Their worst fears seemed to materialize about one in the morning, when a group of forty hussars, followed soon afterward by a handful of dragoons, appeared at the southern entrance of Varennes. The commanders of the hussars, whom townsmen soon learned to be Goguelat and the duke de Choiseul, spoke to the cavalry in German, and the latter responded with surprise, "Der Konig! die Konigin!" They then charged over the barricade, swinging the flat sides of their sabers to push the guardsmen out of the way, and rode into the center of town, ultimately positioning themselves in battle formation in front of Sauce's house.18 The moments that followed were tense and uncertain, causing "the most fearful agitation" for everyone. The hussars, high on horseback with their plumed helmets, pistols, and sabers, were invariably intimidating to the population. Sauce came out and gave a brave patriotic speech in front of his grocery, protesting that he knew the cavalrymen "were too worthy as citizens and too brave as soldiers ever to participate in an operation which could only lead to bloodshed."" But no one knew how much French the soldiers understood, and the faceoff between guardsmen and cavalry continued. Finally, first one and then two other officers asked to speak with the king. When Goguelat returned sometime later and seemed to be organizing a breakout, the guardsmen had prepared their defense. They had maneuvered their four small cannons into position on the street above and below the hussars and shouted for all house owners to open their doors, allowing citizens still in the street to escape and leaving the cavalry alone in a firing field. Seeing the danger, Goguelat himself charged at the guardsmen, ordering them to turn their cannons aside. But one of the citizen militiamen fired his pistol, shooting the baron off his horse. As the baron was carried wounded into the Golden Arm, followed closely by the guardsman who had just shot him-apologizing and almost in tears-other men and women went to work on the officerless cavalry. After more tense moments and offers of free drink, the Germans were persuaded to dismount, and soon they were embracing the townspeople and vowing obedience to the local guard commanders.20
For the citizens of Varennes, the appearance of Goguelat and the hussars marked a turning point in more ways than one. Through this threat of violent action, the inhabitants were more convinced than ever that the king's flight represented not simply the monarch's effort to find refuge from Paris for himself and his family, but a vast and dangerous conspiracy involving foreign soldiers and perhaps foreign armies. Moreover, the effect on the town leader Sauce must have been particularly strong. Only a few days earlier the baron had lured him with vigorous professions of patriotism into presenting a general report on the town and the national guard, even while other citizens had been far more suspicious. Now it dawned on the grocer that he had been manipulated by a noble, that he had been made a fool. "Under the veil of patriotism," as he wrote later, "Goguelat concealed from me his black treachery. I can only express my deep est resentment."21 The experience may well have been crucial in Sauce's change of position toward the king.
In any case, not long thereafter reinforcements began arriving from every direction. About a half hour after midnight someone had dispatched three or four mounted constables, who were soon shouting "To arms, to arms!" from village to village. Shortly afterward Sauce sent messages for armed assistance from Verdun, the largest military center in the region: "Quick! Come with your national guards and with cannons. The king and the royal family are here. Quick, quick! Come to our aid!"22 Even before the couriers arrived, some neighboring villages had heard the Varennes church bells ringing, and people were out in the streets; and in short order, peasant militias were marching to Varennes, drums beating, flags unfurled. In Montblainville, just two miles to the north, the first messenger arrived about one o'clock. Although there was some confusion as to the exact meaning of the emergency-the courier had galloped off to warn other villagers before the message had been clearly understood-the men sounded the call to arms and a hundred or so marched off on foot, arriving in Varennes a little after half past one. Once they had learned the true nature of the crisis, they took up positions ready for battle. As in previous mobilizations, the women with children in tow followed soon afterward, bringing wagons of food and supplies."
