When the King Took Flight (2 page)

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

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.

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 variety 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.

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.