When the King Took Flight (21 page)

After much wrangling, the Assembly opted for a middle position.
Responsibility for the flight to Varennes would be determined by
the Assembly itself, which would establish itself as a de facto court
of inquiry. Investigations into the affair would be supervised by two
of the Assembly's regular committees, the Committees on Research
and Reports. All those outside the royal family who had taken part
in the escape and who had been captured-the three bodyguards,
the nurses, Madame de Tourzel, Choiseul, Goguelat, and the other
principal commanders-would be imprisoned and carefully examined. The king and queen, however, would be given favored treatment and questioned in their quarters at the palace. A special commission of deputies would then be established to consider all the
evidence and make a recommendation to the full Assembly. But at
the same time the Assembly made the critical decision to continue
the suspension of the king's powers. His right to sanction decrees
would remain in abeyance, and all executive activities would be exercised by the ministers and the Assembly's committees.15

Three deputies, all eminent men of law, were chosen by the Assembly to question the royal couple. The king's interview took
place on the evening of June 26, just twenty-four hours after his return. The queen, however, postponed her meeting with the deputies until the next day, supposedly because she was still in her bath, but
in reality so that she could make certain her story matched that of
the king. The story agreed upon was the same they had carefully
prepared while in Monsieur Sauce's bedroom and had then recounted to Barnave and Petion during the return from Varennes.
The king had never intended to leave the country, but only to travel
to Montmedy, where he and his family could be safe from the
threats and insults they had encountered in Paris. He had entered
into no relations with foreign powers. He had been surprised during
his travels to discover that people everywhere in France supported
the new constitution. For this reason, as Lindet put it, he was "prepared to put aside his personal unhappiness" with the Revolution
and to cooperate. Much of the story was no doubt accurate as far as
it went. The denial of links with foreign governments was, however, patently untrue."6

Once the results of the interviews had been read to the full Assembly, the whole question was turned over for consideration to a
commission that eventually combined the membership of seven
standing committees.27 And then for almost three weeks, from June
27 through July 13, the whole affair was left in limbo. The permanent session, meeting day and night for some 128 hours, was finally
brought to an end, and the Assembly returned to its normal order
of business. According to the deputy Laurent-Francois Legendre,
the long wait was necessary so that the committees could complete
their inquiry into the affair. But for the American statesman
Gouverneur Morris, who resided in Paris and knew many deputies,
the delay was conceived less for judicial than for political reasons. It
seemed clear to him that with the king now safely back in the
Tuileries, the moderate deputies in the Assembly had returned to
their long-term strategy of preserving the monarchy. "The intention of the Assembly," wrote Morris on July 2, "is I find to cover up
if possible the king's flight and cause it to be forgotten." For the
American, such a scheme seemed ill conceived and potentially disastrous: "This proves to me great feebleness in every respect and
will perhaps destroy the monarchy." In fact the Barnave-Lameth- Duport faction was secretly negotiating once again with the royal
family. The delay in taking a position would, they hoped, permit
them to mobilize public opinion in the provinces in support of the
king.28

But whatever the motives, the Assembly and the nation now
found themselves in a veritable interregnum. For all practical purposes, the government had become a "republican monarchy," a
kingdom with a powerless king, ruled by deputies who had assumed
not only legislative and executive functions but also a critical judicial role. It was the Assembly itself which would judge on the responsibility for the flight to Varennes. In his caustic manner, cure
Lindet seized up the situation: "Executive power is now exercised
only indirectly. The Senior Government Official [the king] must
confine himself to drinking, eating, and sleeping. These are duties
which he fulfills perfectly well.""

The one major development in the Assembly during this interval
was the arrival of a letter from General Bouille, sent from his exile
in Luxembourg. By the general's own account, the statement was
conceived as a means of salvaging the king's position after the failure of the escape. Bouille now assumed entire responsibility for
the flight. Mocking and insolent, he expressed nothing but scorn for
the Revolution and "your infernal constitution." The king and the
queen, he claimed, had not really wanted to leave. It was only after
the violence of April 18 and under pressure from the general that
the royal couple had been persuaded to flee. "I arranged everything,
decided everything, ordered everything. I alone gave the orders,
not the king. It is against me alone that you should direct your
bloody fury."" The letter substantially warped the reality. Even
though the deputies could not know all the details of the escape
plan, they had ample evidence that the king himself had signed numerous orders for military maneuvers in anticipation of the flight."
But Bouille's statement was quickly seized upon by the moderates in
the Assembly who hoped to preserve the monarchy, and in this respect the general's ploy worked better than he might ever have
hoped.

