THE KING'S DISASTROUS FLIGHT REVISITED: THE GUARDS' YELLOW LIVERIES AND OTHER PUZZLES

"NO ONE RECOGNIZED THE ROYAL COUPLE BUT EVERYONE RECOGNIZED THE YELLOW LIVERIES OF THE PRINCE DE CONDÉ"

Twelve pages later the prince turns out to be "The detested émigré leader of a counter-revolutionary army, and lord of numerous lands in the region..."

-- The King Takes Flight (in the French translation,"Le Roi s'enfuit") by Timothy Tackett, 2004, pp. 101. et 89

Other historians leave out the liveries entirely. The movie fits their narratives...

            L'Evasion de Louis XVI (please scroll down)

The drawing fits the sources.

Harald Wolff

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More enigmas: Why...

• Didn't the royals take separate routes in ordinary vehicles, a method that would almost certainly have succeeded? 

• The king's brother, travelling with an English passport and a single servant, left France the same day without incident, as did his wife and Axel von Fersen. When a year later the royalist writer René Chateaubriand and his brother tried to cross the frontier disguised as wine merchants, the problem they encountered came from a sleepwalking valet, not their disguises or passports. By the end of 1791 about 10,000 nobles had left the country, passing through Paris with no attempt to hide heading for the frontier.

-- Valet, Chateaubriand, Mémoires, ed. 1973; émigrés, 283-284 and Tackett, The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution, pp. 128-129.

• The main difficulty was slipping out of the Tuileries palace, with its 2000 guards, servants and spies. That accomplished, the royals should have been even safer than the émigrés since they did not intend to cross the frontier. They had only to take different routes and blend into the environment by their vehicles and clothing.

Yet they travelled together — Louis, Marie-Antoinette, the Dauphin, the princess, their governess, Louis's sister, two chambermaids in a second coach and the three guards: 11 travellers, with a main coach that was not only colossal but painted in vibrant green and black or yellow and red. (Prints on the preceding page show the two versions.)

• Leave out men whose presence would have been invaluable? The Count d'Agoult, who knew the route, was ready to come in the main coach and Fersen, an experienced fighter, to ride alongside it. Passionately in love with Marie-Antoinette, he would have given his life for the royal family.

One of his creations / zoom

• Include Marie-Antoinette's hairdresser, Monsieur Léonard (who travelled by another route)? In the provincial town the queen would need her own coiffeur, but he could have arrived next day.

• Bring three guards when one sufficed to ride ahead and have relays prepare fresh horses? Why choose subordinates who had been trained to follow orders but not take initiatives, who did not know the route and who had never fought when battle-hardened veterans had been proposed? Why were they unarmed? 

"The King 

[...] had asked Monsieur d'Agoult, head of the royal Guards, to give him three to carry letters to the princes, his brothers; ignoring their real destination, he [d'Agoult] chose the first that happened to be on hand. It would be an injustice to doubt their courage and devotion;

 

[...] but accustomed by their status to perfect obedience, and having never been commanders themselves, such an enterprise was beyond their powers. They did not dare take an initiative, would ask for orders from the king that they would execute even at the peril of their lives, but they lacked the audacity essential to the circumstance in which they found themselves."  

-- Madame de Tourzel, pp. 257-258

.

• Dress them in liveries resembling those of the hated overlord, a choice demanded by the king himself? 

"Louis had personally called Moustier [one of the guards] on June 17 and asked him to find courrier outfits for him and his two companions: yellow coats, leather trousers and round hats."

                 -- Tackett p.84. Later he says the choice accidental. The contradiction shows that he finds the extraordinary fact unimportant. 

 

• The escort? That Louis did not think it necessary for protection is shown by not hiding his identity once away from Paris, and by writing to the commander to cancel it if it destabilized the population.

• Have the several hundred horsemen staggered along the route to progressively join the cortège as it passed by?  

