These dark clouds gathering over the head of her son did not convince Marie Antoinette to change her mind and escape with Louis Charles alone. As she told Comte Louis de Bouillé, the royal family had sworn to stay together after the events of 6 October and she intended to honour that promise. This was a woman who was fully capable of courage; ruthlessness was another matter.
The commissioning of a large and durable travelling coach, a berline de voyage, on 22 December 1790 was a significant moment in the Queen’s escape plans. The berlin stood for several things. One was the large size of the party to which Marie Antoinette was inexorably committed, for it could transport six adults inside. Another was the intimate participation of Count Fersen in all the practical details. Ostensibly the berlin was commissioned by one of Fersen’s friends, the Franco-Russian “Baronne de Korff,” in order to travel to Russia—one of those endless trans-European journeys common at the time among a cosmopolitan aristocracy with which Fersen himself was so familiar. In fact the man who paid the 5000-odd livres for the berlin was Fersen himself. At all events, this was a carriage “unknown” to belong to the King and Queen, whose official carriages were highly recognizable.
Afterwards, the nature of the coach, apparently both cumbersome and awesomely opulent, was the subject of much ill-informed comment; it was seen as some kind of doomed symbol. But there was in fact “nothing extraordinary” about it, in the words of the Marquise de Tourzel, given the purpose for which it was designed: a long, long traverse of roads that would at best be unreliable. Such a berlin, apart from being well sprung, had to be strong, which inevitably made it slow. Sometimes described as bright yellow, the berlin was actually green and black, with a white velvet interior, the only flashes of yellow being on the wheels and undercarriage as was customary at the time.17
Hospitality along such a notional route would be quite as unreliable as the roads, so the voyagers would expect to be virtually self-sufficient. In the case of the real journey that was projected, such containment was of course equally vital. So the berlin was to be “a little house on wheels,” with a larder, a cooker for heating meat or soup, a canteen big enough for eight bottles, a table that could be raised for eating, concealed beneath the cushions, as well as leather pots de chambres: all “very convenient” as the Governess noted.*78 The same practical convenience applied to the Queen’s nécessaire, a kind of superior picnic basket made of beautiful smooth walnut with a silver basin, tiny candlesticks and a teapot, which doubled as a dressing-case, whose furnishings included little tortoiseshell picks as well as a mirror. She actually had two made, one going as a blind to Marie Christine in Brussels: “I’ll be delighted if she uses it since I have another just the same for my own use.”*7918
Such elaborate arrangements underlined another important aspect of the projected journey. If the royal party set out as fugitives, they certainly did not intend to arrive as such. It was as the King and Queen of France, with all the appurtenances of majesty, that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette intended to disembark. The King’s crown and royal robes were therefore to be included in the baggage. The loyal crowds who were confidently expected to flock to their ill-used sovereign had, after all, to be able to recognize him when they saw him. Where kings were concerned, appearance and ceremony made the monarch. In short, Louis XVI was to remain within the frontiers of France itself.
In Marie Antoinette’s lengthy correspondence throughout the spring, via couriers since she no longer trusted the posts, she was quite as inflexible on this subject as she was over the nature of their joint escape. Precisely what “the Austrian woman” did not actually want was for the King to be seen to flee to Austria or its dominions; these included Belgium and its capital, which already housed many of their supporters. Even if things went badly inside France, Marie Antoinette preferred to head for Switzerland, via Alsace, rather than Austria.19
On the other hand, the Queen did expect assistance from her homeland, as she always called it, and many of her letters to Count Mercy, himself in Brussels, concerned her attempts to secure it. What was wanted was a massing of Austrian troops on the north-west frontier. This would in turn give the Marquis de Bouillé at Metz an excuse to move his own troops in order to combat the imperial menace. In reality these troops were intended to act in support of the King when he arrived.20
The real trouble with this plan was that Emperor Leopold was not only the brother of the Queen of France but he was also the head of a great power with an ambiguous attitude towards France, alliance or no alliance. As the Comte de La Marck saw for himself, the Emperor was by no means displeased by France’s weakened state, due to its inner turmoils. The requested Austrian troops would cost money to move, and that would need subsidizing: a difficult task for the French King (or in fact the Queen) who were so short of finance. More money had to be borrowed—from bankers in Belgium and from Fersen, Fersen’s mistress Eléanore Sullivan and her protector, Quentin Craufurd.
