not, in itself, unreasonable. There was a strong party in the Assembly
with which it was possible to negotiate. In the Rhone district, along
the Loire, in parts of western and southern France, hundreds of
thousands of the most intrepid men on earth were ready to die for the
altar and the throne. But they were not willing to expose themselves
for a prince in whose hands the best cause was doomed to fail, and
whose last act as king was to betray his faithful defenders.
Instigated by Bouille, the queen asked her brother to lend some
regiments to act with the royal forces as auxiliaries in case of
resistance. She wished for 30,000 men. That is the significant fact
that justifies the postmaster of St. Menehould and the patriots of
Varennes. The expedition to Montmedy was a first step towards civil
war and foreign invasion. That is what these men vaguely understood
when they stopped the fugitives.
For the management of the journey the best advice was not always
taken. Instead of two light carriages, the royal party insisted on
travelling in one large one, which Fersen accordingly ordered. The
route by Rheims would have been better, because Varennes was off the
post road. But Varennes was preferred on the ground that Rheims was
the coronation city, and the king might be recognised. The shortest
way to Montmedy passed through Belgian territory; but it was thought
dangerous to cross the frontier. It was urged that a military display
on the road would lead to trouble, but it was decided that it was
necessary beyond Chalons. Bouille's advice was not always sound, but
there was one point on which it proved fatal to reject it. He wished
the travellers to be accompanied by an experienced officer, whom he
knew to be masterful, energetic, and quick in an emergency. The king
thought of several, but the queen was disinclined to have a stranger
in the carriage. But she asked for three able-bodied officers, to be
employed as couriers, adding that they need not be unusually
intelligent. In those words the coming story is told. The three
couriers answered too faithfully the specified qualification.
The departure had been fixed for the second week of June. Bouille
still hoped for a movement among the imperialists, and he requested a
delay. On the 16th he was informed that the royal family would start
at midnight on the 20th. He had sent one of his colonels, the Duke de
Choiseul, to Paris for the last instructions. Choiseul's horses were
to fetch the king at Varennes, and he was to entertain him in his
house at Montmedy. He had the command of the farthest detachment of
cavalry on the road from Montmedy to Chalons, and it was his duty to
close up behind the royal carriage, to prevent pursuit, and to gather
all the detachments on the road, as the king passed along. He would
have arrived at the journey's end with at least 400 men. His last
orders were to convey the king across the frontier, if Bouille should
fall. The great abbey of Orval was only a few miles away, and it was
thought that, at the last moment, it might be found safer than the
hostile soil of France.
Choiseul was not equal to the difficult part he had to perform. He set
out for his post on the Monday afternoon, carrying with him a
marshal's baton, which had belonged to his uncle, and the queen's
hairdresser, Leonard. For Thursday was the solemn festival of Corpus
Christi, when a military mass would be celebrated in the camp, and, in
the presence of the assembled army, Bouille was to be made a marshal
of France. The queen could not be allowed to appear at such a function
without the artist's help, and he was hurried away, much against his
will, without a word of explanation. The king's sister learned the
same day what was before her. There had been an idea of sending her on
with the children, or with the Countess of Provence. The Princess, who
was eminently good, and not always gracious, did not enjoy the
confidence of the queen. She was one of those who regarded concession
as surrender of principle, and in the rift between the Princes and
Marie Antoinette she was not on the side of compromise. Provence came
to supper, and the brothers met for the last time. That night their
ways parted, leading the one to the guillotine, and the other to the
throne which had been raised by Napoleon above every throne on earth.
The Count and Countess of Provence both started at the same time as
the rest, and reached Belgium in safety.
Fersen, directing matters with skill and forethought, made one
mistake. Two attendants on the royal children were taken, in a hired
carriage, to Claye, the second stage on the eastern road; and it was
their driver who made known, on his return, which way the fugitives
had taken.
When everybody was in bed, and the lights were out, the royal family
went out by a door that was not in use, and got into a hackney coach.
