remarkable physical resemblance to the King, leaving at roughly the same hour through the same exit for the last fortnight. Once arrived at the Petit Carrousel, the King boasted of his self-possession, which had even enabled him to bend down and casually fasten the loose buckle on his shoe.
The only person missing at this point was Marie Antoinette. She had decided to leave after the King so that her absence, if discovered, should not prejudice his own escape. She therefore had to await the end of the long-drawn-out coucher and La Fayette’s departure. Minutes later when she did arrive—at most, fifteen—the King, in a rare gesture of public emotion, took his wife in his arms and embraced her, saying over and over again: “How happy I am to see you!” It was not so much the duration of the delay as the sheer adrenalin produced by the danger of the situation that caused the King’s outburst. Malden, once more acting as escort, may have got muddled among the courtyards, but even so, it is clear from the various accounts that the Queen arrived shortly after the King.*819 The delay that had crept into the schedule so far was due to the inexorable ritual of court and coucher.
It was after one-thirty in the morning by the time Fersen, as coachman, reached the berlin waiting outside the city barrier at the Porte Saint-Martin. Out of caution,*82 he did not take the more direct public route but looped round, and this again caused a certain delay in the projected timings. At the first poste they reached, at Bondy, Fersen surrendered his role as coachman according to the King’s previous decision, and left the royal party.
On rolled the berlin, keeping up a good steady pace which has been estimated at between six and seven miles an hour. After Meaux, La Ferté-sous-Jouarre was reached, then Montmirail, Étoges and Chaintrix, with Châlons-sur-Marne about thirteen miles away. There were few stops, except briefly for fresh air for the children, and once for the King, since the berlin contained all the necessary amenities. At one point the King looked at his watch and observed with some complacency: “La Fayette is now in real trouble.”10 It was around two o’clock. The royal party was expected to make contact with the Duc de Choiseul and forty officers at an inconspicuous poste at Pont de Somme-Vesle, fourteen miles beyond Châlons, between two-thirty and four-thirty. Clearly the original schedule had been over-optimistic but unlike La Fayette, the royal family did not expect to be in real trouble as a result.
It was now that the party encountered its first bit of bad luck. One horse after another stumbled and fell, causing a break in the harness, which then had to be mended. This was not an unexpected feature of travel at the time but it did mean that the berlin was now over two hours behind its projected schedule. At this point the Duc de Choiseul, having waited for about two hours at the Somme-Vesle poste, lost his head. He had zeal—he would have died for the King—but he lacked the kind of calm resourcefulness that was needed in this situation. Choiseul, on his own initiative, decided that the whole mission had been aborted.11
Without waiting for the arrival of the courier Valory, who was supposed to ride ahead to report progress, he proceeded to take his dragoons back in the direction of Montmédy. Goguelat did not argue against the decision, nor did he remain at the poste. Instead he helped to warn those further down the line that everything had gone wrong. Choiseul had Léonard with him, who had accompanied him on his trip back from Paris on the instructions of Marie Antoinette (the coiffeur kept bemoaning the fact that he was in tell-tale silk stockings and breeches). He now told him to take his cabriolet and spread the news that “the treasure” would after all not be arriving.12
At six o’clock Valory arrived at the poste at Somme-Vesle and was appalled to find no sign of the dragoons. When the berlin itself arrived at six-thirty, there was similar consternation. What did Choiseul’s absence mean? What should they do now without the military escort which had been so carefully planned in the weeks before the escape? No one had any idea, not the three junior bodyguards, accustomed to take orders rather than giving them, and not the King. As to Choiseul’s motivation, the Marquise de Tourzel’s explanation was hardly too extravagant: “Heaven, who wanted to test our august and unfortunate sovereigns to the end, let him leave.”13
In the end, for want of any more imaginative solution, the berlin simply rolled on again, reaching Orbeval—where there was still no sign of Choiseul—and thence to Sainte-Menehould. It was now about eight o’clock, and the royal family had been travelling for eighteen hours. Here there were in fact forty dragoons of Choiseul’s regiment, under the command of Captain d’Andouins; they had been installed in order to safeguard the passage of this mythical “treasure.” But these troops had unsaddled and d’Andouins, who in any case believed that everything had gone wrong, kept his distance from the family to avoid suspicion. All the time the royal luck was running out. Someone now recognized the King in a brief moment when he put his head out of the carriage, or at least suspected his identity.
