When the King Took Flight (25 page)

But although teams of citizens could help shore up the defenses,
they could do nothing about the problem of arms. And almost everywhere municipalities found that their stores of muskets and powder were distressingly meager. General Bouille had surreptitiously
removed armaments from most of the strongholds in Lorraine in
order to concentrate them in Montmedy for the protection of the
king. When local administrators discovered what had happened,
many assumed that it was part of a general conspiracy to weaken
defenses in anticipation of invasion. Everywhere in the northeast, in
the hours and days after Varennes, people began looking out for the
arrival of enemy armies. Not surprisingly, perhaps, some began to
see them.24

The origins of the invasion panic that swept across northeastern
France can be precisely identified. Early on the morning of June 22
General Bouille, still hoping to rescue the king, ordered a regiment
of Swiss infantry in the pay of France to march westward from the
town of Metz to the Meuse River, only ten miles from Varennes. In
fact, when the regiment arrived near its destination late that night,
most of the soldiers mutinied and refused to advance, announcing
that they were not paid to fight against the French people. The officers then fled, and the remainder of the Swiss retreated in good
order to Verdun. But coming as it did in a moment of supreme tension, this strange cross-country movement away from the frontier
of several hundred heavily armed, German-speaking soldiers provoked pandemonium among the local population.2

Late in the afternoon of June 22, authorities in Verdun sent word
to the surrounding villages that an army was moving toward Varennes, and that all available guardsmen must march to the Meuse
and burn all the bridges, if necessary, in order to halt the attack.
Soon thereafter the panic-stricken leaders of Varennes issued their
own urgent call for help.26 Within hours, the messenger chain that
had spread the word of the king's arrest was set in motion once
again to announce the approaching "enemy" troops. For the second
night in a row, guardsmen were mobilized all across the region to
come to the aid of Varennes.

Invariably some towns and villages, in relaying the appeals for
reinforcements, exaggerated or expanded on the original message.
In the atmosphere of fear and tension, there were inevitable misunderstandings and miscommunications. But it was also natural for
terrified officials to exaggerate a bit, to make certain that the situation seemed sufficiently critical to rouse others to their aid-and to
justify their own panic. Thus, when citizens in Clermont relayed
Varennes' plea to "fly to the assistance of your brothers in arms,"
they inflated the story somewhat, announcing that fighting had already broken out between patriots and "the enemy." The next village to the south embellished the message further, asserting that a
battle was now raging and that many French citizens had been killed. By the next morning, as the news reached the southern edge
of the department of Meuse, the word enemy had subtly changed
meaning: the threat was no longer from a regiment of Swiss mercenaries in the pay of France, but from the "Imperials" themselves, an
invading Austrian army, which was now said to be advancing rapidly beyond the Meuse.27

In the meantime, the news had traveled westward across the
Argonne Forest and arrived in Sainte-Menehould. The small town
was just recovering from an exhausting and harrowing night. The
confrontation with Damas' German dragoons, the sudden appearance of the king and queen, and the havoc wrought by the duke de
Choiseul's cross-country cavalry ride just north of the town had
thrown the citizens into near panic. Now they heard, or imagined
they heard, that Austrian soldiers had taken and destroyed Varennes, were heading directly west, and would soon fall on the people of Sainte-Menehould themselves-perhaps planning to punish
them, as they had punished Varennes, for their part in the capture
of the king. "Imperial troops have sacked Varennes," they wrote in
a desperate call for help: "In the name of the Fatherland, we implore you to come to our aid. Quick! We are short of arms and munitions, and especially of men."28

By the morning of June 23, the rumored invasion had produced
a wave of terror not unlike the Great Fear of 1789. Toward nine
the story arrived in Chalons-sur-Marne, where the royal family had
just spent the night on their return trip to Paris. Rumors spread
rapidly through the town that the Austrians had arrived and were
just outside the gates. Soon a riot broke out as people desperately
sought arms for their protection. The doors of the city hall were
beaten down, and the mayor was surrounded by an angry crowd
and forced to throw open the municipal arsenal-before leaping
from a second-story window and making his escape. Terrified both
by the imagined Austrians and by fellow townspeople clamoring
for action, officials mobilized the national guards throughout the
department, urging all citizens to come to their aid: "Take courage! Let us show ourselves worthy of our freedom by daring to defend it!"29