The last to come was the queen, who had been frightened by meeting
Lafayette. Afterwards she asked him whether he had recognised her. He
replied that if he had met her not once but thrice, he could never
have recognised her, after what she had told him the day before; for
she had said that they were not going away. Bailly, who was at home,
ill, had taken alarm at the persistent rumours of departure, and urged
Lafayette to redouble his precautions. After a last inspection the
general assured the mayor that Gouvion was on guard, and not a mouse
could escape. The journalists, Marat and Freron, had also been warned.
Freron went to the Tuileries late at night, and satisfied himself that
all was quiet. Nobody took notice of a coachman, chatting and taking
snuff with a comrade, or guessed that it was the colonel of Royal
Swedes, who in that hour built himself an everlasting name. It was
twelve when the queen arrived; and the man, who had made her heart
beat in happier years, mounted the box and drove away into the
darkness. Their secret was known, and their movements had been
observed by watchful eyes. The keeper of the wardrobe was intimate
with General Gouvion. She had warned him in good time, and had given
notice to persons about the queen that she knew what was going on. The
alarm was given at two in the morning, but that she might not be
compromised it was given by devious ways. A traveller from Marseilles
was roused at his lodgings by a friendly voice. He refused to get up,
and went to sleep again. Some hours later the visitor returned, and
prevailed with the sleeper. He came from the palace, and reported that
the king was gone. They took the news to one of the deputies, who
hastened to Lafayette, while the man from the palace disappeared.
Lafayette, as soon as he was dressed, conferred with the mayor and
with the president of the Assembly, Beauharnais, the first husband of
the Empress Josephine, and they persuaded him that nothing could avert
civil war but the capture of the king. Thereupon Lafayette wrote an
order declaring that Lewis had been carried off, and calling on all
good citizens to bring him back. He believed that too much time had
been lost; but nothing less than this, which was a warrant for arrest,
would have appeased the rage of the people at his lack of vigilance.
He despatched his officers, chiefly towards Lille. One of them,
Romeuf, whom he directed to follow the road to Valenciennes, was
stopped by the mob, and brought before the Assembly. There he received
a new commission, with authority to make the king a prisoner. As he
rode out, after so much delay, he learned that the fugitives had been
seen on the road to Meaux, and that they had twelve hours' start.
There is much in these transactions that is strangely suspicious.
Lafayette did not make up his mind that there was anything to be done
until others pressed him. He sent off all his men by the wrong roads,
while Baillon, the emissary of the Commune, struck the track at once.
He told Romeuf that it was too late, so that his heavy day's ride was
only a formality. Romeuf, who was the son of one of his tenants, got
into many difficulties, and did not give his horse the spur until the
news was four hours old. At Varennes he avowed that he had never meant
to overtake them, and the king's officers believed him. Gouvion,
second in command of the guard, knew by which door the royal party
meant to leave, and he assured the Assembly that he had kept watch
over it, with several officers, all night. Lewis had even authorised
Mme. de Tourzel to bring Gouvion with her, if she met him on her way
to the carriage. Burke afterwards accused Lafayette of having allowed
the departure, that he might profit by the arrest. Less impassioned
critics have doubted whether the companion of Washington was preparing
a regency, or deemed that the surest road to a republic is by a vacant
throne.
The coach that was waiting beyond the gates had been ordered for a
Russian lady, Madame de Korff, who was Fersen's fervent accomplice.
She supplied not only the carriage, but L12,000 in money, and a
passport. As she required another for her own family, the Russian
minister applied to Bailly. The mayor refused, and he was obliged to
ask Montmorin, pretending that the passport he had just given had been
burnt by mistake. The numbers and description tallied, but the
destination was Frankfort. As the travellers quitted the Frankfort
road at Clermont, the last stage before Varennes, this was a
transparent blunder. Half an hour had been lost, but the first stage,
Bondy, was reached at half-past one. Here Fersen, who had sat by his
coachman, flourishing the whip, got down, and the family he had
striven so hard to save passed out of his protection. He wished to
take them all the way, and had asked Gustavus for leave to travel in
the uniform of the Swedish Guard. But Lewis would not allow him to
remain, and underrated the value of such an escort. Fersen took the
north road, and reached Belgium without difficulty. In the following
winter he was again at the Tuileries. As a political adviser he was
unfortunate, for he was one of those concerned in the Brunswick
proclamation which cost the king his crown.
