All such decrees, improvised in the space of a few hours, were conceived as temporary, emergency measures. Yet no one really knew if the king would be found or would ever return. Indeed, the rapid reorganization of the government constituted a virtual second revolution, instituting, if only provisionally, a veritable republic. In theory all such changes were perfectly legal, since in 1789 the deputies had declared themselves to be a "constituent assembly," with full powers to make a new government. But in practice they had always sought Louis' approval of their decrees, constitutional or otherwise. In two of his speeches, elaborated on the spot, Charles Lameth proposed another justification for their actions, a justification based on expediency. "At present," he declared, "we are compelled to assume both legislative and executive powers." "In periods of crisis, one cannot subject oneself rigorously to the forms of the law, as one would necessarily do in a period of calm ... It is better to commit a momentary injustice than to see the loss of the state itself."14 Such sentiments carried ominous implications. In many respects, decisions taken during the crisis of Varennes would prefigure the policies of another government by expediency, the government of the Terror.
The deputies were also quick to perceive the international consequences of the king's departure. No less than the people of Varennes and Sainte-Menehould, they suspected that the flight had been coordinated with a planned foreign invasion to end the Revolution by force. Thus the Assembly took steps to prepare the nation for war. The principal military commanders then in Paris were ordered to the Assembly and asked to swear their allegiance to the constitution, the laws, and the Assembly; the word king was again absent from the oath formula. The deputies were thrilled when General Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, the friend of Washington and the hero of the Battle of Yorktown, arrived to pronounce his oath. The commanders were asked to work with the ministers and the Assembly's committees to develop contingency plans." Ever conscious of the weakness of French armed forces, the deputies took steps to call up volunteer national guardsmen throughout the country for potential service in the regular army. A first generation levee en masse-the general mobilization of the nation for war-established lists of at least 3,000 citizens in each of the eighty-three departments "ready to bear arms for the defense of the state and the preservation of the constitution." The Assembly anticipated yet another institution of 1793-94 by sending four teams of representatives on a mission to the frontier departments to oversee war preparations and to verify the loyalty of the officer corps. Everywhere they traveled, the representatives were authorized to "take all necessary measures to ensure public order and guarantee the security of the state."'6
Equally worrisome for many deputies was the problem of maintaining the peace in France itself, particularly in the great metropolis surrounding the Assembly. Given the almost continual popular unrest in Paris during the previous six months, most members anticipated outbreaks of panic or violence or worse. Barnave recalled the crisis of July 1789 and the enormous disorders caused by the lower classes in Paris until "property owners and those citizens veritably attached to the nation" had taken charge. The representatives quickly established an armed guard to surround their meeting hall and to prevent anyone but deputies from entering. And they issued an appeal for order directed primarily at the Parisians: "The National Assembly . . . informs all citizens that the protection of the constitution and the defense of the nation have never more urgently required the preservation of law and order." The Parisians were far from unmoved by the disappearance of the king, and several incidents of violence did occur. Yet for the most part, during those first days after the king's flight they remained remarkably calm. The deputies were amazed and extremely grateful. "It would seem to be a miracle," wrote Felix Faulcon, "a great and unexpected good fortune. I am tempted to think that a kind of Providence is watching over the constitution.""
At first virtually everyone spoke of the king as having been abducted or kidnapped. The rumors circulating before June 21 had usually involved someone absconding with the king against his will or through trickery. No one wanted even to consider the possibility that the monarch had acquiesced in the venture. But the appearance of Louis' handwritten "declaration" explaining his actions changed everything. Its existence was first mentioned by one of the ministers, and at two o'clock on the afternoon of the June 21 it was formally read to the Assembly. To judge by the deputies' speeches and letters, the declaration caused nearly as much consternation as the initial news of the king's disappearance."
As the implications of the statement sank in, virtually no one outside the extreme right was willing to defend the king. The deputies were horrified by the facility with which Louis had broken his previous oaths. Basquiat, who had been a strong defender of the king, spoke for virtually all his colleagues: "Louis the Sixteenth," he wrote, "this king whose goodness had always seemed to excuse his weakness, has abjured in an instant all of his promises and all of his oaths. With this declaration, written and signed in his own hand, he has revealed to the whole universe that the honor and duty of kings toward their people are utterly worthless." Deputies were enraged by Louis' apparent obliviousness to the consequences of his act, an act that might easily lead to "civil war and the greatest possible disasters." Many were deeply disillusioned that the king who had so often seemed to support the Revolution "in such a candid and faithful manner" could now disavow everything. They had always believed Louis to be "quite incapable of breaking his word or betraying the people's confidence." The king "has deceived us," wrote another deputy, "as he has deceived all of France, who once so adored him." The "good king," the "citizen king" of only a few weeks before, was now described as "an imbecile," "an idiot," "stupid," "pitiful," "cowardly," "a monster," "a pathetic excuse for a king.""
