When the King Took Flight
[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]
Arrest of the King and His Family Deserting the Kingdom. Townspeople and national guardsmen in Varennes have halted the king's carriage below the archway of the upper town, as hussar and dragoon cavalrymen arrive to defend the royal family. Events occurring at different times during the night have been collapsed into a single scene.
WHEN THE KING
TOOK FLIGHT
Timothy Tackett
For Jean Miller Tackett and Earl McClellan Tackett
Contents
Maps and illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Prologue I
I Sire, You May Not Pass 3
2 The King of the French 26
3 The King Takes Flight 57
9~ Our Good City of Paris 88
5 The Fathers of the Nation 119
6 Fear and Repression in the Provinces 151
To Judge a King 179
8 The Months and Years After 203
Conclusion: The Power of an Event 219
Abbreviations 227
Notes 229
Bibliography 247
Index 259
Maps and Illustrations
MAPS
The flight to Varennes and the return to Paris, June 21-25, 1791 64
Paris in I791 90
The spread of the news of the king's flight, June 1791 154
ILLUSTRATIONS
Arrest of the King and His Family Deserting the Kingdom. Artist unknown. Musee Carnavalet; photo by Giet, PMVP. ii
Jean-Baptiste Drouet. Naude. Photo by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. 6
Jean-Baptiste Sauce. Artist unknown. Photo by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. 6
Louis XVI at the End of the Old Regime. From a painting by Joseph Boze. Photo by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. 27
Count Axel von Fersen in 1785. L. Pasch the younger. Photo by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. 34
Louis XVI Taking His Oath to the Constitution at the Champ de Mars, July 14, z7go. Detail of a painting by Charles Thevenin. Musee Carnavalet; photo by Andreani, PMVP. 40
Brawl in the Tuileries palace, February 28, 1791. Artist unknown. Musee Carnavalet; photo by Briant, PMVP. 43
Marquis Francois-Claude-Amour Bouille. Artist unknown. Photo by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. 5z
Departure of Louis XVI from the Tuileries palace at 12:30 A. M. on June 21, 1791. Artist unknown, in Les revolutions de Paris. Photo by the Musee de la Revolution Francaise, Vizille. 62
Drouet Recognises the King in Sainte-Menehould. Artist unknown, in Les revolutions de France et de Brabante. Photo by the Musee de la Revolution Frangaise, Vizille. .73
The Royal Family Approaches Paris. Jean-Louis Prieur, in Tableaux historiques de la Revolution francaise. Photo by Helen Chenut. 83
The Royal Family Returns to the Tuileries. Artist unknown. Musee Carnavalet, photo by PMVP. 84
People Rushing to the Tuileries after Learning of the King's Departure. Artist unknown. Musee Carnavalet; photo by Ladet, PMVP. 99
The Family of Pigs Brought Back to the Stable. Artist unknown. Musee Carnavalet; photo by Andreani, PMVP. 1o3
Parisians Covering Symbols of Royalty. Artist unknown. Photo by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. zzo
Antoine-Pierre Joseph-Marie Barnave. F. Bonneville. Photo by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. z23
Jerome Petion. Artist unknown. Photo by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. 123
The King Speaking to the National Assembly, February 4, zy79o. Borel. Photo by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. NO
Declaration of Martial Law at the Champ de Mars, July z7, zy9z. JeanLouis Prieur, in Tableaux historiques de la Revolution francaise. Photo by Helen Chenut. z49
Conspirators in the King's Flight Burned in Effigy in Strasbourg, June 25, 1791. Artist unknown, in La fuite de Louis XVI d'apres les Archives municipales de Strasbourg. Photo by Helen Chenut. /69
"How Precious Is This Image to All Good Frenchmen!" From a drawing by Filibert-Louis Debucourt. Photo by the Musee de la Revolution Frangaise, Vizille. 182
The Overturned Idol. Artist unknown. Photo by the Musee de la Revolution Franccaise, Vizille. 192
Henry IV Shocked by the Present State of Louis XVI. Artist unknown. Musee Carnavalet; photo by Andreani, PMVP. z95
The Janus King. Artist unknown. Photo by the Musee de la Revolution Franccaise, Vizille. 2tt
Acknowledgments