The travellers pursued their way without molestation to Chalons, and
there, as they were about to meet their faithful soldiery, they
fancied that the danger was over. In reality the mischief was already
done, and by their own fault their fate was sealed. As they were sure
to be pursued, safety depended on celerity. The point of peril was
Varennes, for a good horseman at full speed might ride 146 miles in
less than thirteen hours, and would arrive there about nine at night,
if he started at the first alarm. It was calculated that the royal
family, at 7-1/2 miles an hour, would reach Varennes between 8 and 9.
The margin was so narrow that there was no time to lose. The king
thought it sufficient to reach Bouille's outposts before he could be
overtaken, and they would be met a stage beyond Chalons. To secure the
meeting it was necessary to keep time. The hours were exactly
determined; and as the agreement was not observed, the troopers were
useless. Before Chalons four hours had been lost--not by accident, as
the royalist legend tells, for Valory the outrider testifies that it
took but a few minutes to repair. Bouille knew the ignoble cause of
his own ruin and of so much sorrow, but never revealed it. When he
came to England he misled questioners, and he exacted an oath from his
son that he would keep the miserable secret for half a century. The
younger Bouille was true to his word. In 1841 he confided to a friend
that the story whispered at the time was true, and that the king
stopped a couple of hours at Etoges, over an early dinner at the house
of Chanilly, an officer of his household, whose name appears in his
will. When people saw what came of it, there was a generous conspiracy
of concealment, which bewildered posterity, until Bouille's tale was
told.
At Pont de Somme-Vesle, 8 or 9 miles beyond Chalons, Choiseul was in
command. His men had been badly received at St. Menehould, and their
presence perturbed the country people. Nobody believed the pretence
that so many horsemen were required to protect the passage of
treasure, and they began to suspect that the treasure was the queen
herself, flying to Austria. Choiseul took alarm; for if the king
arrived in the midst of sedition, the worst might be expected. He had
been positively instructed that the king would pass at half-past two.
Fersen had said that he might rely on it, and there was to be a
courier riding an hour ahead. When three o'clock came, without any
sign of king or courier, Choiseul resolved to move away, hoping that
his departure would allay the ferment and secure safe passage. He sent
Leonard forward, with instructions to the officers in command at St.
Menehould, Clermont, and Varennes, that all seemed to be over for the
day, and that he was starting to join Bouille; and after some further
watching, he withdrew with all his men. For this Bouille afterwards
demanded that he should be tried by court-martial.
It had been settled that if the king did not appear at Bondy by
half-past two in the morning, the courier who had preceded him was to
push on, and warn the officers that there was no more to be done. As
no courier made his appearance in the afternoon, it was certain that
the fugitives had got out of Paris, where the danger lay. If Choiseul
found it necessary to move his men, he was to leave a staff officer,
Goguelat, to wait the king's coming, and to be his guide. But Choiseul
took Goguelat with him, leaving no guide; and instead of keeping on
the high road, to block it at a farther point, he went off into
byways, and never reappeared until all was over at Varennes. His error
is flagrant, but it was due to the more tragic folly of his master.
Not long after he had abandoned his post the king arrived, and passed
unhindered. Again he changed horses without resistance at the next
post-town, which was St. Menehould, and went on to Clermont en
Argonne. Some of the bystanders thought they had recognised him under
his disguise, and the loudest of them was Drouet, who, as postmaster,
had just had a quarrel with one of the officers, and was in the
dangerous mood of a man who has his temper to recover. The town
council assembled, and on hearing the grounds of his suspicion,
commissioned him to follow the travellers and stop their flight. They
did not doubt that Lewis was about to throw himself into the arms of
Austria. It was not his first intention, for he hoped to make a stand
at Montmedy; but the prospect of effective action on French soil had
diminished.
