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..."

-- Le Roi s'enfuit by Timothy Tackett, 2004, pp. 101. et 89

Other historians leave out the liveries entirely. The movie fits their narratives, the drawing fits the sources:

            L'Evasion de Louis XVI (please scroll down)

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 Tackett, Terror, pp. 128-129.

• The main difficulty was slipping out of the Tuileries palace, with its 2000 guards, servants and spies. Since the royals did not intend to cross the frontier they should have been even safer than the émigrés, on condition of taking different routes and blending 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 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 last 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, 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

• Include Marie-Antoinette's hairdresser, Monsieur Léonard (who took another route with no problem)?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, aide-major of the royal Guards, to give him three to carry letters to the princes, his brothers; and ignoring their real destination, he [d'Agoult] gave them 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

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• 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 (please read on). The contradiction indicates how little importance  he gives it.. 

 

• Have an escort? Since Louis wrote the commander to cancel it if he felt that it destabilized the population, he did not think it necessary for protection.

• Stagger the several hundred horsemen along the route after Châlons 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 Châlons was the last point at which exhausted horses could be exchanged for fresh ones (assuming that enough mounts could be quickly found for a large force), and the royalist troops were stationed beyond it.

As well, protection would not explain staggering the troops.

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

Zoom

Zoom

Hessian Ttoops during the American War of Independence, 1799 / 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." 

--  Citations: Michelet, and the chapter heading of Varennes by Mona Ozouf, 2005. That view is uncontested.

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But if the puzzles are seen in the context of announcing the Old Regime's return, they make sense. 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 Reims for his coronation and to Cherbourg (in 1786): On both occasions the enthusiastic reception confirmed his belief in provincial popularity. Marie-Antoinette had gone to Paris many times, but for festivities alone. Then they rarely ventured out of the Tuileries.

And the king had to appeal to the émigrés massed on the border. Whatever the circumstances, he had no choice but to travel in a commoner's disguise. Worse, by coming with his family (for that necessity please read on) he was obliged to appear a subordinate, shocking a society based on hierarchy by birth. 

To convince those nobles that he would restore their rights he had to convince them that he would bring back the Old Regime in full, not an adulterated version of it. So he sacrificed practicality to tradition:  

• The family staying together with as large an entourage as possible evoked the royal displacements that had taken place for centuries.   

• Retaining the governess meant retaining traditional privilege. 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 that rules might change.

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

• As Monsieur Léonard was famous for his court creations, his presence would in itself indicate an unchanged restoration. 

• The escort: The French and German horsemen would join in group by group, becoming a cortege like those of the royal entries.*

*Châlons's arc of triumph, built to honor Marie-Antoinette when she passed through the town to marry the prince (in 1770), shows that the ancient tradition remained. (The arc is still the city's symbol.)

• The liveried guards:* Perched on top of the coach or galloping beside it they announced the return of the centuries-old ways, most emphatically by their coats resembling those of the lord of many of the lands and head of the émigré army.

*At the inquiry they 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  the king's cousin the Prince of Condé is impossible. But what else could they say?

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

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

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The guards in their 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

to provoke invasion and chaos.

For more instances of how dismissing

what contradicts our assumptions 

leads to missing the point,

 please click.

For a catastrophic result of such myopia, 

 please click and scroll down.

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Next,

End of the 1500-year-old monarchy