INITIAL RESEARCH in France was carried out with the support of a President's Fellowship from the University of California. Much of the book itself was written while I was a fellow at the National Center for the Humanities in North Carolina. The welcoming atmosphere and able assistance of the entire staff at this extraordinary center contributed greatly to the completion of the manuscript. It would be impossible to thank all those friends, colleagues, archivists, and librarians who have assisted me in the conception, research, and writing of this book. But I would like to offer a special word of appreciation to Jack Censer, Helen Chenut, Maria Chenut, David Garrioch, Carla Hesse, Jeff Horn, Marilee Jaquess, David Jordan, Thomas Kaiser, Jo B. Margadant, Ted Margadant, Jeremy Popkin, Joyce Seltzer, Donald Sutherland, Jean Tackett, and all the students in my undergraduate seminar on the French Revolution at the University of California, Irvine. For assistance with the illustrations, I thank Philippe de Carbonniere, Alain Chevalier, and Luc Passion. Earlier versions of Chapters 6, 7, and 8 were first presented at the annual meeting of French Historical Studies in March 1999, in the seminars of Andre Burguiere and Patrice Gueniffey at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in February 2001, and at the international conference on "Violence and the French Revolution" held at the University of Maryland in October 2001. Finally, my thanks to Nicolas Tackett for making the index.
When the King Took Flight
Prologue
IN THE SUMMER OF 1789 a revolution began in France that is widely considered one of the turning points in the history of Western civilization. Although the origins of that revolution are complex, once it had begun, it was rapidly linked to the lofty humanitarian ideals of the Enlightenment, including religious tolerance, equal justice before the law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and control of the government by the governed. Most revolutionaries were also committed to political change through nonviolent means, "through no other force than the force of reason, justice, and public opinion," as one early leader put it.' These ideals, similar in many respects to those promulgated by the founding fathers of the United States, were soon embodied in a "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen," which became a model for liberal reform throughout the world.
Yet despite its idealistic beginnings, the Revolution of 1789 was transformed in a period of only a few years into a veritable "Reign of Terror." By the summer of 1793 a totalitarian and eminently intolerant regime had emerged that regularly employed fear and violence as instruments of power. Searches without warrant, arrests without indictment, the repression of free speech: all were pursued more systematically and more efficiently than in any previous period of French history. Justice before the law and "due process" were often abandoned in favor of guilt by association. A "law of suspects" attacked individuals on the basis of unverified denunciations. By the summer of 1794 thousands of people had been sent to the guillotine-some of them through travesties of the judicial system-or had been executed summarily without trial.
Any explanation of how the liberal, humanitarian revolution of 1789 was transformed into the Terror of 1793-94 would have to take into account a var
iety of factors: the state of war existing between France and much of Europe; the organized efforts of dissident opponents to launch a counterrevolution; the terrible factionalism that beset the revolutionary leaders themselves; and the emergence of an obsessive fear of conspiracy-real or imagined-that helped fuel the factionalism and justify popular violence. But a full explanation of the origins of the Terror must also reflect on the impact of a single event: the attempted flight of the reigning king of France on June 21, 1791. The dramatic effort of Louis XVI and his family to escape the capital and abandon the new government established in his name set in motion an extraordinary chain of actions and reactions with profound effects on all elements of society and virtually every corner of the nation.
This is the story of that event, the king's flight to Varennes and how it changed the history of France.