Bouille's command was narrowed. He could not trust his men; and
Leopold did not stir. The basis of the scheme had crumbled. Whether
within the frontier or beyond it, success implied an Austrian
invasion. Bouille's plan, from its inception, had no other meaning;
and it was executed under conditions which placed Lewis more
completely in the hands of the calculating emperor. It became more and
more apparent that his destination was not the camp of Montmedy, but
the abbey of Orval in Luxemburg. The men of St. Menehould who resolved
to prevent his escape acted on vague suspicion, but we cannot say
that, as Frenchmen, they acted wrongly. They had no certainty, and no
authority; but while they deliberated a pursuing horseman rode into
the town, bringing what they wanted. An officer of the National Guard,
Baillon, had got away from Paris early in the day, with orders from
Bailly and Lafayette, and took the right road. He was delayed for two
hours by an encounter with M. de Briges, one of the king's men, whom
he succeeded in arresting. To save time he sent forward a fresh rider,
on a fresh horse, to stop the fugitives; and this messenger from
Chalons brought the news to St. Menehould, not long after the coach
had rolled away.
When Drouet started on the ride that made his fortune, he knew that it
was the king, and that Paris did not mean him to escape. An hour had
been lost, and he met his postboys returning from Clermont. From them
he learnt that the courier had given the word Varennes, and not
Verdun. By a short cut, through the woods, he arrived just in time.
Meantime St. Menehould was seething; the commanding officer was put
under arrest, and his troops were prevented from mounting. One man,
Lagache, warned by the daughter of his host that the treasure for the
army chest had evaporated and the truth was out, sprung on his horse
and opened a way through the crowd with a pistol in each hand.
Drouet told the story to the National Assembly more to his own
advantage, claiming to have recognised the queen whom he had seen at
Paris, and the king by his likeness on an _assignat_. On a later day
he declined all direct responsibility, and said that he followed the
coach in consequence of orders forwarded from Chalons, not on his own
initiative or conjecture. When he gave the second version he was a
prisoner among the Austrians, and the questioner before whom he stood
was Fersen. At such a moment even a man of Drouet's fortitude might
well have stretched a point in the endeavour to cast off odium.
Therefore the account recorded by Fersen has not supplanted the
popular tradition. But it is confirmed by Romeuf, who says,
distinctly, that the postmaster of St. Menehould was warned by the
message sent on by Baillon. Romeuf's testimony, contained in the
protocols of the Assembly, where I have seen it, was omitted in the
_Moniteur_, in order that nothing might deface the legend of the
incautious traveller, the treacherous banknote, and the vigilant
provincial patriot, who was the idol of the hour as the man who had
preserved his country from invasion and civil war.
Clermont, like the other post towns, was agitated by the presence of
cavalry; and after the king had pursued his journey, the authorities
despatched a messenger to rouse Varennes. Passing the royal party at
full speed, he shouted something which they did not understand, but
which made them think that they were detected. He was superseded by
the superior energy and capacity of Drouet, and plays no part in the
adventure. There was an officer at Clermont who knew his business; but
his men deserted him, and he reached Varennes alone. At Varennes the
two men in the secret, Bouille's younger son and Raigecourt, were with
the horses, at the farther end of the town, over the bridge, keeping
no look-out. They relied on Goguelat, on Choiseul, on d'Andouins who
commanded at St. Menehould, on Damas at Clermont, and above all on the
promised courier, who was to ride an hour ahead to warn them in time.
But they expected no warning that night. If there was any watchfulness
in them, it was put to sleep by Leonard, who had gone through an hour
before with Choiseul's fatal letter. The king was arrested a few
hundred yards from their inn, and they were aware of nothing. When
they heard, they galloped away on the road to Stenay, where they knew
that the general was keeping anxious vigil. Drouet passed the carriage
near the entrance of the town, where the couriers were wrangling with
the postilions and looking about in the dark for the relays. With the
help of half a dozen men who were finishing their wine at the inn, he
barricaded the bridge.