The real key to the Emperor’s behaviour was expressed by Count Mercy himself in a long and embarrassed letter of 7 March 1791.21 He told the Queen—who touchingly but unwisely still imagined that he had her best interests at heart—that she should not count on exterior help. Nor should she have any illusions about the general behaviour of great powers who famously “do nothing for nothing.” However humiliating this truth might be, the Queen should try to come to terms with it. She should concentrate on how they might be propitiated—or in other words how they might be bribed to help the royal family. The King of Sardinia, for example, wanted Geneva and the King of France would lose little by supporting this claim. Spain was interested in the territorial limits of Navarre. The German feudal princes with lands in Alsace, anxious about their privileges, could be won over. Although Mercy claimed that the Emperor himself was above all this, he did touch on Austria’s interests with regard to Prussia, which must be borne in mind.
Writing to the Queen himself a few days later, the Emperor was similarly negative as well as circular in argument. The foreign powers could not think of interfering while the King and Queen were not in a state of safety. Although their only method of achieving that state was obviously to flee, the Emperor went on to say that the King and Queen should not be encouraged to do that, since the foreign powers were in no position to help them. Leopold could not even fix a date for an escape while his Austro-Turkish war—a legacy from Joseph II—went on. So the Emperor advised his sister and brother-in-law to wait until such time as they had developed their own resources—or were in pressing danger.22
Against this self-interested caution the Queen cried out with increasing desperation. Surely the other powers would help them? It was, after all, “the cause of Kings, not simply a matter of politics.” Furthermore “the cause of Kings” in France received an additional blow with the death of Mirabeau on 2 April. The Jacobins, including their newly elected president Robespierre, were secretly delighted, although the eight-day public mourning, plus a grandiose funeral cortège and a public burial, paid ostentatious tribute to the great man. Mirabeau had at least envisaged the continued need for a sovereign, or, as the Duc de Lévis put it, Mirabeau loved “liberty through emotion, the monarchy through reason and the nobility through vanity.”
On 14 April, still lacking a positive response from Vienna, Marie Antoinette wrote asking whether they could count on Austrian help, Yes or No? (Her italics.)23
It was Louis XVI’s determination to perform his Easter duties at the hands of a non-juror priest that brought about a cathartic resolution to the drama of delay. In spite of the advice of various counsellors to yield to duress, the King could not bring himself to take Communion at the hands of a juror at the parish church of the Tuileries, Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. He therefore turned to the expedient that had been so successful the previous summer, when it was a question of fresh air rather than spiritual sustenance. He decided to make an expedition to Saint Cloud where, of course, it would be far easier for a non-juror to be slipped in.
