A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys

I. THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES-1

I. THE FLIGHT TO VARENNESI

On the night of Monday, 20th June, in the year 1791, the baked streets of Paris were cooling after a day of cloudless sun. The pavements were emptying and the last hackney coaches were conveying festive citizens homewards. In the Rue de l'Echelle, at the corner where it is cut by the Rue St. Honoré, and where the Hôtel de Normandie stands to-day, a hackney carriage, of the type which was then called a "glass coach," stood waiting by the kerb. It stood opposite the door of one Ronsin, a saddler, as if expecting a fare; but the windows were shuttered, and the honest Ronsin had gone to bed. On the box sat a driver in the ordinary clothes of a coachman, who while he waited took snuff with other cabbies, and with much good-humoured chaff declined invitations to drink.

The hour of eleven struck; the streets grew emptier and darker; but still the coach waited. Presently from the direction of the Tuileries came a hooded lady with two hooded children, who, at a nod from the driver, entered the coach. Then came another veiled lady attended by a servant, and then a stout male figure with a wig and a round hat, who, as he passed the sentries at the palace gate, found his shoe-buckle undone and bent to fasten it, thereby hiding his face. The glass coach was now nearly full; but still the driver waited.

The little group of people all bore famous names. On the box, in the driver's cloak, sat Count Axel Fersen, a young Swedish nobleman who had vowed his life to the service of the Queen of France. The first hooded lady, whose passport proclaimed that she was a Russian gentlewoman, one Baroness de Korff, was the Duchess de Tourzel, the governess of the royal children. The other hooded lady was no other than Madame Elizabeth, the King's sister. One of the children was the little Princess Royal, afterwards known as the Duchess d'Angoulême; the other, also dressed like a girl, was the Dauphin. The stout gentleman in the round hat was King Louis XVI. The coach in the Rue de l'Echelle was awaiting the Queen.

For months the royal family had been prisoners in the Tuileries, while the Revolution marched forward in swift stages. They were prisoners in the strictest sense, for they had been forbidden even the customary Easter visit to St. Cloud . The puzzled, indolent king was no better than a cork tossed upon yeasty waters. Mirabeau was dead—Mirabeau who might have saved the monarchy; now the only hope was to save the royal family, for the shades were growing very dark around it. Marie Antoinette, the Queen, who, as Mirabeau had said, was "the only man the King had about him," had resolved to make a dash for freedom. She would leave Paris, even France , and seek her friends beyond the borders. The National Militia and the National Guards were for the Revolution; but the army of Bouillé on the eastern frontier, composed largely of German mercenaries, would do its general's orders, and Bouillé was staunch for the crown. Count Fersen had organized the plan, and the young Duke de Choiseul, a nephew of the minister of Louis XV., had come to Paris to settle the details. A coach had been built for the journey, a huge erection of leather and wood, of the type then called a berline, painted yellow, upholstered in white velvet, and drawn by no less than eleven horses. It was even now standing outside the eastern gate, and Fersen was waiting with his hackney carriage to conduct the royal fugitives thither. But where was the Queen? Marie Antoinette, dressed as a maid and wearing a broad gipsy hat, had managed to pass the palace doors; but rumours had got abroad, and even as she stood there leaning on a servant's arm the carriage of Lafayette dashed up to the arch, for he had been summoned by the Commandant, who represented the eyes of the National Assembly. The sight flurried her, and she and her servant took the wrong turning. They hastened towards the river, and then back, but found no waiting coach.

The chimes struck midnight, and at long last Fersen from the box in the Rue de l'Echelle saw the figure which he knew so well, the lady in the gipsy hat who was the Queen. The party was now complete. The door was shut; the driver plied his whip, and the coach started northward through the sleeping city. Up the street where Mirabeau had lived they went, till in the Rue de Clichy the coachman stopped to ask a question at a house about the great berline. He was told that it had left half an hour ago. The carriage then turned eastward and passed through the eastern gate. There stood the berline, with two yellow liveried gentlemen of the Guard to act as postilions.

The King and Queen, the two children, Madame Elizabeth, and the so-called Baroness de Korff, free now from the cramped hackney coach, reclined at ease on the broad cushions. The hackney coach was then turned adrift citywards, and was found next morning upset in a ditch. Again Count Fersen took the reins, and as the eastern sky was paling to dawn they reached the end of the first stage, the post and relay station of Bondy.

Fresh horses were waiting and fresh postilions, and one of the gentlemen-in-waiting took Fersen's place on the box. Fersen walked round to the side where the Queen sat and took a brief farewell. Marie Antoinette's hand touched his and slipped upon his finger a broad ring of very pale gold. The young Swede turned and rode towards Bourget and the highway to Brussels , so passing out of the history of France .

II

Daylight broadened and the great berline rumbled along the highroad, being presently joined by a cabriolet carrying two of the Queen's maids and a collection of baggage. The royal family, no longer drowsy in the fresh morning air, fell into good spirits. A matter of an hour and a half had been wasted at the start, but now the coach travelled briskly at a speed of something like seven miles an hour. They believed the escape to have already succeeded, and talked happily of their plans. Soon the suburbs and the market gardens were left behind, and long before they reached the posting station of Meaux they were in a land of deep meadows and cornfields.