There the king's passport betrayed him, for it was made out for
Frankfort, and Varennes was not on the road to Frankfort. The party
were therefore detained and had to spend the night at the house of
Sauce, municipal officer and grocer, while the drums beat, the tocsin
rang, the town was roused with the cry of fire, and messengers were
sent to bring in national guards from the country round. At first
Sauce beguiled the king over a bottle of wine, and then introduced a
travelled fellow-townsman who identified him. A scene of emotion
followed, and loyal citizens pressed their sovereign in their arms.
They talked of escorting him to Montmedy, a hundred strong, and Lewis,
ready to believe them, declared he would be content with fifty. As
night wore on, a number of officers collected: Choiseul and Goguelat,
after their long ride from Pont de Somme-Vesle; the Count de Damas
from Clermont; and at last Deslon, a captain of the German horse that
Bouille chiefly trusted. Choiseul's men, and some of those quartered
at Varennes, were faithful, and it was thought possible to clear the
street. Urged by the queen, Damas wished to attempt it, and long after
he assured an English friend that he regretted that he did not lead
the charge, in defiance of the king's optimism, and of his reluctance
to be saved by the sword. He said to Deslon in German, "Mount and
attack!" But Deslon saw that it was too late. Goguelat threatened to
cut his way out, and was unhorsed by a pistol shot.
Drouet was master of the situation. It was he who managed the
hesitating soldiers and the hesitating townsmen. At five in the
morning Romeuf and Baillon arrived, with Lafayette's order, and the
decree of the sovereign Assembly. There was no more illusion then
about pursuing the journey, and all the king's hope was that he might
gain time for Bouille to deliver him. Bouille was at Stenay, twenty
miles off. He spent the night watching the road, with his arm through
his horse's bridle. Long after every possible allowance for delay, his
son came up with the tidings of Varennes. The trumpets roused the
Royal Germans, but their colonel was hostile, and precious hours were
lost. Bouille gave all his money to his men, told them what manner of
expedition they were on, told them that their king was a prisoner, and
led them to the rescue. It was past nine when he reached the height
that looks down on the valley of the Aire. The horses were tired, the
bridge was barricaded, the fords were unknown. All was quiet at
Varennes, and the king was already miles away on the road to Clermont.
It was the end of a bright dream, and of a career which had been noted
for unvarying success.
As the unhappy man, who had so narrowly missed the prize, turned his
horse's head in the direction of exile, he said to his son, "Do you
still praise my good fortune?" That evening he rode across the
frontier with a group of officers, and his men fired on him as he
passed. He issued an angry declaration, and composed a defence of his
conduct, saying that nobody had remained at his post except himself.
But he knew that king and constitution were lost because he was not on
the spot, and had posted inexperienced men where his own presence was
needed. He could not recover his balance, and became as unwise and
violent as the rest. The _emigres_ did not trust him, and assigned him
no active part in the invasion of the following year. His fame stood
high among the English who had fought him in the West Indies, and Pitt
offered him the command in San Domingo, which the Duke of Portland
obliged him to relinquish.
Lewis XVI. was brought back to Paris by an insolent and ferocious
crowd, and looked back with gratitude to the equivocal civilities of
Sauce. The journey occupied four days, during which the queen's hair
turned grey. Three deputies, sent by the Assembly, met the dolorous
procession half way, and took charge of the royal family. The king at
once assured them that he had intended to remain at Montmedy, and
there to revise the Constitution. "With those words," said Barnave,
"we shall save the monarchy." Latour Maubourg refused his turn in the
royal carriage, on the plea that his legs were too long for comfort,
and advised the king to employ the time in domesticating his
companions. The advice partly succeeded, for Barnave was made a
friend. Nothing could be made of Petion, who states in his narrative
that the princess fell in love with him. General Dumas assumed
command, and, by posting cavalry on one of the bridges, managed to
bring the horses to a trot, and left the crowd behind.