Montfaucon, on a nearby hill in the Argonne, received word toward three in the morning. Villagers later remembered how calm everything had seemed the evening before and how stunned they had been by "this message, as unbelievable as it was unexpected." But they, too, set off immediately with whatever weapons they could muster, arriving in Varennes about dawn. By a quarter past five the news had arrived in Verdun, and the district leaders relayed it on before dispatching some four hundred guardsmen and regular French soldiers. Triaucourt, twenty miles to the south, received couriers about the same time; Autry, on the west side of the Argonne, got word an hour or so later, both directly from Varennes and indirectly via two other villages. Indeed, as soon as they learned of the emergency, many communities set their own church bells ringing and sent out additional messengers to warn friends and family in other farms and hamlets, so that a chain reaction was set in motion, passing the news with amazing speed. By morning militia were arriving in Varennes from Cuisy, Septsarges, and Bethin- court, just beyond Montfaucon; from Dannevoux and Sivry, on the Meuse River; and from Damvillers, well beyond the Meuse. That same morning, the word had spread to Saint-Dizier, some forty-five miles to the south, and to Chalons-sur-Marne and Reims, over seventy miles to the west. By afternoon Metz and Thionville, an equal distance to the east, had also received the news. All these towns rapidly dispatched armed contingents to Varennes.z4
By the morning of June 22 several thousand people had converged on the small town in the Argonne: guardsmen with muskets, peasants armed with whatever they could find, women doing their best to prepare food and bake bread for the men. Although a few less-disciplined citizens began breaking into the homes of local inhabitants, looking for food and drink, most of the arrivals maintained themselves in good order, waiting for the attack they were sure would come. An elderly patriot nobleman, a former officer in the king's army, appeared on the scene and set to work organizing a systematic defense. Barricades were placed around most of the town's perimeter, and the wooden bridge at the center of Varennes was partly dismantled. Shortly after dawn another sixty-five hussars had arrived from the north, but the people were now prepared with a line of loaded muskets, and the cavalry was forced to wait outside the town, with only the commander, Captain Deslon, allowed to enter and speak with the king.25
The Fate of the Nation
In the meantime the municipal council, meeting in emergency session with other town notables and the judges of the local tribunal, was agonizing over what should be done with the king. The little group of men, shopkeepers, merchants, and small-town lawyers by profession, found themselves weighed down with the responsibilities of a veritable supreme court, with the fate of the nation perhaps in their hands. Soon after reconvening at about two in the morning, they had sent off a messenger-the master barber Mangin-to notify the National Assembly of the king's presence and to ask its advice. But they knew it might be days before they received a response from Paris, and they could not postpone their decision indefinitely. They had initially promised to help the monarch and his family travel on. But the arrival of the cavalry and the aggressive threats of their officers to carry off the king by force had substantially diminished the spirit of cooperation and goodwill-especially after they spotted Goguelat as one of the commanders and realized the extent of his trickery and deceit.
Moreover, through their own reflection and through the insistent advice of the Jacobins and other patriots present in the town hall, the council members came to reflect on the full portent of the king's flight. Louis had told them he would not leave the kingdom and would remain in Montmedy, but was the king really in control of the situation? They were surprised by the king's version of the atmosphere in Paris, which did not match their own understanding, garnered from newspapers and from the correspondence of their mayor. Most of them had heard rep
orts of Louis' unreliable councilors and of the ease with which he could be influenced, however worthy his intentions might be. What would be the consequences for their town if it were subsequently determined that the king had been misled? Could they themselves be accused of treason, as Drouet claimed? And even if the king were not to cross the frontier, what would his absence from Paris mean for the survival of the National Assembly and the new constitution, which most of them supported as fervently as they supported the king? The potentials for civil war and perhaps foreign invasion were only too obvious, particularly for a town like Varennes, obsessed by its proximity to the frontier.
