When the King Took Flight (9 page)

As for the course of the escape, both Bouille and Fersen had
originally urged the royal family to travel in separate groups and in
small, unpretentious vehicles in order to make a rapid dash for the
border. This would be the strategy followed by "Monsieur," the
king's brother, who escaped without a hitch to Brussels, disguised as
an English gentleman, on the same night that the royal couple left.43
But the king and queen adamantly refused to journey apart, or
without their two children and the king's sister, Elizabeth. Making matters more complicated, the queen insisted on taking along
two of the children's nurses. Soon they also added the marquis
d'Agoult, a family confidant, to act as "guide" and spokesman if
difficulties arose, as well as three other nobles, disguised as coachmen, to serve as bodyguards. With a total of eleven individuals, the
party had now grown too large for a single coach.44

Presented with such requirements, Fersen set to work on the
complex travel arrangements that had to be worked out if this small
troop of people were to be transported in secret to the frontier. In order to establish a fictitious front, the Swede obtained the support
of a Russian baroness de Korff, who was planning to leave France
with her daughter in June. The baroness would claim that she had
"accidentally destroyed" her passport and would then ask the authorities for a duplicate copy, the document to be used by the royal
family. It was also de Korff who ordered the construction of a "ber-
line"-the coach with large wheels and great coiled suspension
springs, which was to take the royal party to safety. Supervised by a
"friend" of the baroness-none other than Fersen himself-the
specially designed vehicle took nearly three months to build and
cost close to 6,ooo French pounds, a huge sum for the day, beyond
the budget of all but the wealthiest individuals. Exceptionally large,
painted black with a bright yellow frame, it was a true luxury
model, fit for a king, though poorly conceived for inconspicuous
travel. It came complete with leather and taffeta interior, padded
seats, numerous built-in luggage compartments, picnic apparatus,
bottle racks, an emergency repair kit, and a leather-covered chamber pot. A smaller, two-wheeled cabriolet was also prepared to
carry the two nurses."

To transfer all eleven people out of the Tuileries and onto the
post road outside the city, Fersen devised a sophisticated movement
of people, carriages, and horses with all the method and meticulousness of a military order of battle. Plans were made to employ
an array of little-known corridors and empty rooms within the palace, the most important being a ground-floor chamber with a small
door opening directly onto an exterior courtyard-a chamber vacated since April 18 by one of the king's gentlemen and designated
as the family's secret assembly room for escape to the outside. The
queen had an interior door opened up between this room and a
stairway leading to the royal suites, supposedly to provide access
for her first lady-in-waiting. Several of the royal chambers had also
been remodeled to secure easier access to rear passages and to insulate the family's rooms further from the servants and guards who
slept just outside.46

In the meantime, the queen and a few trusted servingwomen set about devising disguises appropriate to the "de Korff family," including a small girl's dress for the five-year-old dauphin and the
outfit of a financial agent for the king. Other than this special costume, the king seems to have taken only the magnificent red and
gold suit worn during the trip to Cherbourg in 1786, which he
planned to don when he took command of his loyal military on the
frontier. A queen of France, however, could hardly be expected to
live like a commoner, and Marie took great pains to smuggle out in
advance not only an entire wardrobe, but most of her diamonds and
jewelry, several items of furniture, and a specially constructed and
fully stocked cosmetics case. Care was taken to cover these diverse
arrangements with a variety of ploys and explanations. Unfortunately, however, the construction and shipping of the "necessary"
for the queen's cosmetics was discovered and aroused the suspicions
of one of her servants, a woman who was not only a patriot but also
the mistress of an officer in the national guard. In the end, the family would make the fateful decision to postpone the escape by one
day so that this woman would be off duty.47

