Everywhere in the provinces, on the eve of Varennes, the overwhelming majority of French citizens continued to feel affection, even reverence, for the person of the king. They continued to think of the monarchy as central and integral to the unity and coherence of the nation.
Tears of Blood
Perhaps it was the very intensity of their attachment to the monarch that prompted so many French to recount their experiences during the traumatic days following the king's flight. Between June 21 and the end of July more than 650 letters were received by the secretaries of the National Assembly from a variety of collective bodies all over the country: from every department, from virtually every town of any size, and even from a surprising number of villages. The ostensible purpose of this mass of correspondence was the reaffirmation of allegiance to the Assembly in what was undoubtedly the greatest political crisis since the beginning of the Revolution. But a great many of the letters contained heartfelt testimonies of changing attitudes toward the monarch in the face of the crisis. Municipal and administrative councils, patriotic clubs, national guard units, women's societies, regional tribunals, and unspecified collections of "citizens" all sent in statements, statements undoubtedly drafted by local elites, but frequently signed by dozens or hundreds of others. Taken as a whole this correspondence constitutes a poll of provincial opinion over time, as people throughout the country attempted to come to terms with the king and the king's place in the nation in the weeks after Varennes.9
In the first days of the crisis-after citizens had learned of the king's disappearance, but before they had heard of his arrest-reactions depended in large measure on how and from whom the news was received. The petitions of the Parisian clubs and the reports of the radical newspapers were anything but gentle with the missing monarch. But the early announcements of the Assembly itself were much more ambiguous, never mentioning the king's antirevolutionary declaration, and leaving ample room for the belief that the royal family had somehow been kidnapped. Many provincial groups were eager to accept such a scenario and to give Louis the benefit of a doubt. Overall, close to a third of those sending in views during this early period persisted in their positive and sympathetic views of the monarch.10 They spoke bitterly of "the frightful crime of the abduction of the king and the royal family"; of "these monsters of humanity who have carried away the best of kings"; of "France now having been left an orphan." The Jacobins of Arras, usually linked closely to their compatriot Robespierre, were particularly poignant in their initial reaction to the event. "They have taken him away from us," they lamented, "this king who seemed to live only for his people, this king who so frequently offered his homage to the National Assembly, and whose patriotic actions were imbued with such candor and truth." When they learned that the king had been found and was being returned to Paris, many provincial towns launched spontaneous celebrations. Within minutes the courtyard of the Rouen city hall "was filled with a prodigious number of citizens, both men and women, attracted by the news of the event. They expressed their happiness with a spontaneous dance that lasted until three in the morning." Everywhere church bells, fireworks, thanksgiving prayers, and public celebrations marked the moment when their "bitter sorrow," as Limoges described it, was transformed into "the exhilaration of joy.""
In general, it was only at the end of June that people in the provinces began to appreciate the full significance of the events which had just transpired and that a veritable crisis of conscience began to sweep across France. As the National Assembly entered into its three-week interregnum, placing a moratorium on considerations of the king, its official pronouncements were no longer the preeminent source of information in the provinces. Towns were inundated with circular letters and petitions from the various clubs and sections in the capital and with Parisian newspapers of every political stripe. The great mass of newspapers, in particular, enormously broadened the range of information and interpretations available. "The public papers," as the patriotic club of Vendome explained, "have continually helped us develop our opinions. Like all French people, we have closely followed the regular rhythms of their publications."" Many of the circumstances surrounding the flight had been neglected or censored in the Assembly's initial accounts. It was from newspapers and brochures that people in the provinces first heard of the Parisians' disapproving reception of the returning royal family on June 25, and of the early efforts of the Cordeliers Club to have the king deposed. Only now did they read of the king's personal declaration in which he implicitly repudiated his earlier oath and denounced many of the Revolutionary decrees that he had previously signed into law. Local leaders in Toulon first learned of the king's letter on July i. When citizens in Bergerac first saw it, four days later, they publicly burned a copy in the town square.13
In the evaluation of this mass of information, local patriotic clubs played a particularly important role. By the middle of 1191 several hundred such clubs had already been created, including some four hundred directly affiliated with the Jacobins of Paris." But although the provincial clubs closely followed the debates of the Jacobins in the capital, they were never blindly subservient to the mother society. The British agent William Miles was struck by the continual interchange of ideas among the various societies throughout the country, a process that reminded him of "the whispering gallery of Saint Paul's Cathedral"-the circular walkway inside the great dome in London from which visitors could hear one another speaking, no matter where they were standing. With the Parisian Jacobins unable to reach a consensus, provincial clubs became even more independent in the range and subjects of their debates. Dozens of societies began circulating copies of local deliberations throughout the correspondence network of provincial clubs, resulting in a rapid dissemination of ideas and proposals. In Bordeaux, in Bergerac, in Bar-le-Duc new tracts and petitions arrived daily from sister societies around the kingdom without even passing through Paris, tracts that seemed to grow more radical from one day to the next."