This was one Drouet, in his late twenties, an official of the Sainte-Menehould poste, who was a strong supporter of the Revolution. Afterwards a colourful story was spun concerning Drouet’s recognition, how he quickly compared the face when he saw it with the assignat in his pocket, which the King himself had given him. The fact was that the “the infamous Drouet,” as he became from the royalist point of view, had served seven years in the army; his attention, like that of the rest of the town, might have been caught in the first place by the sight of the dragoons, added to which Louis XVI had quite a distinctive appearance, assignat or no assignat. Furthermore the gossip about the berlin’s contents was spreading in the district. Fresh horses always had to be accompanied by local postilions in order to take charge of them when their relay was over. It is possible that the King had in fact been recognized as early as Chaintrix and Châlons; but there the inhabitants were more discreet—or more respectful.14
Drouet’s suspicion was not yet certainty and the berlin was allowed to depart. It was not until an hour and a half later that Drouet and another man, Guillaume, set off in pursuit; they did so at the orders of the municipality.*83 By this time, the royal party had reached Clermont. Here the Comte de Damas, Colonel of the Dragoons of Monsieur (the Comte de Provence), had been ordered to await the King’s passing with 140 men. Unlike Choiseul, Damas had only been let into the secret of the escape fifteen days before its execution and was sufficiently out of touch to believe that the Vicomte d’Agoult would be with the King in the berlin. Wrongly alerted by Léonard that there would be no arrival of the “treasure,” Damas was put under pressure from his officers to stand down. He had thus allowed the horses to be unsaddled and his men to go to sleep at about nine o’clock.15
By the time Damas was in a position to send a quartermaster named Rémy and a few troops after the King, Drouet and Guillaume had arrived. They now received some vital information about the berlin’s route from another quarter. It might have been expected that the King would roll on east to Verdun. In fact, Verdun, like Metz, had all along been seen as a potential hazard. After Clermont, it was intended that the berlin should turn sharply north on a more obscure route, through wooded hills. Unfortunately Rémy missed this turning, and continued for some time towards Verdun, delaying his meeting with the berlin. It was Drouet and Guillaume who learnt of the fateful words spoken to the postilions of the fresh horses at Clermont: “Take the road to Varennes.”16
The royal party reached Varennes-en-Argonne, a “miserable little town” of perhaps one hundred inhabitants, at about eleven o’clock at night. Miserable as it might be, Varennes’ peculiar layout turned out to be crucial to the royal fortunes. The main street descended a steep hill to a bridge over the Aire River, with a further section of the town, including its castle and the Hôtel Le Grand-Monarque, on the far side; this meant that Varennes was effectively divided into two. There was now an urgent need for fresh horses, especially as the postilions of the current relay had been instructed by their employer, a woman, to get home without fail the next day for the harvest. Yet—almost unbelievably—no one in the party had the faintest idea where the new horses were supposed to be found.
This was essential information, given that Varennes was too small and insignificant to have its own poste and arrangements had therefore had to be made in advance. There was a vague supposition that their best bet was “the Clermont end of the town,” yet no horses were to be found there and the town was in darkness. It was one of the unfortunate but lethal effects of Choiseul’s withdrawal that the horses’ whereabouts—altered by Goguelat to the far (Stenay) end of the town—was never passed on by either man.
As it was, the King’s party was left knocking on doors in the darkness in the upper part of Varennes, while in the lower part, across the bridge near the castle, at the Hôtel Le Grand-Monarque, two comparatively junior officers waited with the missing horses, as well as a detachment of the Royal German Regiment. One officer, Charles de Bouillé, younger son of the Marquis, had been chosen because the presence of his father or Comte Louis might have drawn too much attention; the other, Raigecourt, was also a younger son. These officers had posted no lookout and were thus for some time in complete ignorance of the events happening only a short distance away from them—and their men.17 Once Drouet and Guillaume rode by, giving the alarm at the local inn, Le Bras d’Or, the town began to wake up. But at this crucial point, the bridge over the Aire was blocked by a conveniently overturned furniture wagon.
Not only were Charles de Bouillé’s hussars now cut off from the royal party but so, in theory, were the additional one hundred hussars on the road further north at Dun. Their acting commander, Lieutenant Rohrig, was also quite junior, Goguelat having sent back the experienced commander of the squadron, Deslon.18 There were in fact several fords over the Aire. But no one among the royalists seemed to know where they were. When Charles de Bouillé was at last alerted to the King’s arrival, he found that a deep trench in the water, which had been cut for a nearby mill, made the only ford he knew impassable. He then turned north. In short, the lack of preparations at Varennes was a disaster. Unlike the delays, it was an avoidable disaster. This was something about which both Valory and Choiseul agreed afterwards.