Indeed, if they were ever to hope to slip out unobserved, it was
essential to catch the Revolutionaries off guard and unsuspecting.
Through the first half of 1791, and especially after April 18, the
royal couple consciously pursued a policy of deceit. While they denounced the Revolution at every opportunity in secret messages to
foreign leaders, they did everything in their power to lull the patriots into thinking they now fully supported the National Assembly.
On April i9 Louis went to the Assembly in person for the first time
in over a year and reiterated his acceptance of the constitution, and
four days later he sent a similar well-publicized message to all his
ambassadors. Shortly thereafter the king and queen attended Easter
mass with the constitutional clergy, despite the king's revulsion for
the "schismatic" church. As Fersen explained to Breteuil, the king
had resolved to "sacrifice everything for the execution of his plans
and to lull the factious parties [the Revolutionaries] to sleep concerning his true intentions. Henceforth, he will give the appearance
of recognizing and entirely embracing the revolution and the revo lutionary leaders. He will appear to rely entirely on their counsel
and will anticipate the will of the mobs in order to keep them quiet
and create the sense of confidence necessary for his escape from
Paris."48

During the same period, General Bouille was following a similar
campaign of deception with the local patriots in his headquarters of
Metz, some i8o miles to the east of Paris. Francois-Claude-Amour,
marquis de Bouille, fifty-two years old, had already won considerable notoriety in France as veteran of the Seven Years' War and the
American Revolution, and the hero-or archvillain, depending on
one's point of view-in quelling the recent military mutiny in
Nancy. Indeed, several Revolutionary political leaders had recently
approached him as a potential ally. But since the bishop of Pamiers
first brought him a letter from the king, requesting his assistance, he
had, by his own account, entirely devoted his services to the monarch. After a visit by Fersen to Metz and after having sent his oldest
son and aide-de-camp to Paris, he had developed an elaborate plan
for the king's journey to the frontier.49

The first and most pressing task had been to choose a fortified
position to which the king could retreat. Although Bouille at first
considered both Besancon and Valenciennes, he ultimately recommended the small citadel town of Montmedy, to the south and west
of Luxembourg. Not only was this fortress under Bouille's direct
command, but it had the advantage of strong fortifications directed
toward the southwest, in the direction of Paris, as well as toward
the northern frontier. However, the king would not be kept in the
fortress itself, for fear he might be trapped by a siege, but in the
chateau of Thonnelle, just north of Montmedy and less than two
miles from the Austrian frontier. In all, the monarch would be protected by some ten thousand troops, both inside the fortifications
and in adjacent positions."

As for the escape itinerary of the king and his family, Bouille had
initially proposed the most direct road through Reims, Vouziers,
and Stenay-to the north of the route actually taken. Not only
was it the most direct road, but it passed primarily through poor and sparsely inhabited countryside, largely avoiding the major radical strongholds. But Louis had traveled a portion of this route
for his coronation in Reims, and he seemed obsessively frightened
that he might be recognized by local Revolutionaries. In the end, a
more southerly road was chosen: through Montmirail, Chalons-surMarne, Sainte-Menehould, and Clermont, though carefully avoiding the town of Verdun, reputed to be particularly "extremist.""
Once the itinerary had been selected, Bouille enlisted Francois de
Goguelat to reconnoiter the 15o-mile journey by making the trip
with watch in hand in one of the regular postal coaches. Forty-five
years old and trained as an army engineer and mapmaker, Goguelat
was an exalted monarchist who had once been personal secretary to
the queen. Since the king's party would have to travel as rapidly as
possible and change horses frequently, Goguelat also took note of
each of the relay posts along the way. After Clermont, however, the travelers would turn north to avoid Verdun and leave the royal post
road. So plans had to be made to prepare fresh horses from the
army itself for the last leg of the journey, positioning them in a secluded spot just outside the town of Varennes. Since the conspirators had little knowledge of the political atmosphere in Varennes,
Goguelat quietly-but awkwardly, as we have seen-interviewed
several citizens there, including the deputy mayor Sauce, and concluded that the town was entirely "safe." Bouille himself would be
waiting with horses and a large escort at the final relay near Dun,
about fifteen miles beyond Varennes and an equal distance south of
Montmedy.sz

[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]

Marquis Francois-Claude-Amour de Bouille.