Even deputies on the moderate right declared their disgust at the thoughtlessness of the king's actions, "doubly offended," as Lafayette recalled, "that they had not been warned and that they had been left behind, exposed to all kinds of dangers." The conservative marquis de Ferrieres wrote to his wife: "[The king] has abandoned to the fury of the mobs not only the nobility, the clergy, and the whole right side of the Assembly, but also his friends, his servants, and his ministers. Such conduct is atrocious." In the heat of the moment certain deputies were initially ready to see the king tried in public, replaced by a regent, or even deposed in favor of a republic. "France is now prepared," wrote the cure Thomas Lindet to his brother, "to give the example of a people who can quite dispense with kings. When one examines the list of the imbeciles and rogues who have defiled their thrones, one is tempted to overthrow the whole lot of them." Antoine Durand felt that the experience "had cured the French of this ridiculous idolatry that makes them treat kings as gods.""
Late on the evening of June 22, however, everything was again thrown into question by the amazing news that the royal family had been captured. After two full days of uncertainty, most of the deputies had concluded that the king had crossed into foreign territory. But when the Varennes barber Mangin burst into the hall to recount his story, all the deputies stood on their benches and cheered. In their initial disgust with the king, some had mused that it would be preferable to let Louis go and be rid of him altogether. Yet most greeted his capture with enormous relief. Ferrieres wrote immediately to his wife, "You can imagine the joy that this news has caused." Gaultier began his own account to his constituency with a prayer of thanksgiving. "The plot has failed," wrote the Protestant pastor Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Etienne, "thanks to our star of destiny, in which I continue to believe."2'
But the feeling of celebration was to be short-lived. As word arrived of the king's slow progress back to Paris, the mood turned tense and somber. The deputies had initially concentrated all their energies on the immediate crisis, on the tasks of maintaining calm, of holding the government together, of preparing the country for what everyone assumed was an impending war. In their first reactions of shock and betrayal, a surprising number of deputies had been prepared to eject Lo
uis from the government altogether and replace him with a regency or even a republic. But such thoughts were easier to pursue with the king absent and perhaps in a foreign country than with the king returned to the Tuileries palace, only a few hundred yards away. Now they were forced to face the central issue of what the flight meant for the future of the constitution on which they had labored for almost two years and which was now so close to completion, the issue that, as one of them put it, "we have not dared to consider until now.""
And the problems seemed endless, ranging from basic matters of procedure-for which neither precedent nor the constitution gave any guidance-to profound questions of political philosophy. How did one investigate a king? Had the king committed a crime? Was it possible for a king to commit a crime? And even if there was no crime before the law, could Louis ever again be trusted and placed in a position of executive authority? A great many deputies agonized over the course of action they should take, feeling themselves in a nearly untenable position. They had staked all their hopes on the new constitutional monarchy. They were increasingly anxious to put that constitution into effect, to end the Revolution, to bring a halt to the agitation and anarchy that seemed to be eating away at the very fiber of their society. But after the recent events, would such a constitution ever again be viable? "We are confronted with pitfalls in every direction," as one of them put it. It was difficult to imagine "by what means we can extricate ourselves from the impossible position in which the king's flight has placed us.""
A first round of debates had already begun on the afternoon of June 25. With the king returning from Varennes, only a few hours from Paris, the Assembly was forced to make a preliminary decision on how it would handle the situation. And it was soon clear to everyone that the unity of purpose experienced by the deputies after the first news of the flight had now been shattered. The conservatives and the aristocratic reactionaries held that the king should be immediately reinstated. He had not broken any law in leaving the palace, and in any case he was covered by royal immunity voted by the Assembly itself nearly two years earlier. Anything else, as the conservative speaker Pierre-Victor Malouet said, "would entirely distort the constitution that you have created." Deputies on the extreme left, on the other hand, argued that Louis should be put on trial, perhaps before the newly created national appellate court. "No matter what his rank," pleaded Robespierre, "no matter how lofty his position, no citizen can think himself degraded when he submits to the rule established by law."24
After much wrangling, the Assembly opted for a middle position. Responsibility for the flight to Varennes would be determined by the Assembly itself, which would establish itself as a de facto court of inquiry. Investigations into the affair would be supervised by two of the Assembly's regular committees, the Committees on Research and Reports. All those outside the royal family who had taken part in the escape and who had been captured-the three bodyguards, the nurses, Madame de Tourzel, Choiseul, Goguelat, and the other principal commanders-would be imprisoned and carefully examined. The king and queen, however, would be given favored treatment and questioned in their quarters at the palace. A special commission of deputies would then be established to consider all the evidence and make a recommendation to the full Assembly. But at the same time the Assembly made the critical decision to continue the suspension of the king's powers. His right to sanction decrees would remain in abeyance, and all executive activities would be exercised by the ministers and the Assembly's committees.15