CHAPTER I
Sire, You May Not Pass
IT WAS NOT a particularly distinctive town. Astride the small river Aire, between two ridges of the Argonne Forest in northeastern France, it was a minor community where some fifteen hundred souls pursued their works and days as shopkeepers or artisans or farmers in the wheat fields and orchards of the surrounding countryside. Like so many other small municipalities scattered across the kingdom, it was a backwater.' The one road of any importance entered Varennes from the south and squeezed through an archway under the chateau chapel before curving down through the town and crossing the river on a narrow wooden bridge. North from the town a road led on toward the fortresses of Sedan and Montmedy some thirty or forty miles away, on the border of what is today Belgium but was then a part of the Austrian empire. Yet the roadbed was rough and poorly maintained and frequented primarily by local peasants and military personnel. For a great many residents the town of Varennes must have seemed a commercial and cultural dead end, where relatively little ever happened.
But on the night of June 21, 1791, something quite extraordinary did happen.' At eleven o'clock most of the inhabitants lay fast asleep, and with the moon not yet risen the town was very dark and very quiet. The only lights still visible were in a small inn called the Golden Arm, on the main street of the old quarter just below the archway. Here a number of young men were still drinking and chatting. There were a couple of out-of-town visitors spending the night in upstairs rooms; a group of German-speaking cavalrymen recently arrived in town and billeted in a nearby convent; and four local friends, all members of the volunteer national guard company of grenadiers. Among the latter were the innkeeper himself, jean Le Blanc, Le Blanc's younger brother Paul, the schoolteacher's son Joseph Ponsin, and Justin George, son of the mayor. George's father was currently away in Paris, sitting as a deputy to the National Assembly, and the four men may well have been discussing the latest news of the Revolution. Very likely they were also questioning the Germans, trying to determine why they were in town and why there had recently been so many troop movements in the region.
At this moment two strangers rushed into the inn. The speaker for the two, an exceptionally tall and self-confident man who called himself Drouet, immediately asked the innkeeper and his friends if they were good patriots. When they assured him that they were, he told them an amazing story. He was manager of the relay stables in Sainte-Menehould, a small town about thirty kilometers to the southwest, and a few hours before he had seen the king and queen of France and the whole royal family traveling in two carriages, changing horses at his relay. After consulting with the town leaders, he and his friend Guillaume, both former cavalrymen, had pursued the royal party on horseback, and they had just passed them parked by the side of the road at the top of Varennes a few hundred paces away. He was sure that it was the monarch and that he was heading for the Austrian frontier. For the sake of the nation and the Revolution, he said, the king and his family must be stopped.
Such a tale might well have met with disbelief. But these were very special times, and Drouet's intensity and self-assurance carried conviction and stirred the men to action. The Le Blanc brothers rushed to awaken several other members of the national guard and a couple of town councilmen who lived nearby and then went home to fetch their muskets. At the same time Drouet and Guillaume and some of the others hurried down to the river and blocked the bridge with a wagon loaded with furniture.
The first council member to arrive on the scene was jeanBaptiste Sauce, the town manager, or procureur, who had taken over the day-to-day operations of the municipal government while mayor George was away in Paris. A grocer and candlemaker by profession, he was thirty-six years old, tall, somewhat stoopshouldered, and balding. Although he had only a limited education and wrote awkwardly with an improvised phonetic spelling, he was a dedicated patriot and carried himself with a quiet distinction that had won the respect of the townspeople. Flabbergasted by Le Blanc's wake-up call, he nevertheless dressed as best he could, grabbed a lantern, and sent his two sons to rouse the rest of the town with the traditional cry of "fire, fire!" By about twenty minutes past eleven Sauce, George, Ponsin, the Le Blanc brothers, and the two men from Sainte-Menehould had assembled with perhaps a half-dozen others in the street near the inn. Just then the two carriages described by Drouet, accompanied by two riders on horseback, clattered under the archway.