In this liminal period of flux and uncertainty, in which the king seemed to have disowned the Revolution and the National Assembly had not yet taken a position, people everywhere began a sweeping reevaluation of the foundational assumptions of the new constitution. Not only in the local political clubs, but in the diverse administrative councils and the various ad hoc meetings set up to meet the crisis, citizens pondered and debated and passed in review the options available. In Toulouse "everyone made an effort to publicly pronounce his opinion, no matter how bold, on the question of the king." In Tours, as one townsman described it, debates soon focused on "the most interesting and probing questions ever discussed since the beginning of the monarchy. AN How can we describe it, the joy we felt in the midst of all our tensions and fears. We saw shy adolescents stammer out their thoughts, bold young men express the ardor and impetuosity of their feelings, mature men offer advice dictated more by reflection and prudence. What a touching spectacle it was!""
And opinion now swung decisively against the monarch. During the pivotal period between late June, when news arrived of the capture in Varennes, and mid-July, when the Assembly issued its decrees, only about one in six of the testimonies from the provinces revealed any sympathy for the runaway king." Even those who did show compassion frequently joined their remarks with harsh commentaries, linking the king's actions to his weakness of character in accepting bad advice. "The monarch is unfortunate, weak, deceived, and taken advantage of," wrote one town council. "We would like to believe," wrote another, "that it was through weakness and a blind submission to odious courtiers that Louis XVI was led to desert his post and abandon a people who had overwhelmed him with their love; that it was not through his own initiative, but in order to yield to the desires and unrestrained ambition of those who surrounded him. Because of this possibility we will remain silent and not judge him."18
By contrast, close to three-fifths of the correspondents were distinctly negative in their assessment of the monarch.'9 In statements that were striking for the anger
and bitterness of their rhetoric, administrators, club members, and national guard units in every corner of the nation castigated the king for a whole range of sins. Louis was indicted for having deserted the palace without any consideration for the consequences of his actions for the French people. The man they had once considered their strongest supporter had "abandoned his post in a cowardly manner and betrayed all his oaths." His "desertion of the most admirable throne in the universe could have turned France into a vast tomb." Despite Louis' disclaimers, most correspondents had little doubt that the king's real intention had been to flee France and seek the aid of foreign powers against his own country. "The supreme commander of the nation planned to leave and take refuge in a foreign state that promised him money, assistance, and troops in order to reconquer the imagi nary rights he claimed to be his." "He sought in vain to bring down foreign swords upon us." Such actions could only have led to war and could only be characterized as "treasonous." The king had abandoned his throne "to travel to foreign soil and transform our fertile plains into an ocean of blood. He would have delivered France over to desolation and to foreign and civil war." Even if he had been following the advice of others, he was "no less guilty of utter treason against the nation." It was only too clear that his ultimate aim had been to return "at the head of an army" and to reimpose "the former system" of the Old Regime. "Imbued with the principles of despotism, Louis will forever be the enemy of our liberty."20
Nothing more angered the provincial patriots than the king's famous "declaration," announcing to all the world that his previous oaths to the constitution had been insincere. In the Revolutionary ethos, imbued with the ideals of transparency and authenticity, there was perhaps no greater sin than to swear false oaths, and this is precisely what Louis admitted he had done. Again and again, they described him as a "parjure," one who is disloyal and a traitor to his promises. "We are horrified by any Frenchman who is so deceitful as to betray his sworn oath, thus violating the most sacred of principles." He was "cowardly and faithless," "perfidious and disloyal," "a traitor to his oaths"; "his supposed goodness was only the most base hypocrisy."21 Several groups directly compared the king's false oath to their own recent vows, assuring the Assembly that they, unlike the king, would forever maintain "the religion of their oaths." For the Jacobins of Nantes, Louis had covered himself with "eternal infamy." No longer would they link him to good king Henry, but to Charles IX, the treacherous French king who had invited Protestant leaders to a wedding on Saint Bartholomew's Day 1572, only to have them massacred.22
In addition to the small group of patriots showing a modicum of sympathy for Louis and the large mass harshly condemning him, another fourth made no mention of the king at all in their correspondence: a disregard of the monarch's very existence that was, in itself, unprecedented and implicitly damning." Most such respondents made it clear that they had now transferred all their allegiance to the Assembly. The Jacobins of Saint-Lo, in Normandy, described the psychological process through which they had passed in late June, after they learned of the recent events. "At first we were at a loss for words to describe our feelings, for one phrase had destroyed all our hopes: `The King has abandoned us!' We hesitated. We tried to discern what it meant. Were his promises then totally frivolous? Were his oaths merely vain words? But then we realized, gentlemen, that you were taking charge. The voice of the nation can still be heard. And we all repeated a solemn oath to accept the new decrees. The destinies of free nations are no longer affected by the actions of kings." It was the deputies themselves who were