Three deputies, all eminent men of law, were chosen by the Assembly to question the royal couple. The king's interview took place on the evening of June 26, just twenty-four hours after his return. The queen, however, postponed her meeting with the deputies until the next day, supposedly because she was still in her bath, but in reality so that she could make certain her story matched that of the king. The story agreed upon was the same they had carefully prepared while in Monsieur Sauce's bedroom and had then recounted to Barnave and Petion during the return from Varennes. The king had never intended to leave the country, but only to travel to Montmedy, where he and his family could be safe from the threats and insults they had encountered in Paris. He had entered into no relations with foreign powers. He had been surprised during his travels to discover that people everywhere in France supported the new constitution. For this reason, as Lindet put it, he was "prepared to put aside his personal unhappiness" with the Revolution and to cooperate. Much of the story was no doubt accurate as far as it went. The denial of links with foreign governments was, however, patently untrue."6
Once the results of the interviews had been read to the full Assembly, the whole question was turned over for consideration to a commission that eventually combined the membership of seven standing committees.27 And then for almost three weeks, from June 27 through July 13, the whole affair was left in limbo. The permanent session, meeting day and night for some 128 hours, was finally brought to an end, and the Assembly returned to its normal order of business. According to the deputy Laurent-Francois Legendre, the long wait was necessary so that the committees could complete their inquiry into the affair. But for the American statesman Gouverneur Morris, who resided in Paris and knew many deputies, the delay was conceived less for judicial than for political reasons. It seemed clear to him that with the king now safely back in the Tuileries, the moderate deputies in the Assembly had returned to their long-term strategy of preserving the monarchy. "The intention of the Assembly," wrote Morris on July 2, "is I find to cover up if possible the king's flight and cause it to be forgotten." For the American, such a scheme seemed ill conceived and potentially disastrous: "This proves to me great feebleness in every respect and will perhaps destroy the monarchy." In fact the Barnave-Lameth- Duport faction was secretly negotiating once again with the royal family. The delay in taking a position would, they hoped, permit them to mobilize public opinion in the provinces in support of the king.28
But whatever the motives, the Assembly and the nation now found themselves in a veritable interregnum. For all practical purposes, the government had become a "republican monarchy," a kingdom with a powerless king, ruled by deputies who had assumed not only legislative and executive functions but also a critical judicial role. It was the Assembly itself which would judge on the responsibility for the flight to Varennes. In his caustic manner, cure Lindet seized up the situation: "Executive power is now exercised only indirectly. The Senior Government Official [the king] must confine himself to drinking, eating, and sleeping. These are duties which he fulfills perfectly well.""
The one major development in the Assembly during this interval was the arrival of a letter from General Bouille, sent from his exile in Luxembourg. By the general's own account, the statement was conceived as a means of salvaging the king's position after the failure of the escape. Bouille now assumed entire responsibility for the flight. Mocking and insolent, he expressed nothing but scorn for the Revolution and "your infernal constitution." The king and the queen, he claimed, had not really wanted to leave. It was only after the violence of April 18 and under pressure from the general that the royal couple had been persuaded to flee. "I arranged everything, decided everything, ordered everything. I alone gave the orders, not the king. It is against me alone that you should direct your bloody fury."" The letter substantially warped the reality. Even though the deputies could not know all the details of the escape plan, they had ample evidence that the king himself had signed numerous orders for military maneuvers in anticipation of the flight." But Bouille's statement was quickly seized upon by the moderates in the Assembly who hoped to preserve the monarchy, and in this respect the general's ploy worked better than he might ever have hoped.
While formal debate on the king among the deputies was largely shut down, it raged with enormous passion outside the Assembly. Two groups of deputies, in particular, were anything but passive and patient during the interregnum. On June 28 a large group of conservatives-"the wisest and most enlightened among the minority," a
ccording to the noble Irland de Bazoges-met to discuss the situation. They were indignant at the majority's suspension of the king and seizure of executive power. For all practical purposes the king was now a prisoner in his own palace. Yet Louis had, they believed, committed no crimes and should be allowed to travel wherever and whenever he saw fit. His only fault, according to the duke de Levis, was to have had the weakness to say that he liked the constitution when this was not in fact the case, and "to have wanted to enjoy the very liberty he gave to others and in the name of which he is now enchained." Some of the more staunch reactionaries, like the marquis de Vaudreuil, were even angry that the king had backed away from his declaration of June 21. More royalist than the king and abiding no compromise, the marquis used the occasion to announce his rejection of a whole range of measures passed by the Assembly, including the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the suppression of the nobility. After a lengthy debate, some 293 conservative deputies formally protested the suspension of the king, and more than 250 of these vowed to boycott all future votes in the Assembly.32 There can be no doubt that the protest of the royalist deputies inflamed the conspiracy obsessions of a great many Parisians. Some now concluded that the "250" had colluded in the king's escape from the very beginning.
When the King Took Flight Page 14