The issue of a military escort for the king posed a particular
problem for the planners. They all wished to provide Louis with
protection as soon as possible after he left Paris, but it was dangerous to send troops too close to the capital. Moreover, if a military
escort were positioned too long in advance, it might actually attract
attention to the royal family's carriage. Ultimately, in agreement
with the king and queen, it was decided to dispatch a relatively
small number of cavalrymen a few hours before the family's arrival. If need be, they would explain to the local population that the
troops had been sent to escort a shipment of money for the pay of
the soldiers. But in general, all such detachments would be instructed to watch from afar and to follow well behind the royal
carriages, intervening directly only if the king were recognized and
appeared to be in trouble.53 The extent to which soldiers should intervene or not was perhaps the most delicate question of the entire
operation. And here Bouille was forced to rely on the discretion of
his younger field officers, many of them to be informed of the
king's arrival only at the last moment.

After some debate, it was decided to establish the most advanced
escort brigade near the relay post of Somme-Vesle, a village just
east of Chalons. Among his other duties, the commander of this
brigade was to send a courier notifying detachments farther along
the route as soon as the royal party had passed. Perhaps equally important, he must post a rear guard across the road after the king had gone by, blocking any messengers from Paris who might attempt to
spread the alarm .51 As commander of this key position, Bouille
made the curious choice of duke Claude-Antoine-Gabriel de
Choiseul-Stainville, only thirty years old and relatively inexperienced. Although everyone recognized Choiseul's loyalty and honored his aristocratic pedigree, both Fersen and the queen were wary
of his reputation for flightiness and urged the general to find someone else. Fersen referred to him in one letter as "a muddleheaded
young man."55

Yet Bouille worried far less about his officers than about the loyalty of the troops they would be asked to lead. Throughout the
winter and spring of I791 local patriotic clubs had been vigorously
recruiting the French soldiers garrisoned in their localities and
casting doubt on the loyalty and motivation of their commanding
officers-officers who, almost without exception, were members
of an increasingly mistrusted nobility. Commanders everywhere
watched helplessly as their subordinates became more unruly and
undisciplined, sometimes announcing their intention of following
only orders that they themselves had approved. Under such conditions, Bouille felt no choice but to make plans based entirely on the
use of foreign mercenaries.56 He appealed to the Tuileries for funds
to ensure that his Swiss and German troops were all well paid and
that extra money would be available for the day of reckoning.
Fersen and the queen managed to scrape together nearly a million
French pounds-much of it from Fersen's own fortune-which
they audaciously shipped to Metz wrapped in bolts of white taffeta.
Plans were further jeopardized in the spring, however, when the
new pro-Revolutionary minister of war moved some of the general's best foreign troops to another province."

But Bouille was also concerned about the reliability of the king
himself. The inclusion of the marquis d'Agoult in the escape party
had been conceived to compensate the monarch's lack of experience
in traveling by himself. Then, at the last minute, the royal family
removed d'Agoult to make room for the royal governess Madame
de Tourzel, who had insisted on traveling with her charges as soon as she learned of the escape plan. Bouille was also haunted by the
fear that the monarch would never summon the determination and
constancy to go through with such a bold plan, that he would back
out at the last minute, leaving the conspirators unprotected and vulnerable to arrest for treason.58 Such fears were only increased by the
king's repeated postponement of his departure date. First scheduled
for late May, then early June, the flight was put off successively to
June 12, 15, and 19.59 More unfortunate still, Bouille learned only on
June 15 that the royal family had rescheduled its departure yet again
to the twentieth. By this time all the general's instructions had been
issued, and his troops were moving into position. The necessary
changes in orders, cobbled together at the last moment, would cause
several minor mistakes and inconsistencies that measurably affected
the success of the enterprise. Perhaps most serious of all, a number
of cavalry contingents would be forced to bivouac an extra day in
towns along the way, arousing great nervousness and suspicion
among the local inhabitants."