now described as "the fathers of the nation," "the fathers of the people," "the restorers of liberty," paternal attributions once largely reserved for the king. The letters abounded with comparisons of the deputies to the heroic figures of Greece and Rome: they were the new Lycurgus, giving laws to the people; they were Roman senators battling "against Nero and Catiline." Other writers used religious references in praise of the Assembly: "your work has been touched by the finger of Divine Providence"; even on their deathbeds they would turn their heads toward Paris "and pronounce these words: for God and the National Assembly." In the present circumstances, they announced, they would follow the fathers of the nation no matter what their decision-even, they implied, if the king were to be tried or deposed. They would remain "faithful to the nation, to the law, and to executive authority, however you should choose to organize that authority." "We leave to your discretion and firm judgment the punishment or the pardon of the crimes of Louis XVL"24
Many of the statements were intensely moving, expressive of a deep disillusionment with the king. Until June 21, wrote the Jacobins of the village of La Bassee, in northern France, they had all considered Louis XVI the greatest man and the greatest monarch who had ever reigned. How different he had seemed from the sixtyfive kings who had preceded him. But in one day, through a single act, "this prince has entirely lost his reputation." Louis' famous silence, once construed as the silence of wisdom and caution, was now attributed "either to stupidity or to treachery." Even the names used in designating the monarch, the dramatic slippage from "His Majesty" or "Sire" or "the king" to the pervasive use of his first name alone-"Louis" or "Louis de Bourbon"-underscored the fact that the king was no longer viewed as the embodiment of an eternal throne, but as a deeply flawed, if not depraved and perverse individual. In forsaking his vows, in violating "his solemn oaths," Louis "had deserted the just cause of a magnanimous and sensitive people who had always worshipped their kings as idols, loving them in spite of their vices." Indeed, the image of the idol, "a king previously the idol of the French," an idol now smashed and destroyed forever, appeared again and again in the rhetoric of the provincial correspondence."
A few of the letter writers even began recasting the history of the Revolution and of the king's place in that history. The municipal leaders of one small town in central France wondered if Louis had not, after all, "always been moved by the principles of despotism." And they wrote a lengthy reinterpretation of the two years since 1789 in which the king was portrayed as attempting to "create a bastion of despotism in the midst of the National Assembly itself. It was he whose use of force compelled the deputies to take refuge in the Tennis Court. Paris would today be a vast graveyard, if it had not been for the courageous action of its inhabitants [who stormed the Bastille]." For the Jacobins of Versailles it now seemed that this "deceitful king" must have been responsible for "all the difficulties that have afflicted France over the last two years," just as he recently "prepared the cold-blooded massacre of the nation, a nation that had always covered him with kindness." Only recently, recalled the citizens of Ales, in southern France, "we formed a religious chorus to sing his praises. Too trusting, we thought of him as the restorer of our rights." But "rather than being our father, he preferred to be our tyrant, we might even say our executioner. Ah, gentlemen! Our hearts are broken and our eyes are filled with tears of blood.""
[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]
The Overturned Idol. The female figure of France, having donned the royal robes, is about to crush the overturned bust of Louis XVI. Behind her, guardsmen, citizens, and sans-culottes indicate that they will maintain the monarchy to the last drop of their blood, even if they no longer trust the present king.
Monarchy or Republic?
Most of the groups sending testimonies in late June and early July took no direct stance on what should be done with the king, promising to abide by the Assembly's decision, whatever that decision might be. But about a fourth of the correspondents went a step fur- ther.27 They felt themselves so deeply betrayed, they deemed Louis' behavior so reprehensible that they could never again trust him with responsibilities in the government, and they urged the National Assembly to take action against him. About half of this group seemed prepared to maintain the present constitution, although they encouraged the Assembly to remove Louis from the throne or to place him on trial before the nation.28 The town leaders of Montauban agonized at length
over the steps that should be taken. They still loved the institution of the monarchy, they said, but what could France do when faced with "a man who grudgingly refuses to carry out the law? A fugitive king who abandons the honorable post in which the constitution placed him, who violates the decrees which he himself had accepted, who tramples under foot his most sacred oath, who gives citizens the example of base deception: such is the sad spectacle before us." In the end they resorted to a contract theory of royal authority to justify the suspension of his immunity from prosecution: "a monarch who violates the constitution has destroyed the social contract in which his right to rule is inscribed." The Jacobins of Limoges fell back on a more direct logic of emotion: "Louis XVI should no longer sit on the throne of the French," they advised, "because he no longer reigns in the hearts of the people who now despise him." In Nantes the assembled body of citizens proposed a French version of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the English Parliament deposed James II and replaced him with William and Mary. The English taught us, they wrote, "that to dethrone a king who is faithless to the laws of his country is not to overthrow the monarchy itself."29
When the King Took Flight Page 20