The Queen, on the arm of Malden, took temporary refuge at the large house of an invalid, a Monsieur de Préfontaine; since he had worked for the Prince de Condé, here was a friendly contact that could have been established in advance, but had not. Meanwhile about half an hour was wasted while Valory and Moustier tried to coerce the postilions into going further.19 They resolutely refused. It was said later that their royalist employer bitterly regretted the intransigent orders she had given about the priority of the harvest. The two bodyguards looked in vain for the fresh horses.
By this time the procurator of the local commune, Monsieur Sauce, had become involved, thanks to Drouet. Another barrier was set up at the top of the town, while the postilions were told: “Your passenger is the King.” The alarm for fire in the town was set off, a traditional method for rousing the sleeping inhabitants. National Guards began to be summoned. Six passing dragoons, who happened to observe the commotion and might have assisted the royal party, had no officer to command them and therefore did nothing. In all of this, time was of the essence if the berlin was to go on its way with the new relay, or alternatively if the royal party was to be rescued by other means.
Procurator Sauce also understood the value of time, or rather delay, since the task of arresting the King of France in the middle of the night, without any authority, was to say the least of it delicate. In such an extraordinary situation, the appearance of coercion had to be avoided. It was thus, on the excuse of the irregularity of their passports, that the royal family was persuaded to accept the “hospitality” of Sauce’s house until morning, when no doubt they would be continuing on their journey.
The Sauce house had two upper rooms. The royal family congregated in the back one, which was about fifteen feet by twenty, and the bodyguards sat outside under the window. The Queen asked for hot water and clean sheets for the children, who sank into instant sleep, and wine for the rest of the party (with the exception of herself). The King sat slumped in an armchair. Here at last at midnight, Choiseul and Goguelat reached the King, the former with his dragoons, having been lost in the wooded terrain. Damas also got through with a small party of loyal troops. Although crowds were beginning to gather outside the windows, these were mainly peasants. There was as yet no authority for the arrest. Therefore it was still perfectly possible at this point for the various bodies of troops in the neighbourhood to have simply forced through the liberty of the royal family, either by the threat of superior weapons, or by the use of them, as Choiseul and Goguelat suggested. No order was given to do so.
Whose failure was this? Louis XVI must take part of the blame. Fearing as ever the effects of violence on those around him, including his own family, he declined the sword that the Duc de Choiseul offered, telling him to put it away. Louis XVI clung to his paternalistic role, the only one he understood. At one point the King attempted to pacify the gathering crowds by appearing before them and announcing that he had no intention of leaving France and furthermore would return to Varennes, after he had been established at Montmédy. But there is a story that someone shouted from the crowd: “And what if your foot slipped [over the frontier]?” Even if apocryphal, it is one of those stories that capture the mood of the moment; it was not credible to simple people (nor, of course, to many more sophisticated ones) that the royal journey would really stop at Montmédy, so close to the frontier of the Empire.
Once again, however, Choiseul must bear a responsibility. The Duc had actually received an order in advance from the Marquis de Bouillé to go into the attack if the King was arrested at Châlons; that would have justified his action, if justification were needed. He was a soldier, not a courtier. It was a risk of course, like all unplanned military actions, but there were other soldiers in French royal employ who would have taken it.
After all, the King himself was never likely to take real command. When Goguelat, the ADC, managed to make his way to the King, the latter asked him when they were to depart. “Sire, we await your orders,” replied “Monsieur Gog.” As a soldier he at least was not afraid of violence. Goguelat tried to disperse the National Guards gathering outside and, drawing his sword, found himself the victim of an officer’s bullet; it struck his collarbone and his horse then threw him. Later Deslon, the commander of the squadron of hussars who had been at Dun, also got back into Varennes, although without his men. Asking for orders, he was told by Louis XVI that he had no orders to give, since he was a prisoner.20 Once again the lack of a senior advisor at the King’s side was a terrible disadvantage—even that cool plotter and professional soldier Count Fersen, the lack of whose “courage and sang-froid” the Marquis de Bouillé would later lament.
