When the King Took Flight (29 page)

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.

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

Yet all such proposals immediately posed an array of difficulties.
Could the Assembly itself simply declare Louis deposed, as the citizens of Nantes seemed to advocate, or would he first have to be formally tried, presumably before the new supreme court established in
Orleans? What would happen if such a tribunal found the king not
guilty? And if the king were removed, who would take his place?
The king's legal successor, the young dauphin Louis-Charles, was
only five years old, and the problem of choosing a trustworthy
regent seemed altogether daunting. The most likely such regent
would have been the duke d'Orleans, the king's prorevolutionary
cousin. But many patriots distrusted the duke almost as much as
they distrusted Louis. Perhaps, in the face of such difficulties, it
would be preferable to modify the constitution itself. And a small
group of correspondents proposed various schemes for severely
limiting the authority of the king, leaving him only "the ghost of
his authority," as the officials of Brest proposed. "Never," wrote the
town leaders in Lyon, "will you see Louis XVI regain the confidence that he has lost. If we must have a hereditary king sleeping
on the throne, he must never have so much power that he could
abuse it." Some suggested ending the king's right to veto legislation, a power unthinkable in the hands of "a cowardly and deceitful
king." Others recommended giving all real authority to a cabinet of
ministers, ministers to be chosen by the legislature or even by the
people, moving France ever closer to the English parliamentary system. "If the monarchy is to be preserved," wrote the Jacobins of
Dijon, "the French nation must so restrain its authority that the
people will always be protected from the threat of despotism.""

But should France, in fact, conserve the monarchy? Clearly, a
number of groups throughout the nation, like the club of Dole,
were seriously considering the next step in the train of logic: to "cut
the Gordian knot" and eliminate the monarchy altogether." In the
context of eighteenth-century Europe, it was a stunning proposi tion, flying in the face of almost all contemporary thought, all common wisdom as to the danger and impracticality of a republic for so
large and populous a territory as France. Only a handful of groups
were prepared to take such a collective position. Those who did justified themselves with extraordinary rhetorical periods and angry
denunciations against Louis XVI and the whole regime, often seeking inspiration from the classical heroes of republican Rome. None
seems to have mentioned the nascent American republic, considered
far too rural and sparsely populated to be comparable with France.

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

Henry IV Shocked by the Present State of Louis XVI. Good King Henry is appalled to find his descendant transformed into a pig. The caricaturist plays on
the king's reputation for overdrinking, portraying him "drowning his shame"
in a wine barrel. Empty bottles of the "wine of June 21," the "wine of the aristocracy," litter the ground.

National guardsmen in the small town of Saint-Claud, in southwestern France, thundered against their "barbarous king" who had
"sold his trust, his glory, and his country to a race of foreigners," while "harboring in his breast the horrible plan of overseeing the
massacre of the French people." They then enumerated the twelve
centuries of "scourges with which the scepters of kings have devastated the earth," before urging the National Assembly to overthrow
the modern-day Tarquins-the last kings of Rome-and to establish a republic. Club members in the nearby town of Niort appealed
to a contract theory. Louis XVI "has violated the treaty he had contracted with the nation; he betrayed his oath, thus the pact is broken
and henceforth the nation has the incontestable right to end his political existence." "If we must do battle with the Tarquins," they
concluded, "never forget that all true Frenchmen have already pronounced the oath of Brutus"-the Roman leader who had led their
overthrow. "Citizens and compatriots," intoned the national guard
of Arras, "the book of destiny is now open! Great events have
brought forth great treason; but an atrocious crime, secretly plotted,
can yield unexpected good fortune. Let us now forget that we have
a king and he will be a thing of the past."32

How patriots in a small number of French provincial towns
arrived at such positions is by no means clear. In the case of
Clermont-Ferrand, Marie-Jeanne Roland, the Parisian patriot with
ties to the Cordeliers Club, is known to have sent regular advice on
fostering support for a republic to one of the local patriot leaders.33
It is not impossible that partisans of republicanism in Arras and
Chartres had been influenced by the rhetoric of their own radical
deputies, Robespierre and Petion respectively. But other townspeople seem to have adopted such positions independently, before
letters and petitions could have arrived from Paris. And indeed,
the single most important inspiration in the provinces for the destruction of the monarchy came not from Paris at all, but from
Montpellier.

The origins of republicanism in this small provincial capital and
university town near the Mediterranean remain rather mysterious.
In their 1789 statement of grievances, signed by several of the future radicals, townsmen had revealed themselves unusually fervent
in their support of the king.3" The first motion to abolish the mon archy came on June 27, only one day after the town had learned
of Louis' arrest in Varennes and almost certainly before the arrival
of republican petitions from Paris. The proposal was presented to
the local patriotic society by Jacques Goguet, a twenty-four-yearold physician, only recently graduated from Montpellier's medical
school. But it was enthusiastically adopted by much of the local
leadership, not only by the club, but by the town, district, and departmental administrators as well35 In its final version, approved on
June 29, the petition to the National Assembly was tightly argued
and succinct. The present monarch, the members of the club argued, "is debased, and we despise him too much to hate him or fear
him. We leave to the law courts the sword of vengeance. We ask
only that henceforth the French might have no other king but themselves." And once again, the demand was buttressed with a reference to antiquity: "All that remains, for us to become true Romans,
is the hatred and the expulsion of kings. The first of these is already
a fact. We await your actions to ensure the second." "Today," they
concluded, "all prejudices have been destroyed and the people are
enlightened. Popular opinion allows you, requires you to deliver us
up from the evil of kings."36