While some of the guardsmen held torches, others raised their muskets and forced the drivers to stop and get down. Sauce approached the first carriage, a two-horse cabriolet, and found in it two startled and trembling women who told him that their identity papers were being carried by those traveling behind them. The grocer then moved to the second, much larger carriage, pulled by six horses and heaped high with baggage. He held his lantern to the window and cautiously peered in. The carriage seemed to contain six people. There were two children-he could not tell at first if they were boys or girls; three women in middle-class dress, one about twenty and rather pretty, and two others somewhat older and distinguished in bearing; and a heavyset man with a large nose and a double chin, dressed in the clothes of a merchant or a legal agent. Sauce had never before laid eyes on the king, but he felt there might be a resemblance to the royal portraits he had seen.
Despite their protests, he took the travelers' passport into the inn for a closer look. As several city officials gathered around, he read the papers of a Russian baroness, Madame de Korff, and her suite, bound for Frankfurt, signed by the foreign minister and by "Louis," the king himself. Although the document was somewhat vague about the number of people traveling, and although Varennes hardly seemed on the most direct road from Paris to Germany, the papers appeared to be in order, and Sauce and his colleagues were inclined to let them pass. But Drouet, who had already invested a great deal of his time and his honor, was adamant. He knew he had recognized the king. He had also seen a noble cavalry captain in Sainte-Menehould salute the carriage and take orders as though he were obeying a commanding officer. If the officials were to let the royal family escape to foreign territory, they would be accomplices to treason. In addition, Drouet asserted, the passport was not valid, since it had not been cosigned by the president of the National Assembly. In fact the president's signature was not legally required, but no one knew this for certain, and in the end the town fathers decided to play for time.
[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]
Jean-Baptiste Drouet.
[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]
Jean-Baptiste Sauce.
The occupants of the carriage were told that it was too late for their documents to be properly examined, that in any case the road ahead was in poor condition and dangerous at night, and that it was better to wait for daylight. Despite their angry objections, the party of eight travelers and three other men in yellow uniforms who accompanied them were forced to descend and were offered hospitality in the grocer's home. They were led several paces down the cobblestone street from the inn to Sauce's store and then crowded up a wooden stairway and into his small two-room apartment. At first the group studio
usly stuck to their story. One of the older women announced herself to be the baroness de Korff, insisting that they were in a great hurry and must be allowed to leave for Germany. But still intrigued by the man's resemblance to the king, Sauce remembered that a local judge, Jacques Destez, had married a woman from Versailles and that he had seen the royal family on several occasions. He went up the street to the magistrate's house, woke him, and led him back to his home. Destez had scarcely entered the upstairs quarters when he fell on one knee, bowing and trembling with emotion. "Ah! Your Highness!" he said.
It was the stuff of fairy tales: the king of France, Louis XVI, here in their town, in the storekeeper's bedroom. There, too, were the queen, Marie-Antoinette, their twelve-year-old daughter and five-year-old son-the dauphin, heir to the throne-the king's sister, Elizabeth, and the children's aristocratic governess, Madame de Tourzel. Everyone stood in wonder. Sauce's elderly mother came in soon afterward and fell to her knees sobbing, never having imagined that she might one day see the king and the little crown prince. Realizing that his incognito was broken, Louis XVI now spoke to them. "Yes, I am your king," he said. "I have come to live among you, my faithful children, whom I will never abandon."3 And then he did a remarkable thing. He took the members of the municipal council in his arms, one by one, and embraced them. And he appealed to them and told them his story. He had been forced to flee his palace in Paris. A few fanatical revolutionaries, the Jacobins, had taken over the city. Worse, these agitators had repeatedly put the life of his whole family in danger. In fact, he now told them, he had no intention of fleeing to Germany, but only of traveling to the citadel of Montmedy near the frontier. There, far from the mobs of Paris, he could retake control of his kingdom and end the chaos and anarchy that, he said, were increasingly rampant. "After having been forced to live in the capital in the midst of daggers and bayonets, I have journeyed into the country to seek the same freedom and tranquility which you yourselves enjoy. If I remain in Paris, both I and my family will die."' The townspeople must prepare his horses and allow him to complete his journey.
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