The king's escape that ended fifty kilometres from safety
The royal family's attempt to escape from Paris to a loyal army on the eastern frontier, on the night of 20 June 1791. Recognised on the road, they were arrested at Varennes, some 50 km short of safety, and brought back to a silent capital. The flight destroyed what trust remained between Louis XVI and the Revolution and gave the idea of a republic its first wide hearing.
Also in the berline: the king's sister Madame Élisabeth, the two royal children and their governess, Madame de Tourzel. Three of the king's bodyguards rode with them as couriers.
Since October 1789 the royal family had lived in the Tuileries Palace in Paris, under the eyes of the National Guard. The devout king was deeply troubled by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and on 18 April 1791, when the family set out to spend Easter at Saint-Cloud, just west of the city, a crowd and the Guard itself refused to let the carriage leave. Louis concluded that he was a prisoner.
The escape had been in preparation for months. The Swedish count Axel von Fersen, a devoted friend of the queen, raised money, obtained a passport made out to a Russian lady, the Baroness de Korff, and ordered a large new berline, a travelling coach roomy enough for the whole family. The Marquis de Bouillé, who commanded the army at Metz, was to receive the king at Montmédy, a fortress close to the frontier of the Austrian Netherlands, and posted detachments of cavalry along the last stretch of the road to meet the coach.
Twenty-three hours on the road east
Late on 20 June, after the evening ceremony of the king's retiring to bed, the family left the Tuileries one by one. Madame de Tourzel, the royal governess, travelled as the baroness; the queen played the children's governess, the king's sister Madame Élisabeth a companion, and the king a valet named Durand. The six-year-old Dauphin was dressed as a girl. Fersen himself, dressed as a coachman, drove them in a hired carriage across the sleeping city to the Saint-Martin barrier, where the berline was waiting, then drove the berline to the first relay at Bondy, east of Paris, and there took his leave.
They were already behind schedule, and the heavy coach lost more time on the road. At the relays the travellers were in no hurry, and the king sometimes got out to stretch his legs. By the time they passed Châlons, in the afternoon of 21 June, they were hours late. At Pont-de-Sommevesle, where the first detachment of hussars was to meet them, the soldiers had waited, drawn the suspicion of the villagers, and withdrawn, believing the plan abandoned.
At Sainte-Menehould, around eight in the evening, the postmaster Jean-Baptiste Drouet looked hard at the man in the berline and thought he knew the face — reputedly from the king's portrait on an assignat, the revolutionary paper money. By the time the town had been roused, the coach was gone. Drouet and a companion rode after it by a shorter way and reached Varennes first.
At Varennes the fresh horses were not where the travellers expected them, and they lost time searching in the dark. Around eleven at night Drouet and the townsmen blocked the bridge; the procureur of the commune, a grocer named Jean-Baptiste Sauce, examined the passport and took the family into his house. A local judge who had lived at Versailles recognised the king, and Louis admitted who he was. By morning National Guards from the surrounding villages filled the streets. Two envoys arrived from Paris with the Assembly's decree, and early on 22 June the berline set off back towards the capital. Bouillé's cavalry reached Varennes too late.
By the time it reached the cavalry posts, the coach was hours behind schedule.
Four days back, through crowds that kept their hats on
The journey back took four days, the berline moving at walking pace among crowds and National Guards. Near Sainte-Menehould a local nobleman, the Comte de Dampierre, rode up to salute the king and was killed by the crowd. Near Épernay three deputies sent by the Assembly — Barnave, Pétion and Latour-Maubourg — met the procession; Barnave and Pétion squeezed into the berline beside the family.
On the evening of 25 June the berline entered Paris. Vast crowds lined the route in silence. Many kept their hats on as the king passed, and National Guards held their muskets reversed, as at a funeral.
“Whoever applauds the king will be beaten; whoever insults him will be hanged.”
In the Tuileries the king had left behind a long declaration addressed to all the French. In it he complained of his treatment since October 1789 and criticised the new constitution and the political clubs; it showed that his acceptance of the Revolution had been reluctant. The Assembly took over the government on 21 June and, on 25 June, suspended the king from his functions.
To save the constitutional monarchy it was about to complete, the Assembly settled on a fiction: the king had not fled but had been carried off. Few in Paris believed it. The Cordeliers Club and the popular press called for his removal, and a republic, until then the idea of a few, began to be argued for openly. When the Assembly cleared the king in mid-July and blamed those around him, the Jacobin ClubGroup: Jacobin Club. The Paris club at the heart of the radical Revolution split and its moderates left to found the Feuillants. On 17 July a crowd gathered on the Champ de Mars to sign a petition against the king; the National Guard under Lafayette fired on it, killing between about a dozen and fifty people.
In September Louis accepted the constitution and was restored to his functions. But the flight had shown the country a king who did not want the Revolution. Fourteen months later the monarchy fell.