While formal debate on the king among the deputies was largely
shut down, it raged with enormous passion outside the Assembly.
Two groups of deputies, in particular, were anything but passive
and patient during the interregnum. On June 28 a large group of
conservatives-"the wisest and most enlightened among the minority," according to the noble Irland de Bazoges-met to discuss the
situation. They were indignant at the majority's suspension of the
king and seizure of executive power. For all practical purposes the
king was now a prisoner in his own palace. Yet Louis had, they believed, committed no crimes and should be allowed to travel wherever and whenever he saw fit. His only fault, according to the duke
de Levis, was to have had the weakness to say that he liked the constitution when this was not in fact the case, and "to have wanted to
enjoy the very liberty he gave to others and in the name of which
he is now enchained." Some of the more staunch reactionaries, like
the marquis de Vaudreuil, were even angry that the king had backed
away from his declaration of June 21. More royalist than the king
and abiding no compromise, the marquis used the occasion to announce his rejection of a whole range of measures passed by the
Assembly, including the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the
suppression of the nobility. After a lengthy debate, some 293 conservative deputies formally protested the suspension of the king,
and more than 250 of these vowed to boycott all future votes in the
Assembly.32 There can be no doubt that the protest of the royalist
deputies inflamed the conspiracy obsessions of a great many Parisians. Some now concluded that the "250" had colluded in the king's
escape from the very beginning.

In the meantime, at the other end of the political spectrum, the
Jacobin Club was following and commenting on events with particular ardor. All its members, both moderates and radicals, had long
seen as one of their principal tasks the discovery and denunciation
of conspiracy.33 But like almost everyone else, they had maintained
a generally favorable disposition toward the king, usually portrayed
as weak but well-meaning. Now, with the flight to Varennes, a great
many club members not only felt betrayed by the king, but were ap palled at their own blindness in not anticipating that betrayal, in not
rooting out this the most dangerous conspirator of all, dwelling in
their midst. Perhaps it was this feeling of guilt, even humiliation,
that led many Jacobins to react with exceptional outrage and anger
to the king's flight.

Yet the club remained deeply divided, and the evening meeting
on June 21 saw a particularly tense confrontation between the two
factions. Robespierre, leader of the radicals, arrived first, lashing
out in near frenzy against his fellow deputies, accusing "the near totality of my colleagues, members of the Assembly, of being counterrevolutionaries: some through ignorance, some through fear,
some through resentment and injured pride, but others because they
are corrupt."34 But the moderate deputies belonging to the club arrived soon afterward, some two hundred strong, determined to regain control. Former bitter rivals like Charles Lameth and the marquis de Lafayette, Barnave and the abbe Sieyes, all appealed for a
sacred union in the face of the crisis. When Robespierre's ally
Georges Danton, the fiery orator from the Cordeliers Club, accused
Lafayette of treason, Alexandre Lameth rushed to his defense. With
the feeling of fraternity at its peak, Barnave called for an address to
all the Jacobins' affiliated clubs asking full support for the Assembly: "The National Assembly alone, this must be our guide,"
a proposal that was met with rousing cheers. Moderate deputies
were ecstatic at the turn of events: "Now," wrote Francois-Joseph
Bouchette, "there are neither monarchists nor Eighty-Niners, everyone has returned to the Friends of the Constitution. "15