"Monsieur de Bouillé had placed the troops to protect the royal family in the following way: at Pont-de-Somme-Vesle, 40 hussards commanded by the Duke of Choiseul; at Sainte-Menehould, 40 dragoons commanded by Captain d'Andouins; at Clermont, 140 dragoons commanded by Count Damas. At Varennes, 60 hussards commanded by Mr. de Bouillé's son and at Dun, 100 hussars commanded by their chief, Mr. Deslon. »

 -- Madame de Tourzel, p. 612 n.87

It is assumed that their role was to protect the royals in case of pursuit. But their stationing began beyond the last point (Châlons) at which exhausted horses could be exchanged for fresh ones — if enough mounts for a large force could be found unexpectedly.

As well, protection does not explain staggering the troops.

• The striking uniforms made the horsemen more obvious, so more frightening:

                                                                                               French royalist dragoons / zoom

         

US unabhaengigkeitskrieg ("American War of Independence, " in which Hessian troops fought), 1799 (no other data) / zoom

"The king had chosen to bring to our fields the thieving, hungry, outrageous cavalry of hussars and plunderers to spoil the life of France and assure famine under the hooves of horses," wrote Michelet. 

The fiasco is called "a miracle of recklessness," "an incomprehensible Odyssey." 

-- "Recklessness," Michelet; "incomprehensible Odyssey," chapter heading of Varennes by Mona Ozouf, 2005. The view is uncontested.

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But in the context of announcing the Old Regime's return, the puzzles not only make sense, but were inevitable. Ensconced in their bubble* the royals believed that outside Paris the population remained attached to a society thought determined by God.

*Louis had left the court only twice, when he went to Champagne for his coronation at Reims and to Normandy to view the new military port at Cherbourg (in 1786): The enthusiastic reception confirmed his belief in provincial popularity. Marie-Antoinette's view was as limited since thought she had gone to Paris many times, it was only for festivities.

And the king had to appeal to the émigrés massed on the border. No matter how he travelled he would have to disguise as a commoner. Even worse given their hierarchical beliefs, by coming with his family (for that necessity please read on), come as a subordinate.

To restore their rights, that is, to obtain their dedicated support, he would have to seem determined to bring back the Old Regime in full, not an adulterated version of it. That explains:

• Coming with the royal family and as much of an entourage as possible, to evoke the royal displacements that had taken place for centuries.

• Retaining the governess. Her official position meant not separating her from the children without her consent and though she said that she would have ceded her place in the coach if asked, such change would have implied more to follow.  

Excluding Fersen. Custom demanded that only a high-ranking Frenchman accompany the king on a mission of such importance, and he was Swedish.

• Adding Monsieur Léonard. Famous for his court coiffures, his very presence would indicate immutability. 

• The escort: By joining in group by group to the popular applause that had accompanied such processions in the past, the cortège would resemble the royal entries* that the surprised town would not have been able to prepare.  

*Châlons's arc of triumph, built to honor Marie-Antoinette on her way to marry Louis in 1770, shows that the ancient tradition remained. (It is still the city's symbol.)

• The liveries:* By resembling those of the prince of Condé — the king's cousin, the lord of many of the lands through which the coach passed and the émigré army's commander — they trumpeted the Old Regime's return.

*At the inquiry the guards stated that the choice was made by chance. But liveries identified nobles (that is how everyone knew who had visited the fallen favorite du Barry after the death of the king, Madame Campon says in her memoir). That the guards, who were nobles themselves, not know the liveries of the king's cousin is impossible. But what else could they say?

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The plan: On a luminous June evening the king would exchanged his commoner dress for this magnificent costume, make a grandiose entry into Montmédy and proclaim to the awed residents and delighted émigrés that the Old Regime was back:  

Portait de Louis XVI of France by Antoine-François Callent, 1786, zoom

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The liveries are the key to the epic. They...

• Announced to all eastern France (news travelling from market to market) the return of the Old Regime.

• Contributed to the fury that made rescuing the royals impossible. 

• Directed hate of the lord toward a ruler who until then was thought paternal.  

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The choice shows king thought

indecisive but kindly 

meant to deliberately provoke

invasion and chaos.

For more examples of dismissing

 what contradicts our assumptions, 

 please click.

For how such myopia can bring catastrophe now, 

 please click and scroll down.

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Next,

End of the 1500-year-old monarchy