The arrival of emissaries from the National Assembly at about six o’clock in the morning, bearing orders for the immediate return of the King to Paris, changed the situation entirely. The anxious debate at the Hôtel de Ville about the King’s future was at an end. One of them, Romeuf, was familiar to the Queen because he was La Fayette’s ADC. At the sight of him, so thickly coated in dust from the journey, she exclaimed: “Monsieur, I would not have recognized you!” Nor, it seems, did she recognize their legitimacy. For the Queen’s exhausted despair gave way to rage—in which some criticism of the King may perhaps be implied. Valory reported how she cried out: “What audacity! What cruelty! Subjects having the temerity to pretend to give orders to their King!” And “the Daughter of the Caesars”—meaning her imperial parents—threw the order down on the bed where the Dauphin was sleeping.21
It was true that there was one last chance: the Marquis de Bouillé and that large force he had assembled on the excuse of defending the frontier, which was intended to support the King at Montmédy. Deslon knew German and Marie Antoinette remembered enough of the language of her childhood to ask him whether the Marquis de Bouillé would reach them in time; they expected him to rescue them. The Comte de Damas, who also knew German, was able to reply: “On horse and will charge,” before there were cries from their guardians: “Don’t speak German.”22
Bouillé, however, had only got as far as Stenay by about four o’clock, having waited on the Varennes–Dun road for some time, hoping to escort the berlin. He was aroused at four-thirty and his troops were ready to set out at five o’clock. But it needed several hours to make the journey to Varennes, given the rough nature of the road. The King pleaded to delay their departure and one of the waiting-women, Madame de Therville, even feigned illness in order to provide an excuse. It was in vain. They could not hold out beyond seven-thirty in the morning. So the wretched cavalcade set off.*84 The Marquis de Bouillé finally arrived in Varennes about an hour and a half too late.
The journey that followed was a nightmare. The weather, which had been overcast, became intensely hot. The dust on the roads was so great that the outriders were lost in a kind of fog. The royal family was not, however, permitted to close the windows of the carriage. As a result the dust clung to their clothes—the same clothes they had been wearing at their departure—which had become saturated with perspiration. The press of hostile people around them meant that the pace was intolerably slow. It had taken twenty-two hours to reach Varennes from Paris; during many of them the family had been buoyed up with hope. It now took nearly four days to return and the mood throughout was one of desolation.
Three deputies from the National Assembly were in charge; two of them, Jérôme Pétion and Antoine Barnave, crammed into the berlin. Barnave sat at the back between the King and Queen, who had Louis Charles on her knee; Pétion sat with Madame Elisabeth and the Marquise de Tourzel in front, the ladies taking it in turn to have Marie Thérèse on their laps. The third, Maubourg, offered to travel behind with the waiting-women to protect them from the abuse being hurled at them.
Pétion, a lawyer from Chartres in his early thirties who had been a member of the Estates General, was one of the many who had attached themselves to Robespierre’s rising star. At this point he was loud-mouthed and crude rather than overtly cruel—his pulling of the Dauphin’s long fair hair was probably meant as rough teasing rather than anything more sinister. As for his conviction that Madame Elisabeth, that earnest and devout spinster, succumbed to an instant physical attraction for him—he would recall her “smiles on a summer’s night” in his memoirs: that was more ludicrous than anything else.24 But of course his very presence in the stifling coach was itself offensive.
Barnave was a different matter. He was blessed with undeniable good looks, fine regular features and a wide mouth, and was “very well made,” according to the Duc de Lévis, despite his short hair. At the age of twenty-eight (six years younger than Marie Antoinette) he was a man who had acquired an intellectual interest in the whole notion of liberty and what it meant, through wide reading. It was he who had attacked the departure of Mesdames Tantes as being improper during the debate on the Constitution. Barnave now found himself launched into an argument with Madame Elisabeth, who far from joining in intimate caresses with Pétion was actually determined to bring home to the deputy the sheer outrage of what had been done to the royal family. She herself would never abandon her brother unless all practice of religion was forbidden, when her conscience might tell her to leave France. But how would Barnave understand that? He was “not only said to be Protestant” but was probably without any religion at all.25
The Princess also turned to politics. “You are too intelligent, Monsieur Barnave,” she said, “not to have appreciated the love of the King for the French people and his genuine desire to make them happy . . . As for that liberty which you love to excess, you have considered only its advantages. You have not taken into account the disorders that come in liberty’s wake.” It was a spirited defence of an essentially conservative position. On the whole Marie Antoinette left the talking to her sister-in-law who was doing so well. It was not realized at the time that it was the Queen-in-distress, not the robust Princess, who made a striking impression on Barnave.
