When the King Took Flight (26 page)

Thus, when news of the king's flight broke, patriots throughout
much of the country already assumed the existence of internal conspiracies dedicated to the destruction of the Revolution and undoubtedly linked to foreign enemies. "The disappearance of the
royal family," wrote the leaders of one town, "excited a general
movement of indignation against the enemies of the public good.
The audacious statements of some, the emigration of others, the refusal of the oath by clergymen, all are indicative of a criminal conspiracy."" The real problem for administrators-the problem that
would beset the Revolutionaries for years to come-was how they
should respond to such threats. And here they were deeply torn. On
the one hand, most officials were committed to the concept of equal
justice and the rule of law, for nobles and clergymen as for everyone else. Such ideals were, after all, part and parcel of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. As men of substance
themselves, the officials remembered only too clearly the chaos and
disorder of the first summer of the Revolution, and they were anxious that accused "suspects" should be dealt with by the courts and
not by mobs. Their directives in June and July 1791 were filled with
admonishments on the need to preserve law and order. Officials in
Auch, for example, urged everyone to show "a perfect submission to the laws. Citizens! now we must decide whether we can truly be
free or whether we will be fettered with the new chains of anar-
chy."42

On the other hand, the very values of equal justice and the rule
of law were dependent on the continued existence of the new constitution, and the administrators were aware of the threat posed by
the king's departure and the perceived conspiracies to the survival
of the Revolution. Were there not emergency situations in which
the defense of the nation justified repressive actions that would normally be illegal; when, as Charles Lameth had put it, "It was better
to commit a momentary injustice than to see the loss of the state"?
In this context, the Assembly's instructions on taking all necessary
steps for "the maintenance of law and order and the defense of the
nation" were particularly ambiguous and elastic. They could easily
be interpreted as a veritable blank check for repressive action.43

Local officials, moreover, were not acting in a vacuum. They had
always to take into account the opinions of the people they were
supposed to administer and whose suspicions and penchant for violence were only too well known. Two groups, in particular, pushed
local leaders toward more repressive measures in the days after June
21: the urban masses and the national guards. In numerous communities, news of the king's flight and his arrest in Varennes set off
spontaneous outbreaks of popular violence against local nobles and
clergyman.44 Sometimes the authorities acted immediately to redirect such emotions. The notables of Cahors were unusually creative
in this respect, organizing a special "federation" ceremony-perhaps advancing plans already afoot for the July 14 celebration.
There were marching guardsmen, bands, patriotic speeches by the
constitutional clergy, rousing renditions of "ca ira!" and a solemn
oath pronounced by all men and women to be faithful to the nation
and the laws. In Strasbourg a veritable public charivari was organized with straw effigies of Bouille and his subordinates, Klinglin
and Heyman, carried through the streets in a cart and subsequently
burned in the central square before the cheering population.41

But for many officials, acquiescence to popular pressure seemed the better part of valor. Administrators in Brittany were particularly articulate in their description of the dilemma. "The unrest and
resentment of the people has reached an extreme degree," they
wrote in late June. "In the midst of this agitation, it is impossible
for reason alone to be heard. We must soothe and accommodate
such passions if we are to prevent them from falling out of control
... and maintain our favor in public opinion, without which it
would be impossible to govern."46

[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]

Conspirators in the Kings Flight Burned in Effigy in Strasbourg, June 25, 1.791.

Perhaps no single issue aroused greater apprehension among the
common people than the control of the town fortress. The keys to
such strongholds were held by local military commanders who were
themselves invariably nobles. The treason of General Bouille and
his entire staff had intensified suspicion against all such officers. In
Strasbourg, in Verdun, in Dunkerque, in La Rochelle-in virtually every fortress city up and down the coast and along the frontierscivilian administrators were compelled by popular demand to take
control of the local citadels. As the town fathers in Cambrai explained, "the people consider priests and nobles to have been the authors of the king's abduction." Officials thus felt compelled to seize
control of city defenses, "since, in the present state of things, it
would be dangerous to oppose public opinion, which is an essential
element of patriotism."47