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p; Departure was scheduled to take place on the Monday of Easter Week, 18 April. It was now that the ugly consequences of the flight of Mesdames Tantes were seen. Rumours that the King was to follow suit had already led to demonstrations at the Tuileries. In this case, no sooner were the royal party and servants installed in their coaches in the Grand Carrousel courtyard of the palace than the cry went up that the King was trying to escape. A jeering mob surrounded the King’s own carriage, where he sat with his wife, sister and children, and prevented their progress. One courtier, the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, was beaten, leaving the Dauphin to shout, “Save him! Save him!” before the Queen was able to take her son back inside the Tuileries. Even worse for the future was the fact that the National Guards refused to force the King’s passage. They announced that they too were committed to detaining the King, despite the best efforts of Mayor Bailly and La Fayette, their commander, to dissuade them. So the King sat immobilized for nearly two hours listening to the howls of abuse.24
Louis XVI remained outwardly calm, putting his head out of the carriage to remark that it was strange that he who had granted the nation liberty was not allowed it himself. Inwardly, however, the scene, with the mob in control of the guards, left a profound impression on him. Having disembarked, the King celebrated Easter at Saint-Germain and took the Sacrament from “the new curé” who was, of course, a juror. The Queen wore her court dress, garnished with Alençon lace and especially ordered for Easter from Rose Bertin, but at the Tuileries and not at Saint Cloud. She also purchased a length of ribbon à la nation (that is, tricoloured) to put in her hat. The Journal de Paris gave an emollient version of events: how numerous “citizens” had “pleaded with the King to remain.” The King in his Journal put it more succinctly: “They stopped us.”25 This incident meant that Louis XVI had at last joined his wife in realizing the necessity of escape.
The Queen told Mercy at the beginning of May: “Our situation here is frightful, in a way that those who do not have to endure it cannot hope to understand.” The religious split was emphasized by the fact that an effigy of the Pope was burnt in the gardens of the Palais-Royal. The “pressing danger” that was demanded by the Emperor to justify their flight had arrived. It was only when the King was free to show himself in some “strong city” that the people would, she believed, flock to him in astonishing numbers.26
It was now a question as to where that “strong city” might be. Metz was unreliable; although only a few of the officers were said to be “infected,” the whole of the infantry was “detestable” in its revolutionary sympathies, as was the municipality with its local Jacobin Club. Of the various possibilities, Montmédy, thirty-five miles from Metz, near the border of the Habsburg-led Empire (but inside it) and possessed of good communications, was the most popular choice. Montmédy was in Lorraine; hopefully the King’s “faithful Lorrainers” who had been pointed out to him at the Fête de la Fédération by Marie Antoinette would justify their reputation. The troops of the Royal German Regiment at Stenay on the Meuse, ten miles west of Montmédy, between Sedan and Verdun, were also supposed to be reliable.27
Other possibilities were Valenciennes, slightly north-west of Paris, which was originally favoured by the King but subsequently rejected for being too close to the Austrian Netherlands; and Besançon in the south, close to the Swiss border. The idea of leaving France via the Ardennes and then crossing back to a ’strong city” was also rejected because even the briefest departure might give an unfortunate impression of flight. If the choice, then, was to be Montmédy, what route should be followed to reach it? It was not exactly a light journey, 180-odd miles from Paris through terrain where anybody’s loyalty, whether soldier or citizen, might turn out to be doubtful. The obvious way was to go via Meaux and Rheims, and on to Montmédy itself: a straightforward route and the one favoured by the Marquis de Bouillé and Count Fersen, both experienced campaigners.
Suddenly the King asserted himself. He feared being recognized in and around Rheims, which was one of the few areas of France where he was known, thanks to the coronation ceremony there sixteen years ago. So the route chosen was to the south: Châlons-sur-Marne, then Sainte-Menehould, before turning north, through a small place called Varennes on the river Aire, on to Dun, crossing the Meuse, to Stenay and so to Montmédy. This involved using a minor road after Sainte-Menehould and in Bouillé’s view was just as dangerous. But the habit of obedience was too strong in the Marquis to allow him to disagree further with his sovereign. This was the way it was to be.28
Mid-month, Bouillé assured Fersen that the road from Sainte-Menehould to Stenay would be guarded by loyal troops. Fersen actually questioned the security of such a display. Might it not be better, more of a subterfuge, if the small party travelled unattended by any kind of military presence? Fersen’s logic, however, was not accepted by Bouillé; as with his deference to the King over the route, Bouillé’s habit of protecting the King was deeply ingrained.
