When the King Took Flight (33 page)

For the most part, the royalist conspirators of 1791 did far better than their patriot opponents. After their release from prison
through the general amnesty of September, Choiseul, Goguelat,
Damas, and the three bodyguards soon joined General Bouille and
his sons in exile. All but the elder Bouille survived both the Revolution and the Napoleonic period, to reenter France after 1814, honored as heroes by the conservative Restoration government. Axel
von Fersen also survived the Revolution. With singular audacity, he
had slipped into Paris in February 1792 from his exile in Brussels,
visiting the queen one last time at the Tuileries palace. Eighteen
months later, crushed by the news of Marie's execution, he returned
to Sweden. "If only I had been able to die at her side!" he wrote to
his sister in despair. He never married and continued to refer to the
queen with great feeling even as he rose to a position of eminence
in the Swedish court.26 He was massacred during a popular uprising
in Stockholm on June 20, 18io. It was nineteen years to the day
since he had launched the great escape that came so close to changing the destiny of France.

DID THEY DESERVE THEIR FATE, these men and women, celebrated or humble, commoner or king, almost all of whom had begun the year 1789 with such firm hopes for a better future? For
more than two hundred years historians have struggled with the
problem of violence and terror in the French Revolution. Was there
something in the nature of the social situation in France or even in
the ideas and political culture on the eve of the Revolution that
made the slide into violence inevitable? Was there a necessary link
between the inception of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror,
between the National Assembly and the Committee of Public
Safety, between the Bastille and the guillotine?

The story of the king's flight cautions us against making such
simple linear connections. It serves to remind us of the contingent,
unpredictable character of the Revolution-and perhaps of every
major historical movement. What might have happened in the history of France, in the history of Europe, if events had taken only a
slightly different course, and Louis and his family had reached
Montmedy and subsequently taken refuge across the border with
the Austrian army? In fact, during those two days in June when everyone believed that Louis was gone for good and that war was imminent, there had been an extraordinary surge of unity in the Assembly, in Paris, and throughout the nation. Might that harmony have been sustained if the king had not returned and war had broken out? Might the French have moved immediately toward a republic-as even moderates like Lafayette and Dupont de Nemours
were suggesting on June 21? Might the Terror have been avoided or
at least greatly attenuated? And what of that other parallel universe-less likely, to be sure-in which Louis resisted the influence
of the queen and never fled Paris at all; in which he adapted himself to the role of citizen king that most of the French so ardently desired? Might France have then evolved peacefully toward
genuine democracy-following more closely the path of events in
the United States? The solution to this string of "what-ifs" is, of
course, imponderable and impossible to resolve. Yet such reflections
underscore the potential impact on the Revolution and on history
of certain critical events.

The liberal regime initiated by the French in 1789, so close
in many respects to the American system just under construction
across the Atlantic, was not necessarily doomed to failure. There
can be no doubt that on the eve of the king's flight the leaders of
the National Assembly confronted an array of extremely difficult
problems and sources of instability. Some of these problems were
clearly of their own making. The deputies' decision to reform the
Catholic church and to compel much of the clergy to swear a loyalty oath had brought deep unhappiness to whole segments of the
French clerical and lay population. Other difficulties seemed to arise
out of the nature of the Revolutionary process itself. No development was more typical in France after 1789 than a progressive questioning of authority, a questioning that quickly penetrated many
levels of society. In the army, in the national guard, in the guilds, in
the presence of the tax collector, within the civic culture of the cities, almost everywhere men and women began refusing to follow
the rules established by either old regime or new, often with extremely disruptive results. At the same time, the very act of transforming society had aroused opposition among those whose vested
interests and social positions had come under attack. By the spring
of 1791, intransigent nobles and aristocratic bishops living in self imposed exile across the Rhine were already threatening to reimpose the old Regime through violence and the force of arms.

Yet the leaders of the Assembly were well aware of these problems. Although they would never have considered reestablishing the
rights of nobles or rescinding the church reforms, they had made a
great effort to promote toleration, establishing provisions for those
who chose not to accept the religious reforms, and attempting to
handle disputes with nobles and refractories in an orderly fashion
through the regular court system. The Assembly also set out as rapidly as possible to establish a whole new set of administrative and
judicial structures. By June of 1791 most of these structures were
already in place and functioning, and it could be argued that they
substantially reduced-though by no means eliminated political
and social unrest in the provinces and restrained the decline in
civil obedience. Moreover, the Assembly could continue to draw on
deep reserves of support for the new regime from common men
and women, not only in Paris but in communities large and small
throughout the nation. The reaction of the citizens of Varennes to
the crisis of June was a case in point.