To many people it now seemed obvious that the Austrians had
invaded France in an attempt to recapture the king. And from this
point on, the panic closely followed the monarch's procession back
toward Paris. Guardsmen, sometimes accompanied by women and
children, were on the road everywhere, advancing to the aid of
Varennes or Clermont or Chalons, or returning home when they
discovered that the enemy had "retreated." Thousands of others
were hurrying to join the escort of the monarch-now, in part, to
protect him from the Austrians. The weather was hot and dry. The
myriad of marching men and women raised great clouds of dust in
the light chalky soil of northern Champagne. The dust, the confusion, the noise of drums and plodding feet at night or in half light,
could easily confirm one's worst fears that the invading army was
just over the hill or in the woods beyond the river.

Within two days the terrifying news had spread throughout
much of Champagne and parts of the provinces of Lorraine, Picardy, and Ile-de-France. In Lorraine, the fortress city of Metz mobilized its guardsmen and sent them off toward Verdun for the
second time in two days. Thionville, north of Metz, also heard of
the invasion, but now there was confusion as to the direction of the
attack, and citizens set to destroying all bridges across the Moselle
River, in anticipation of an invasion from the German states farther
east. In the meantime, moving from village to village, intensified
everywhere by the warning sounds of church bells, the panic had
surged to the northwest as far as Charleville and the northern frontier. When citizens in the cathedral city of Reims heard the rumor,
they relayed it westward toward Soissons and Laon, and by the
morning of June 24 the fear had swept into the province of Picardy beyond the river Oise. Now the threat had taken on epic
proportions. The king, it was said, had already been stopped by
an army of 40,000 to 50,000 Austrians-some said 6o,ooo. They
had destroyed Varennes and Sainte-Menehould, had moved beyond
Chalons, and were ravaging everything in their path, "burning and
killing everywhere."30 That afternoon, a day ahead of the king, rumors of an "invasion" from the east incited "a movement of unrest
among the common people" in Paris itself."

In the following days four other regions in the kingdom were
touched by similar invasion panics. A shootout between soldiers
and smugglers in the western Pyrenees ignited rumors that the
Spanish army had crossed the frontier and was marching down
three mountain valleys into southwestern France. Soon dozens of
communities from Pau to Bayonne and as far north as Bordeaux
rushed off guardsmen to confront the enemy.32 Along the central
Atlantic coast, "the appearance of several unknown sails off Saint-
Hilaire-de-Riez" prompted a report of an English invasion that
spread throughout much of the province of Poitou.33 In Brittany a
small fight near Saint-Maio between guardsmen and emigrant nobles sailing to Jersey sparked yet another rumor. The story spread
that six thousand troops had disembarked from forty British ships
and were now moving west along the coast. Guardsmen, mobilized
from as far away as Rennes and Brest, rapidly converged on the
"invaders" to save the fatherland.3"

Then, abruptly, almost as rapidly as they had begun, the various panics evaporated. Urgent messages from the "invasion sites"
themselves soon made it clear that no foreign troops had appeared
or that if they had appeared, they had now "retreated." The National Assembly took steps to denounce the stories as unfounded.
Yet the rumors also encountered skepticism from some local administrators. Significantly, all the invasion fears had begun in areas little
touched or untouched by the Great Fear of 1789. But once the rumors arrived in regions that had experienced the violence and anarchy of the previous panic, they were frequently greeted with
disbelief. In Chateau-Thierry, for example, a town that had been
profoundly shaken by the Great Fear, district leaders concluded that
the announced invasion was so inherently incredible that the story
must have been an enemy fabrication, a plot to disrupt the nation.
Not only did they refuse to pass on the rumor, but they set out to
investigate the source of the falsehood.35 Particularly among the
elites, the memory of the widespread violence and anarchy of that
earlier encounter with imaginary enemies seems to have acted like
an inoculation against ensuing panics.