Pressure for various forms of extralegal action also came from
the national guards. Throughout the country, as we have seen, the
mobilization of the local militia was among the first measures taken
when administrators received word of the king's flight. The National Assembly had decreed that lists be drawn up of guardsmen
prepared to go to war if the country should be invaded, and almost
everywhere men rushed to enroll with extraordinary enthusiasm. In
Lyon more than eight hundred new recruits were welcomed from
the city alone; in La Rochelle "spontaneous meetings of citizens by
street or by neighborhood determined the formation of six new
companies." Even in the small southern village of Cuxac, peasant
guardsmen were said to be "burning with the desire to save the nation.""

Most of the guards were strongly committed to the goals of the
Revolution. They had vowed to preserve the constitution against
all its enemies, and the experience of Varennes strengthened their
suspicions of aristocrats and refractory clergymen. Several units
quickly expelled all nobles from participation, since "prudence and
the safety of the state prevent us from confiding troops to individuals whose interests are opposed to those of the Revolution."49 Moreover, if they were to perform their functions properly and obtain
the status they felt they deserved, these newly minted militiamen
would obviously require arms and ammunition. The guardsmen's
vigorous search for muskets and powder would have the advantage
not only of disarming counterrevolutionaries, but also of placing
more weapons in patriot hands.50 Almost everywhere in the days after June 21, the guardsmen formed the shock troops of repression
in the provinces."

Responding to popular pressures and adapting the National Assembly's blank check to do everything necessary for the defense of the
nation, administrators throughout the country took a range of measures against the "enemies within." Many of these measures were
both illegal and in violation of the Declaration of the Rights of
Man. But the crisis appeared so unprecedented and the danger of
conspiracy so real that officials resolved to take "all necessary and
appropriate measures to thwart the treacherous plots of the enemies
of society."52

Thus, almost everywhere local officials began opening and reading letters sent through the post office-despite repeated decrees on
the "inviolability" of the mail.53 The council of one small town in
Lorraine carefully explained its reasoning: "Our internal and external enemies will not fail to do everything possible to achieve their
infernal designs against the nation. Thus, it will perhaps be prudent,
without revealing any family secrets, to scrupulously examine in the
post office any correspondence that might seem suspicious."54 In
practice, the definition of suspicious correspondence varied greatly
from one town to another. Some officials examined all letters addressed to or from foreign countries. Elsewhere they focused on
mail sent from refractory bishops or received by any "suspect" noble or clergyman. Most of the letters so examined were unrevealing,
despite the patriots' best efforts to read conspiracy into inane family
chatter. Large quantities piled up in the archives of the Assembly's
Committee on Research, never delivered, and as little enlightening
to the deputies in 1791 as to historians today. But occasionally the
opened letters had major consequences for individuals. A seemingly
innocent note from an emigre noble to his business agent near
Orleans-a certain Monsieur Petit-intercepted and revealed to the
public, led to the near lynching of the agent and his lengthy incarceration in the town jail. "At every minute," wrote the terrified Petit, "I seem to hear the mobs crying out for a victim."55

Many officials also sanctioned the illegal arrest of travelers.
Broadly interpreting the Assembly's interdiction on individuals crossing frontiers, administrators began stopping unknown travelers wherever they were found, especially those who appeared to be
nobles or who had unlikely dress or strange speech or who seemed a
bit nervous. It was clearly not the moment to leave on a trip, and the
National Assembly was flooded with appeals from unfortunate people who found themselves imprisoned in the midst of the crisis,
sometimes for weeks on end, denied the right of habeas corpus
guaranteed by the constitution. In Cahors guardsmen fell upon two
Belgian businessmen with obvious foreign accents on their way to
Italy. The townsmen justified the arrest in terms of their fear of "an
impending invasion of foreign troops. To save the constitution
from destruction . . . we felt the need for extraordinary precautions." In any case, the two were still in jail in the middle of August,
bitterly lamenting their fate. Elsewhere authorities summarily arrested a down-and-out clarinet player, a physician from the royal
stables on his way to Brussels, and a suspicious count "prowling"
through town and "suspected by everyone." 51

Usually, however, provincial patriots were less worried about
outsiders passing through than about local inhabitants who had already aroused mistrust for their opposition to the Revolution. All
over France, teams of officials and national guardsmen rushed to
scrutinize nearby chateaus and religious houses staffed by clergymen who had refused the oath. They searched for evidence of secret meetings of counterrevolutionaries. They looked also for arms
and munitions, arms that might be used against the Revolution and
that, in any case, were badly needed by the patriots themselves.