In the spring of 1791 the deputies had been hopeful that with the
completion of the constitution and the installation of a permanent
new regime, the Revolutionary period would come to an end. And
it is not impossible that the constitutional monarchy might have
worked and eventually returned some measure of stability to the
nation; it is not impossible that the period of state-sponsored violence and terror might have been avoided, if only the monarch himself, the central personage in the new system, had given his wholehearted support. At the beginning of June the majority of the
French did think this was possible. The majority-especially outside Paris-continued to believe that their "citizen king" endorsed
the Revolution. They continued to imagine Louis as a central father
figure around whom the sovereign nation might rally.

But in opting to flee from Paris at a critical moment, when the
constitution was almost complete, and in repudiating his solemn
oath to uphold the Revolution, the king greatly contributed to the destabilization of the state and the society. In the short term, his action exerted a deeply traumatic effect on the whole population. A
great wave of emotion swept across the country, emotions that
ranged from crippling anxiety to outbursts of violence to chainreaction panics over imagined invasions. Rapidly thereafter patriots took hold of themselves and organized as best they could for
the war that they all assumed to be inevitable. But the king's flight
also initiated a sweeping reconceptualization of the political nation.
Within days after the news had been received, everyone realized
that the king had not been kidnapped, that he had fled of his own
volition. For a great many people the shock was brutal. They had
imagined the monarch as a good father, and now they experienced a
profound sense of desertion and betrayal. In language that was often exceptionally harsh and angry, Louis was denounced as a liar, a
coward, a traitor, a despot. The reaction was particularly strong in
Paris, where the Cordeliers Club and the network of fraternal societies quickly launched a popular movement to depose the king and
abolish the monarchy. The succession of petitions, marches, and
street demonstrations constituted a signal moment in the history of
popular Parisian radicalism and the emergence of the sans-culottes
as a political force. But in many other areas of the country as well,
during that three-week period of uncertainty when the National
Assembly chose not to make a public judgment, a minority of people-far more than historians have realized-reflected seriously on
the possibility of ousting the present king, even on the possibility of
creating a republic.

The king's flight also enormously reinforced the arguments of all
those who held to a conspiratorial view of the world. As the National Assembly delved into the affair, it became patently clear that
a comprehensive plot had been afoot for months, involving numerous participants in Paris, in the army, and among the emigres in
Germany; entailing, as well, a pattern of boldfaced deceit on the
part of Louis himself. Never, since the Revolution began, had there
been more extensive proof of the reality of grand conspiracy at the
highest levels. Almost everywhere nobles and refractory priests, already suspected before the crisis, now became the objects of ex treme mistrust. The popular suspicions were intensified by the new
waves of emigration as noblemen in large numbers, inspired by the
king's attempted flight, crossed the frontiers and joined counterrevolutionary armies.

Far more than ever before, the Revolutionary leaders internalized this "paranoid" perspective. In Paris members of the Feuillant
faction came to suspect not only the refractory priests and the
emigre nobles, but also those intellectuals and popular groups who
were pushing for greater democracy. Wielding the logic of expediency, the need to save the Revolution at all cost from the enemiesreal or imagined-who now seemed to threaten it, patriot leaders
readily violated the very laws and the "rights of man" that they
themselves had only just proclaimed. For the first time, they crossed
the threshold of state-sponsored violence, vigorously promoting
the armed repression of the demonstration at the Champ de Mars.
Thereafter, in both Paris and the provinces, whole categories of citizens were rounded up, without any attempt to determine individual
guilt or responsibility. Freedom of the press, freedom of assembly,
habeas corpus, judicial due process-rights guaranteed in the constitution-were all set aside in the name of the greater end of preserving the Revolutionary state. In this sense, the weeks following
the flight to Varennes marked an anticipation, a prefiguration of
both the psychology and the procedures of the Terror.

Louis' attempt to escape the Revolution did not in itself "cause"
the great expansion of state-sponsored violence in 1793-94. In the
summer of 1791 there were as yet no Committee of Public Safety,
no Revolutionary tribunal, no guillotine. Only a small number of
people lost their lives during the entire crisis. And the war that everyone had feared did not in fact begin so soon. By the end of August, the Assembly was self-consciously attempting to end the state
of emergency and return to a rule of law. Yet this single event, the
flight to Varennes, with all its ramifications and reverberations, profoundly influenced the social and political climate of France. For
better or for worse, it helped set the nation on a new and perilous
trajectory toward the future.

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