Their plan was to go by way of Châlons, Ste. Menehould, and Clermont to Varennes, where Bouillé would await them. But meantime cavalry patrols from Bouillé's army were to come west into Champagne and be ready at each stage to form up behind and make a screen between them and their enemies. The weak points of the scheme are clear. Had the royal family divided itself and gone by different routes to the frontier in humbler equipages there would have been little risk of capture. But a coach so vast as the new yellow berline was bound to excite inquiry as soon as it left the main highways and entered the side roads of Champagne and the Argonne . Moreover, the cavalry patrols of Bouillé, most of them Germans, would certainly rouse comment and suspicion, for the folk of the little towns as far as the Meuse were vehement for the Revolution. These clumsy contrivances were sops to the King, who had as little ingenuity and imagination as he had resolution. Had Marie Antoinette and Fersen had a free hand they would have planned differently.

At Meaux the travellers were in the rich Marne valley, and presently they turned off the main road which runs by Epernay , and struck across the tableland, made famous by the late war, where flow the streams of the Grand and Petit Morin. They had a picnic breakfast in the coach, drinking from a single loving cup, and using their loaves as platters on which to cut the meat. All were very happy and at ease. The children walked up the long hill from the Marne valley. At the post-houses the King got out to stretch his legs and talk to the bystanders. It was a risky business, for the face of the man in the round hat was on every Treasury note. Louis was indeed recognized. At a place called Viels Maisons a postilion recognized him but said nothing; it was not his business, he argued in true peasant fashion.

It grew scorchingly hot, and the wide grassy fields slumbered under a haze of heat. About two they reached a place called Chaintrix, where, in the post-house, was one Vallet, who had been in Paris . He saw and recognized the king and told the news to his father-in-law, the postmaster. Both were enthusiastic royalists, but it is probable that the news spread to some who were not, and news flies fast through a countryside. This Vallet was indeed a misfortune, for he insisted himself on riding with the leaders, and twice let the horses down, so that another hour at least was wasted.

About four o'clock in the afternoon the berline, accompanied by the cabriolet, reached Châlons. Here secrecy was obviously impossible, for it was a big town filled with people who had seen both King and Queen. But these townsfolk did not seek trouble for themselves; it was not their business to stop their Majesties if they had a fancy for a jaunt to the east. It would seem that one man at least tried to force their hand, and, finding he could do nothing with the municipal authorities, galloped on ahead, passing the coach as it halted at the foot of a hill, and carrying the news to more dangerous regions. But at any rate the berline was now free of Châlons, which had been considered the main danger, and a straight lonely road led for twenty-five miles through the Champagne Pouilleuse to Ste. Menehould at the foot of the Argonne . In seven or eight miles they would be at the tiny bridge of Somme-Vesle, where the infant trickle of the river Vesle ran in a culvert below the road. There stood a long farmhouse close up to the kerb, and nothing else could be seen in the desolate grey-green countryside. On the Châlons side there was a slight rise, and beyond that a hill, so that dwellers at the post-house had no long prospect of the road to the west. Had the configuration of the land been otherwise, history might have been written differently.

Now at Somme-Vesle the first of Bouillé's cavalry guards were to meet and form up behind the King. The posse was under the Duke de Choiseul, and consisted chiefly of German mercenaries. It professed to be an escort for a convoy of treasure, but the excuse was lame. What treasure could be coming that way, and if it was a cavalry patrol from Bouillé's army, why was it flung out towards the base and not towards the enemy?

According to the time-table drawn up by Fersen and Choiseul , the King would arrive at Somme-Vesle at one o'clock. Choiseul , with his half-troop of German hussars, arrived in time and waited anxiously through the grilling afternoon. Long afterwards he told the story to Alexandre Dumas, the novelist. At first, apart from his fifty mercenaries, there was no one there except the ostlers in the post-house and a few peasants in the fields. Presently suspicion grew. The peasants began to leave their work and crowd round the hussars till the soldiers were greatly outnumbered. There was some trouble afoot with the tenants of a neighbouring landowner, and it was believed that Choiseul 's men were there to exercise force. Word came that the neighbouring villages were rising, for the Revolution had made almost every village a little military post.

The long dusty road remained baked and empty, and the barren downs seemed to swim in the afternoon glare. The road was silent, but not so the neighbourhood of the post-house. Peasants crowded round with questions. Why did not the foreigners unsaddle? Why did they not ride down the road to meet their treasure? Presently the rumour spread, Heaven knows how! that the King was expected to pass, and the crowd became greater. Choiseul sat on his horse through the sultry hours till he looked at his watch and found that it was five o'clock.

Clearly the King had not started at all. That seemed the only sane conclusion. He gave the order to wheel about and return. He had fresh horses put into his own travelling carriage and gave a note for the officers in command at Ste. Menehould and Clermont, mentioning that he doubted whether the treasure would come that day. Then he took his hussars back along the road they had come, and at the hamlet of Orbeval turned to the left into the Argonne forest in case his appearance at Ste. Menehould should arouse suspicion. By a little after half-past five the last hussar had gone, the peasants had moved off to supper, and the white road was again deserted.