For the first time in many provincial towns the term suspect entered widely into the administrative vocabulary. But what it was
that aroused distrust, what it was that indicated "suspect inten-
tions"-as officials in Montpellier put it-was often far from clear.
In many cases, suspicion seems to have arisen from specific statements made by individuals, either sometime in the past or immediately after Varennes, words that classified them in the minds of their
neighbors as "citizens notorious for their antirevolutionary principles." A woman in Meaux was incarcerated for an "aristocratic out burst" during a dinner with friends several months earlier. A priest
near Verdun was arrested for publicly musing that "it would not
have been a disaster if the king had escaped"-words taken entirely
out of context, according to the "suspect" in question. Two refractory priests were nearly hanged by an angry crowd in Vendome
for insulting a prorevolutionary clergyman. Unfortunately, officials
were unable to save a noble in Brest from popular revenge for his
mocking depiction of a Revolutionary ceremony with "obscene
graffiti" on the walls of a cabaret. Soon after news of the king's disappearance arrived, the noble was murdered and his head paraded
through the streets on a pikes'

Elsewhere, individuals had attracted mistrust because of known
links to emigrants or because they themselves had expressed a desire to leave France. We have seen the sad predicament of Monsieur
Petit when his correspondence with an emigre was intercepted. A
young man named Boubert was tracked down and arrested after
asking a relative for money to finance his emigration.58 More common, no doubt, were the fears aroused by the reputed secret gatherings of nobles and clergymen in local chateaus. Reports of "hidden
conclaves of aristocrats and refractories" in Saint-Denis, just north
of Paris, prompted district authorities to search a nobleman's home
at two in the morning. The nobleman claimed that the visitors had
come only to celebrate Pentecost, and in fact the inspection turned
up neither arms nor mysterious strangers. A similar search of a
chateau near Chaumont-en-Vexin-where a noble family was surprised in the midst of a game of whist-turned up nine antiquated
hunting guns and a souvenir pike from the battle of Fontenoy, all
duly confiscated for the arsenals of the nation.59

In some cases, attacks on individual nobles seem to have arisen
from antagonisms long predating the Revolution. In the wake of
Varennes, guardsmen from several villages near Reims converged
on the chateau of the marquis d'Ambly, deputy to the National
Assembly. Finding few arms, they compelled the marquis' wife to
give them money to purchase guns and then marched off with the
nobleman's terrified young grandson, whom they claimed to have adopted as their "mascot." In this case the guardsmen seem to have
picked on d'Ambly in part because of his reputation as a reactionary in the Assembly, but also because of a grudge over feudal rights
that had pitted villagers against their lord for some twenty-five
years.60 Far more violent was the attack on Guillin du Montet, the
lord of Poleymieux, in the countryside near Lyon. Guillin was already hated before 1791 for his brutal treatment of the peasants
and his general refusal to accept the Revolution. Soon after the
Varennes crisis broke, inhabitants arrived a hundred strong to seize
the large store of weapons that Guillin kept in his chateau. When he
resisted, a gun battle broke out, ending only after the chateau had
been stormed and Guillin had been killed, his body torn to pieces
and thrown into the burning castle." The events in Poleymieux
were soon widely publicized, to the horror of people throughout
France. Yet extreme violence of this kind was rare during the crisis.
Only four individuals, all nobles, are known to have been killed in
the wake of the king's flight, and at least three of these were already
detested for a variety of long-standing grievances.62