THE KING'S DISASTROUS FLIGHT REVISITED

HISTORIANS AGREE THAT THE FUGUE'S SUCCESS WOULD HAVE BROUGHT CIVIL WAR, BUT NONE SAY THAT SUCH WAS LOUIS'S AIM 

They explain the failure by ignorance of the change in mentalities since the fall of the Bastille, Marie-Antoinette's habit of luxury, the delay in meeting the escort, the mistakes of its commanders and bad luck. 

Michelet emphasizes not only the fear of nobles' return but also that of invasion: "The King had chosen to bring to our fields the thieving, hungry, outrageous cavalry of hussars and pandours, to spoil the life of France and assure famine under the hooves of horses." 

-- p.176.

But neither he nor his successors ask why three highly visible guards wore bright yellow liveries that recalled those of the detested local lord, who as leader of the émigrés would lead their dreaded invasion.

The Evasion of Louis XVI  (movie referenced on the preceding page)

Absent: the guards wearing liveries that recalled those of the hated local lord, who as the émigrés' leader would command invasion. The movie skips them because historians do. 

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That detail leads to pondering other baffling choices:

• Why didn't the royals take separate routes in ordinary vehicles, a method that would have been almost certainly have worked? 

• Innumerable nobles had left since the taking of the Bastille. 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.

• Louis and Marie-Antoinette should have been safer yet, since they did not intend to cross the frontier. Taking different routes, wearing commoners' clothes and using ordinary vehicles, while the children travelled separately with their governess, seems almost foolproof.

Instead, they travelled together — Louis, Marie-Antoinette, the Dauphin, the princess, their governess, Louis's sister, the three guards and two chambermaids — in two vehicles, a colossal coach, painted green and black or yellow and red* and a smaller carriage for the maids and baggage, plus two guards on horses and another riding as a postillon on the roof: 11 travellers in all, plus two coachmen.

*Images on the last page show both striking combinations.

• Why were men whose presence would have been invaluable left out? The Count of d'Agoult, who knew the route, was ready to come in the coach and Count Axel von Fersen, an experienced fighter, offered 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

• Yet Marie-Antoinette's hairdresser, Monsieur Léonard, was to join the group by another route.

Granted, the queen would need a coiffeur.

But given the number of émigrés who had settled beyond the border, other stylists must have been able to create upscale looks.

 

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• As for the guards, why choose subordinates who had not fought, were trained to follow orders but not take individual action and who did not know the route, when battle-hardened veterans who did know it had been suggested?

-- Inexperience, one supposes, unless they had been among the volunteers in the American Revolution: otherwise, Memoirs of 

Madame la Duchesse de Tourvel (the children's governess), p.193.

 

• Why were hunting knives the guards' sole arms?

-- Michelet, p. 155.

• Why the escort? It was not there to fight.

Historians assume that it was there to halt pursuers, forgetting that without advance notice a large force could not find fresh horses at relays. (In fact the government would rely on envoys rather than troops, sending two to Varennes and three to Chalons.)

As well, since Louis wrote the commander to cancel the soldiers if he felt that they destabilized the population, he could not have thought them militarily necessary.  

• Why was a first force of 40 hussars stationed after Chalons, at a distance that would make pursuit (should there be one) on tired mounts impossible? Why were several hundred other combattants be staggered along the route, to join the cortège as it passed by?

• Since Louis himself found them unnecessary for his protection, why have them appear to a population so fearful of invasion, wearing striking uniforms to boot? 

 

Zoom

Zoom

Hessian Ttoops during the American War of Independence, 1799 / zoom

All this does make the flight does seem "An Incomprehensible Odyssey"* if one thinks the king's only purpose was to retire near the border.

* Chapter heading in Varennes, the Death of Royalty by Mona Ozouf, 2005 (in French). All historians, to my knowledge, share that perplexity.

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But if it was also meant to announce the return of the Old Regime by war, its organization makes sense:  

•  Absolute traditionalism counterbalanced the disorientation that the royal family's commoner disguises would bring. So:

• Agoult could not break the custom of separating the governess from the children without her consent by taking her place in the coach. 

• Fersen could not ride alongside it because only a high-ranking French noble could accompany the king on a mission of such importance, and he was Swedish.

• The presence of the queen's hairdresser announced that the Old Regime was back.

• Beyond Chalons, the cortège would become increasingly impressive as each group of fighters joined in. It would resemble the displacement of Louis's predecessors, spectacular and slow, rolling on as the population cheered as it passed.   

The huge, brightly-colored coach would be at the heart of that procession.

• The parade would culminate with a royal entry in the citadel of Montmédy on a luminous June evening, the escort in its dashing uniforms creating the show that surprise would have kept the town from preparing. 

• The guards, perched as postillons above and behind the coach in their bright yellow liveries, would announce the return of the local lord and nobles as a whole.

The liveries would trumpet the return of the Old Regime, the uniforms that that would happen through war and the king's flight, that he approved.  

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When recognized at Varennes Louis said that he did not wish to leave France, and was going to Montmédy only to observe foreign troop movements. 

-- Tourzel, p. 200

But the letter he left on his desk stated that he would abrogate the Constitution. He would wear this magnificent costume, his sole personal baggage, to make the announcement that would be the entry's crowning moment. 

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

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Deciphering his seemingly incomprehensible behavior

reveals the full explosiveness of a choice

that changed the history of France.

 

More broadly,

what seems not to make sense 

can be a clue to unfamiliar ways of thinking,

of which those bright yellow liveries are an example.

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Next,

End of the 1500-year-old monarchy