In effect, the return journey retraced the earlier route of the berlin: Clermont, Sainte-Ménehould, Châlons and on to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, Claye and Meaux, leading finally to the Paris barrier. Not every experience along the way was unpleasant. The first night was spent at the intendancy at Châlons where people who remembered the lovely young Dauphine staying there on her bridal progress twenty-one years earlier wept for pity, even if recruits from the Jacobin clubs of nearby Rheims interrupted the Mass being said for the feast of Corpus Christi at the Sanctus; Marie Antoinette heard “with horror the indecent abuse that assailed her ears.” Nevertheless young girls tried to present the Queen with flowers and were annoyed to be prevented from reaching her by orders of the deputies. At La Ferté, the hostess of the inn where a meal was taken pretended to be the cook in order to serve the royal family decently. The King was supposed to have been shown a secret staircase by which he alone could have escaped, the Queen another exit. Neither consented to a plan that went against their shared concept of duty—to stay together to the end.26
At Dormans, on the other hand, where the second night was spent with the King dozing in an armchair, they were kept awake all night by cries of “Long live the nation!” and “Long live the National Assembly!” There were threats to shoot the Queen at Épernay—if she could be got without hitting the King. And although the King and Queen were decently treated by the Bishop at Meaux—a juror—in whose house they spent the third night, there was real trouble from Claye onwards. It was 25 June, “one of the hottest days I ever felt,” wrote Grace Elliott, but the people would not allow the berlin to travel faster than at walking pace. The swearing, which was meant to be heard by the royal party, added to their discomfort, and the insolent smoking outside the open windows even more so. It was symbolic of the way the Queen was now demonized that various stories of her offering food out of the window to hungry people along the route all had the same denouement. The recipients of her charity were speedily warned off with the cry: “Don’t touch it! It’s sure to be poisoned.”27
At the barriers of the city of Paris, there was a vast crowd. But the reception of the royal family was now subject to organization and there was no more danger of mob violence. La Fayette ordered that the normal sign of respect to the King was to be ostentatiously ignored; every head was to be covered as he passed and even the kitchenhands had to put their greasy cloths on their heads. At the same time an order was posted: “Whoever applauds the King will be flogged; whoever insults him will be hanged.” So the infinitely slow, infinitely melancholy cortège of exhausted would-be fugitives reached the Tuileries through crowds that were for the most part silent.
The Queen’s “proud and noble air” even in these circumstances did not fail to arouse comment, both adverse and sympathetic. The press was as ever busy inflaming public opinion against her, this Medea who had been ready to plunge her arms into the blood of the French people. Now it was “the rage of Madame Capet at this terrible contretemps” that they claimed was visible on her face. The envoy from Bourbon Parma, Virieu, saw on the contrary a woman who was “defeated” even though she remained every inch the Queen. But the angelic looks of “the dear little Dauphin”—still the Child of the Nation whatever his parents’ misdemeanours—received general approbation.28
When the party finally reached the Tuileries at eight o’clock at night, having travelled since seven that morning, Louis XVI was almost too exhausted to get out of the coach. The three bodyguards and two waiting-women were taken to the Abbaye prison as much for their own protection as for punishment and the Marquise de Tourzel was also held. François Hüe, the Dauphin’s chief valet, had rushed back to the palace in time to receive his charge, although when the little boy put out his arms to him, Hüe was brushed aside by a National Guard. It was not until later that they were reunited. Once in bed, Louis Charles called out to Hüe: “As soon as we arrived at Varennes, we were sent back. Do you know why?” Hüe told him quickly not to talk about the journey. That night Louis Charles had a nightmare in which he was surrounded by wolves and tigers and other wild beasts who were going to devour him. “We all looked at one another,” remembered Hüe, “without saying a word.”*8529
By this time the Comte and Comtesse de Provence, successfully accomplishing their individual escapes with one attendant each, were reunited at Namur in Belgium. Fersen had also reached Brussels, bearing a letter from the King to Mercy d’Argenteau, conveying to him the money and letters of exchange that had reached him earlier. Count Esterhazy, referring to Fersen under the coded name of “La Chose” (literally, The Thing) described Fersen’s absolute despair on hearing the news of the recapture although, like the Queen herself, Fersen put on a brave face in public. The reaction of Provence, now the senior royal at liberty, was to be rather different: “There wasn’t a trace of tears in those eyes as dry as his heart,” wrote the Marquis de Bouillé, who even discerned “a few sparks of perfidious satisfaction.”31
The Dauphin’s innocent question, although brushed aside by Hüe, deserves answering. What did go wrong at Varennes? There is a supplementary question: what would have happened if the King had successfully reached Montmédy?