Yet tensions within the club remained high, and the issue of the
king continued to arouse passions. As the Assembly waited, the Jacobins debated the issue almost daily. Although a few of the speakers-like the radical Pierre-Louis Roederer-seemed to advocate a
republic, such demands were rare and were quickly denounced by
the moderates as going against the constitution, which the society was bound to support. Nevertheless, no one was ready to defend Louis' actions, and a great many nondeputies in the club called
for a trial of the king and the creation of a regency government. As many of the moderate deputy-members tired of attending the
rancorous nightly sessions-Barnave and Alexandre Lameth seem
never to have returned after June 22-or found themselves preoccupied with committee work in the Assembly, the club as a whole
seemed to gravitate toward an unforgiving treatment of the "traitor
king" even as it proclaimed grudging support for the monarchy.3G

The great debate in the Assembly itself was finally launched on July
13 with the formal report of the "Seven Committees," commissioned to draw up a recommendation on the events of Varennes.
Over a three-day period some seventeen deputies addressed the issue of the fate of the king and the fate of the monarchy, nine in
support of the committees' position of exoneration, eight in opposi-
tion.37 Many were among the finest orators in the National Assembly, and most had carefully prepared their addresses. The leaders of
the moderates were masters of parliamentary rhetoric and maneuver, and they brilliantly programmed and paced the debates for
maximum advantage. Their opponents, all from the extreme left of
the Jacobin group, also developed powerful arguments, but their
proposals were more personal and sometimes conflicting.

To present their case the Committees chose a thirty-three-yearold magistrate from eastern France, Hyacinthe Muguet de
Nanthou.38 Muguet made maximum use of General Bouille's letter to argue that Louis had indeed been "abducted," abducted in
mind-through intimidation and pressure-if not in body. To be
sure, one could never approve the king's actions from a moral or
political standpoint: they had been thoughtless and irresponsible.
But it was essential that the deputies follow the law and not the
whim of emotion. And legally, the king had committed no crime.
His "declaration" of June 21 had been remarkably impolitic, but it
was not in itself against the law. His flight would have been grounds
for deposing him only if he had left the country and refused to return, and this, by his testimony, he had never intended to do. Yet even if Louis were to have committed a crime, he could not be
prosecuted, since the Assembly had voted immunity for the monarch nearly two years before.39 From their earliest debates on the
constitution, Muguet argued, the deputies had decided that France
must be a monarchy. A central locus of power was essential "in so
vast an empire, whose parts would naturally tend to break apart."
In fact, "it is for the nation, and not for the king, that a monarchy
has been established." Within this system, it was essential that the
king be immune from prosecution. If the king could be indicted,
any faction might attack him for its own petty self-interest, and
there would be a continual threat of civil war and chaos, just as had
occurred in England 15o years earlier. The real villains in the affair,
and the only individuals mentioned in the Committees' proposed
decree, were Bouille and his subordinates. France must follow
America's treatment of the traitor Benedict Arnold and prosecute
these men to the full extent of the law. Curiously, Axel von Fersen
was scarcely mentioned. The king and the queen were not mentioned at all.

In reply to the Committees' position, the radicals adopted a number of tactics. Petion and several of the other orators attacked the
very idea of royal immunity. Surely kings must be responsible for
their actions, or there would be nothing to prevent a new Nero or
new Caligula from committing untold atrocities against the people.
The immunity voted by the Assembly in 1789 could apply only to
state activities, not to a personal action like Louis' decision to flee
the country and abandon his office. For the most part, however, the
radicals skirted the Committees' legalistic arguments and appealed
to a higher, moral law. How could they accept as their chief executive a man who had flagrantly lied and deceived the Assembly and
the whole French nation? "How many times," asked Petion, "has
Louis XVI sworn his loyalty and love for the constitution? Did he
not come into this very Assembly, without having been summoned,
and affirm his attachment to the constitution. Did he not declare he
would be its defender?" "Such actions could only have been designed to lull the French nation to sleep and thus more easily to deceive her." Marc-Alexis Vadier, the grim Jacobin and future Terror ist leader, who rarely spoke in the Assembly, was beside himself
with fury. Only a few weeks before he had written self-confidently
to his constituency, denying all the rumors of impending flight.
Now he felt not only betrayed but humiliated. He bitterly assailed
Louis, this "brigand with a crown," this "false, fugitive king, who
cowardly deserted his post only to paralyze the government and deliver us up to the horrors of civil war and anarchy; this king who, in
a perfidious declaration, dared rip to shreds your constitution.""