How long they grappled with these questions, agonizing over the dilemma of divided loyalties, we do not really know. At some point, however-probably about the time Sauce sent out his call for help from Verdun-they clearly ceased thinking of accompanying the king to Montmedy and sought rather to play for time and wait for the arrival of sufficient forces to defend the town. At any rate, toward the end of the night, Sauce and a portion of the council felt obliged to return to Louis and explain their change of heart. It was an extraordinary scene. A grocer and a tanner and a small-town judge informed the king of France that they must reject his orders, that they could not allow him to continue his journey. Struggling to express themselves in the royal presence, they told Louis of "their tender but anxious feelings, as members of a great family who had just found their father, but who now feared they might lose him again." They assured him "that he was adored by his people, that the strength of his throne was in everyone's heart and his name on everyone's lips; but that his residence was in Paris, and that even those living in the provinces eagerly and anxiously called him to return there." They also expressed their fears of "the bloody events which his departure might cause" and their conviction "that the salvation of the state depended on the completion of the constitution, and that the constitution depended on his return." The council's conclusions were reduced to their essence by the persistent cries of the ever-greater crowds of men, women, and children gathering outside Sauce's house: "Long live the king! Long live the nation! To Paris, to Paris!"26
At first the king and the queen seemed not to understand, not even to listen, and they continued to ask that the horses and escort be prepared so they could pursue their journey. Marie-Antoinette even appealed to Sauce's wife to influence her husband, telling her of the great benefits that the town would reap from its support of the king. Madame Sauce replied, as the townspeople remembered it, that she truly loved her king, but that she also loved her husband, and that he was responsible, and that she was afraid he might be punished if he let the party pass. Another story-perhaps true, perhaps apocryphal-told of Louis' appeal to old Geraudel, one of the guardsmen present and a simple woodcutter by profession. The king vowed once again that he would never leave the country and that he only wanted the good of the nation. But Geraudel was said to have replied, "Sire, we're not certain we can trust you."27 Two years of Revolution had changed everything.
When Captain Deslon arrived at the Sauce house about five in the morning, he immediately asked the king what he should do. But Louis now seemed resigned and fatalistic: "I have no orders to give you," he replied; "I am a prisoner." Deslon then tried to speak with the queen and one of the other officers in German-the queen's native tongue-broaching once again a possible military action to extricate the royal family. But the townsmen in the room immediately shouted out "No German!" and Deslon returned to wait with his troops outside town for orders that never came.28 In any case, the situation was entirely transformed about an hour later, when two couriers, dispatched by the National Assembly and General Lafayette the previous morning, arrived in Varennes. Bayon, an officer in the Paris national guard, and Romeuf, one of the general's assistants, had been traveling day and night in pursuit of the king and his family-still uncertain whether they had left on their own accord or had been abducted. Their orders were formal and addressed "to all public officials and members of the national guard or the line army." If the couriers succeeded in reaching the royal family, "officials would be held to take all necessary measures to halt any abduction, to prevent the royal family from pursuing its route, and to notify the legislature immediately."29 Confronted with contradictory orders from the two central authorities of the new Revolutionary state-the will of the king and the will of the National Assembly-the people of Varennes opted without hesitation for the Assembly. The couriers then climbed to the second floor of Sauce's home and presented the decree to the king and queen. Marie-Antoinette appeared outraged. "What insolence!" she sneered, and she threw the decree to the floor. Louis, more phlegmatic but saddened nevertheless, said only: "There is no longer a king in France.""
In fact the National Assembly only specified that the king and queen must be stopped and the Assembly notified. But the people of Varennes had no doubts on the matter: the family must be sent back to Paris immediately. Beyond the constitutional requirement that king and Assembly remain in close proximity, everyone was anxious about the local military situation. They were still expecting an attack from General Bouille, and they could only hope that their town might be spared if the king were sent elsewhere. And so at half past seven, the sun already high and becoming hot, the municipal leaders and the royal party approaching exhaustion from their night without sleep, the two carriages were turned about and driven through the archway and back up the hill out of town. Accompanied now by thousands of national guardsmen, the king, the queen, and the royal children began the long trek back to Paris.