The first point that should be made is that the risky escape from the Tuileries was in itself successful. The King turned to Valory at Varennes when there were no horses to be found and exclaimed: “François, we are betrayed!” In fact, that was not the case. No one betrayed the royal family and up until the devastating absence of Choiseul at the poste of Somme-Vesle after which “everything was abandoned . . . to the caprices of fortune,” things went remarkably well, with only minor—and commonplace—incidents like the breaking of harness with which to contend.
Afterwards the responsibility for the disaster of the royal family’s recapture was the subject of a long war of words in which successive generations also took part, supporting the respective roles of the Duc de Choiseul and the Marquis de Bouillé; belligerent declarations were made such as “Defence forces me to be on the offensive.” Among other first-hand accounts were those of the Comte de Damas, who was arrested like Choiseul on 22 June and who wrote a Rapport while in prison; of the courier Valory; and of the equerry Moustier. Madame Royale gave her child’s-eye view four years later. The Marquise de Tourzel was chiefly concerned in her Mémoires to rebut the charge—“I cannot pass over it in silence”—that it was her presence in the berlin that caused all the trouble, on the grounds that she had only carried out her duty at the orders of the Queen.32
Choiseul’s account of events was written up in prison in August 1791 and he contended that it had subsequently been passed by the King and Queen (although Comte Louis de Bouillé strongly denied that they would have done this). Choiseul explained his defection at Somme-Vesle as due not only to the worrying delay in the schedule but also—even less plausibly—to his need to facilitate the King’s route to Châlons. Among the explanations that were variously offered for the disaster, he cited the lack of preparations at Varennes; that, however, was the overall responsibility of the Marquis de Bouillé.33
On the other hand, the Marquis himself, who turned back from Varennes on finding the King taken away and who later emigrated to England, did receive a brief note of exoneration from the King: “You did your duty,” and signed “Louis.” The best epitaph on Bouillé’s failure at Varennes is that of his son Comte Louis, an avid memorialist. Comte Louis had originally remarked to his father on how happy he must feel at the prospect of liberating the King. While he was retreating from Varennes, in a state of profound dejection that his son never forgot, the Marquis reminded him of the conversation: “Well, do you still call me happy?”34
There is, of course, the question of the route chosen by the King, the fact that Louis XVI “was unwilling to quit the French dominions, although but in travelling,” as was reported later to George III in England. It certainly would have been easier to head for Belgium. But that was to negate his plan to appear as the father of his people whom he would never abandon; afterwards, he described the attempted flight as one of the “most virtuous acts” of his life.35 Arguably the party for the escape was from the start too large. But that would not have mattered so much if some bolder, more authoritative personage had either been the sixth passenger in the berlin, rather than the Marquise de Tourzel, or else had been squeezed in as well. Then again, this lack of a proper advisor for the King would not have mattered so much if a crisis had not arisen, first at Somme-Vesle and then at Varennes as a result of the missing relay-horses, whose whereabouts Choiseul had not had an opportunity to impart. For the want of a nail, the kingdom was lost, as the folk-rhyme has it. The Duc de Choiseul, to whose appointment both King and Bouillé had agreed, was that nail.
The escape, then, could have succeeded. The outcome of the proposed royal appearance at Montmédy is more difficult to predict. The point has been made that Louis XVI was not the first French King to use retreat from Paris as a method of advance, Henri IV being one notable example and the young Louis XIV under the tutelage of Anne of Austria another. As Madame de Staël wrote afterwards, if the flight had succeeded, it would have put an end to the hypocritical situation whereby the actions of the National Assembly, with which Louis did not agree, were purported to be his.36
Yet the combined vision of the King and Queen, in which happy and relieved subjects flocked to their father-sovereign, was surely unrealistic by the summer of 1791. The presence of Bouillé’s force, with the strong possibility of émigré assistance, meant that civil war was a more likely outcome, a solution that had been persistently rejected by the King (and the Queen). Added to which Louis XVI would hardly have made a stirring military leader, a role for which he had neither experience nor inclination. As it was, Louis XVI wrote in his Journal: “Departure at midnight from Paris; arrived and stopped at Varennes-en-Argonne at eleven o’clock in the evening.” And at the end of the year, as was his custom, he recorded the journeys he had made: “Five nights spent outside Paris in 1791.”37