Everywhere in France, even in regions where no panics had occurred, the king's sudden disappearance provoked fears of possible
invasion. But the crisis also aroused fears of internal enemies, secretly plotting against the Revolution. A conspiratorial view of the
world was hardly unique to the Revolutionary period. For centuries
people had attributed grain shortages to the concealed maneuvers
of various groups of scoundrels out to make a profit or to take their
revenge for wrongs previously suffered. Despite the appearance of
new modes of analysis, based on rational "scientific" explanationlinking famine, for example, to meteorological conditions or to
poor transportation-a great many people continued to relate all
that went wrong in the world to the willful actions of individuals
operating through plots and conspiracies.36 Even to the more enlightened members of provincial society, such a hypothesis seemed
by no means impossible in the context of the Revolution. Patriots
knew only too well that the transformations wrought since 1789 had
excited the bitter opposition of two groups, in particular: the nobility and the clergy.

Although a small group of liberal nobles had early thrown in
their lot with the Revolution, the great majority were anything but
pleased by the course of events. Unhappy with the National Assembly's attack on their feudal rights and privileges, they were even
more angered by the suppression of the very status of "noble" in
June 1790. In their racial view of society, the idea that one could
legislate the nobility out of existence seemed absurd, as though-in
the words of a baron-one could change an oak tree into a pine by
a simple decree.37 To be sure, after the summer of 1789 most provincial nobles remained cautious, watching their language and retiring to their chateaus or townhouses, where they hoped to ride out
the storm. But a few were unable to hold their tongues, taunting the
local patriots, rejecting the very existence of a National Assembly
or of the "rights of man," and predicting that the recent changes
would never last. When they gathered among themselves for social occasions and commiseration, they were even less restrained in their
condescending remarks about the Revolution and the Revolutionaries and in their angry prophecies of catastrophe for both. Such predictions, born of impotent rage and frustration, were invariably
overheard by servants and neighbors. Duly embroidered and passed
on to the community, such talk could be transformed into proof of
conspiracy.

The conspiracy interpretation was all the more credible in that
everyone knew of the armies of emigres gathering across the
Rhine, counterrevolutionaries who had fled France and were dedicated to ending the Revolution. With the advantages of hindsight, it
seems clear that such armies, manned with large numbers of noble
officers but very few common soldiers, posed little real danger to
the nation. But for patriots in the spring of 1791, the reality of the
threat was much more difficult to assess. It was hard to believe
that men who had always wielded so much power in society would
now suddenly cease influencing events. Many were convinced that
the emigre leaders, the count d'Artois and the prince de Conde,
were secretly lining up support among provincial nobles." In the
months before Varennes, a citizen in Picardy told the National Assembly of groups of nobles gathering at a nearby chateau, and
of his conviction that "plots were being hatched" among "men
with the evil intention of starting a counterrevolution." In southern
Lorraine, there were reports of another "known counterrevolutionary schemer who was moving from chateau to chateau" to organize
the local nobility and "overthrow the constitution." A letter from
Provence claimed proof of a vast network organized in every region of the country by emigre nobles, an "aristocratic, chivalrous,
Jesuitical association" sworn to obey the count d'Artois.39 Whether
real conspiracies existed in any of these cases is difficult to know.
But such letters revealed the widespread conviction in the spring of
1791 that whole segments of the provincial nobility were engaged in
counterrevolutionary activities.

And such fears were intensified by the religious crisis brewing in
France since the beginning of 1791. By the spring of that year al most half of the parish clergymen in the country had refused to
swear the loyalty oath in the words specified by the National Assembly, and orders were issued for the replacement of the "refractory" priests. In strongly refractory areas like western France or the
peripheral zones of the east and south, many leaders felt themselves
threatened and under siege. Wherever there were significant clusters of oath refusals, administrators were tempted to see collusion
and hidden conspiracies, perhaps initiated by the refractory bishops,
now living abroad and closely tied to the emigres. Already in May
department directors in Laon, northeast of Paris, had become obsessed with the "critical situation" created in their region by the
oath crisis. There was no doubt in their minds that the clerical refusals were linked to "centers of sedition and plotting, both inside
and outside the kingdom.""