THE NIGHT the king suddenly appeared in a small town in northeastern France is arguably one of the most dramatic and poignant moments in the entire French Revolution. For the local inhabitants the experience was unforgettable, and in some cases it would entirely reshape their lives. Drouet would soon find himself elected to the National Convention, largely on the basis of his actions that night. Sauce would be tracked for years by fanatical royalists for whom he became the embodiment of evil. His wife would fall to her death as she attempted to hide in a well to escape the invading foreign armies in 1792. Indeed, the whole town would be periodically threatened with annihilation by various counterrevolutionary groups. "Varennes, unhappy Varennes," wrote one prophet of doom: "your ruins will soon be plowed into the earth."31 By contrast, patriots from all over France flooded the town with letters of gratitude. An enormous sum of close to 200,000 French pounds was offered by the National Assembly as a reward to be divided among various local citizens. Engravings and flags and handpainted dishes would hail the town and its people, "from the nation, in grateful recognition," and the state would erect a memorial tower at the site of the inn of the Golden Arm, where the royal family had been stopped by the national guard. Novelists and historians would make pilgrimages to Sauce's small upstairs apartment throughout the nineteenth century, until it and the whole center of town were destroyed by the German invasion in August 1914-and battered once again by the Americans four years later in the Battle of the Argonne 32
Yet beyond their effect on the inhabitants of Varennes, the events of that night would prove a turning point in the history of the Revolution and of the French monarchy, with an enormous immediate impact on Paris, on the National Assembly, and indeed on the whole of France and of Europe. It is to this broader context of the flight to Varennes, how it came about and how it affected the lives of various social and political groups throughout the kingdom, that we turn in the following chapters.
CHAPTER 2
The King of the French
AT THE CENTER of the drama was king Louis himself, fifth monarch in the Bourbon line, thirty-six years old at the time of Varennes. He was a curious, enigmatic man, in many respects quite unlike any of the kings of his family who preceded or followed him. Even those contemporaries who knew him well found him difficult to assess, uncommunicative, unpredictable. Whether from timidity and uncertainty or from political strategy, he spoke very little, remaining silent and somewhat inscrutable.
By all accounts he had been a diffident, taciturn child, lacking in self-esteem and never really comfortable in the world of parade and flattery and wit that were the essence of court life at the palace of Versailles, the great royal residence about fifteen miles southwest of Paris. He had been the second of four boys born to the son of the previous king, Louis XV, and he invariably came out last in comparisons with his brothers. Contemporaries mistook his shyness and sluggish manner for a lack of intelligence, and this negative image was reinforced by his physical appearance. Although he had the blue eyes and blond hair of his German mother, he inherited a tendency toward corpulence from his father-a trait compounded over time by a passionate love of food and drink. Even as a young man he seemed little concerned with his personal appearance, and he walked slowly in an awkward, tottering gait that seemed the very antithesis of courtly grace. The description of Madame de Campan, one of the queen's ladies in waiting, was not untypical: "His step was heavy and without noble bearing. He quite neglected his clothes, and despite the daily efforts of his hairdresser, his hair was promptly in disorder from the utter carelessness of his manner."'
[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]
Louis XVI at the End of the Old Regime. Heavyset, with his double chin, stooped posture, and somewhat sleepy look, Louis appeared the very opposite of the elegant Versailles courtier.
Contemporaries were also nonplussed by his fascination with physical activities like locksmithing and masonry, hobbies that "shocked the common prejudices as to the proper pastimes for a monarch"-as even his locksmith instructor was reported to have told him.' The one such practice that fully matched both general expectations and the image of his royal predecessors was his passion for hunting. As an adolescent, he went out almost daily, roaming the several great royal forests surrounding Paris and learning by heart every alley and byway. As king, he was prepared to cancel a meeting with foreign ambassadors, even in time of war, whenever a fine day for the hunt presented itself.' And he maintained a precise journal of every expedition, listing each stag, boar, rabbit, and swallow shot or run down by his dogs, in an animal hecatomb of nearly 200,000 "pieces" spanning fourteen years.'
When the King Took Flight Page 3