It now became a matter of personnel—and personalities, as ever in any risky enterprise—both in the military command and in the composition of the berlin party. Those in the know in January 1791, according to Marie Antoinette, had originally been limited to the Baron de Breteuil (now abroad), the Marquis de Bouillé and the Marquis de Bombelles, who had close connections to Breteuil. Then there was the Baron François de Goguelat, ADC to Bouillé and “Monsieur Gog” to the Queen, who used him as an emissary to Fersen. He was, said Marie Antoinette, “a man of action, rather zealous but devoted.”29 Now, however, it was a question of extending the network. A key role was to be played by the young Duc de Choiseul, Colonel of the Royal Dragoons, a relation of Louis XV’s minister.
The character of Choiseul was already the subject of criticism in the early stages of planning. At thirty-one Choiseul was young and “immature” for his command. Although fervent for the royal cause—he had honourably stayed with his regiment instead of emigrating—Choiseul was not a good organizer. “Inclined to be chaotic,” said Fersen to Bouillé, worried that Choiseul might commit some indiscretion. Nevertheless Choiseul had some useful attributes. He might be rash but he was both grand and rich and he could therefore pay for the necessary relays of horses along the way. So the values of the court were in a sense allowed to permeate strategy.30
These values also affected the composition of the coach party. Originally it had been expected that Madame Elisabeth would join in the separate escape of the Comte de Provence and his wife. (In order to travel conveniently, Provence, obese as he might be, had taken up riding again.) But in accordance with her own fixed principle not to leave her brother, Madame Elisabeth was now to be a member of the main party. This meant that five people were already designated for the berlin, with, theoretically, room for one more. At this point protocol and duty dictated, at least to the Marquise de Tourzel, that she should be that one. Had she not given her word never to leave the Dauphin’s side? As a result of which she slept in his room every night, or, on that first dreadful night back at the Tuileries, had sat sleepless on his bed as a guardian. In spite of her health—the Marquise suffered badly from renal colic—she would not desert him now in his hour of danger.31 And that was that.
While it is true that Marie Antoinette had counted on the Marquise in her secret plotting of early February, that was before Madame Elisabeth planned to travel in the berlin. At that point the Queen believed that the remaining space would be allotted to some responsible senior courtier, such as the Duc de Villequier or the Duc de Brissac, both in their mid-fifties, both accustomed to decision-making, both trusted by the King. The two Ducs had, however, recently emigrated, the King fearing reprisals upon them following the debacle of Easter Monday, although “ce bon” Brissac was lofty enough about facing peril. He had done what he had done, he said, for the sake of the King’s ancestors—and his own.32
There was no further attempt to insert a man of this calibre into the heart of the party, although it would certainly not have been physically impossibl
e, given that two out of the designated six were children, one of them very small. For example, the Comte de Damas had expected that Vicomte d’Agoult, another loyal servant who had been accredited to him as an ADC by the King the previous autumn, would be fitted in.33 Instead, two equerries were to ride outside as bodyguards, along with a courier, the Comte de Valory. Two waiting-women, Madame Brunier for Madame Royale and Madame de Neuville for the Dauphin, were to follow in a light carriage. (Madame Thibault, for the Queen, had a separate passport to Tournai, from where she intended to join her mistress.) Count Fersen, who was to drive the berlin on the very first stage of its journey getting out of Paris, was to separate from the royal party after that was accomplished.
Fersen had originally expected to go the whole way to Montmédy, seeking permission from King Gustav to wear a Swedish uniform for the occasion, since his own French uniform was not with him, and he dared not order another one. But Louis XVI banned it. There has been some speculation as to his reason: did Louis XVI choose this moment for an uncharacteristic outburst of jealousy? It seems an unlikely development at this stage, given that Fersen was allowed to perform the risky task of driving out of Paris, with all the possibilities of discovery that that entailed. Perhaps it was snobbery, those court values again. The Duc de Lévis said afterwards that the role of coachman should have gone to “a grand French seigneur.”34 The most probable explanation lies in the fact that Fersen was a foreigner, for all his French military command, and everything was being done to avoid any foreign taint touching the King’s escape when he arrived at Montmédy.
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