Neighboring powers showed signs of coming to the aid of Louis, and the country did not choose to wait until foreign soldiers crossed its frontiers. Nobody knew better than Lafayette how unprepared France was for war against a well-equipped enemy, but the marvels America had accomplished with scarcely any equipment were fresh in his memory, and he looked upon foreign war as a means of uniting quarreling factions at home—a dangerous sort of political back-fire, by no means new, but sometimes successful. Before December, 1791, three armies had been formed for protection. Lafayette was put in command of one of them, his friend Rochambeau of another, and the third was given to General Luckner, a Bavarian who had served France faithfully since the Seven Years' War.
Lafayette's new commission bore the signature of the king. He hurried to Paris, thanked his sovereign, paid his respects to the Assembly, and departed for Metz on Christmas Day in a semblance of his old popularity, escorted to the city barriers by a throng of people and a detachment of the National Guard. He entered on his military duties with enthusiasm, besieging the Assembly with reports of all the army lacked, consulting with his co-commanders, and putting his men through stiff drill.
By May war had been declared against Sardinia, Bohemia, and Hungary, but the back-fire against anarchy did not work. Troubles at home increased. The Paris mob became more lawless, and on the 20th of June, 1792, the Tuileries was invaded and the king was forced to don the red cap of Liberty; a serio-comic incident that might easily have become tragedy if Louis had possessed more spirit. Lafayette spoke the truth about this king when he said that he "desired only comfort and tranquillity—beginning with his own."
Feeling that his monarch had been insulted, Lafayette hurried off to Paris to use his influence against the Jacobins. He went without specific leave, though without being forbidden by General Luckner, his superior officer, who knew his plan. To his intense chagrin he found that he no longer had an atom of influence in Paris. The court received him coldly, the Assembly was completely in the hands of the Jacobins, timid people were too frightened to show their real feelings, and the National Guard, upon whose support Lafayette had confidently relied, was now in favor of doing away with kingship altogether.
Lafayette could not succor people who refused to be helped, and he returned to the army, followed by loud accusations that he had been absent without leave and that he was "the greatest of criminals." "Strike Lafayette and the nation is saved!" Robespierre had shouted, even before he appeared on his fruitless mission. "Truly," wrote Gouverneur Morris, "I believe if Lafayette should come to Paris at this moment without his army he would be knifed. What, I pray you, is popularity?"
In July Prussia joined the nations at war, threatening dire vengeance if Paris harmed even a hair of the king or queen. The mob clamorously paraded the streets, led by five hundred men from Marseilles, singing a new and strangely exciting song whose music and whose words, "To arms! To arms! Strike down the tyrant!" were alike incendiary. In spite of his recent rebuff, Lafayette made one more attempt to rescue the king, not for love of Louis or of monarchy, but because he believed that Louis now stood for sane government, having signed the Constitution. It is doubtful whether the plan could have succeeded; it was one of Lafayette's generous dreams, based on very slight foundation. He wanted to have himself and General Luckner called to Paris for the coming celebration of July 14th. At that time, making no secret of it, the king should go with his generals before the Assembly and announce his intention of spending a few days at Compiègne, as he had a perfect right to do. Once away from Paris and surrounded by the loyal troops the two generals would have taken care to bring with them, Louis could issue a proclamation forbidding his brothers and other émigrés to continue their plans and could say that he was himself at the head of an army to resist foreign invasion; and, having taken the wind out of the sails of the Jacobins by this unexpected move, could return to Paris to be acclaimed by all moderate, peace-loving men.
There were personal friends of the king who urged him to try this as the one remaining possibility of safety. Others thought it might save Louis, but could not save the monarchy. The queen quoted words of Mirabeau's about Lafayette's ambition to keep the king a prisoner in his tent. "Besides," she added, "it would be too humiliating to owe our lives a second time to that man." So Lafayette was thanked for his interest and his help was refused. On the 10th of August there was another invasion of the Tuileries, followed this time by the massacre of the Swiss Guard. The royal family, rescued from the palace, was kept for safety for three days in a little room behind the one in which the Assembly held its sessions; then it was lodged, under the cruel protection of the Commune, in the small medieval prison called the Temple, in the heart of Paris.
With the Commune in full control, it was not long before an accusation was officially made against Lafayette. "Evidence" to bear it out was speedily found; and on August 19th, less than ten days after the imprisonment of the king, the Assembly, at the bidding of the Commune, declared Lafayette a traitor. He knew he had nothing to hope from his own troops, for only a few days before this his proposal that they renew their oath of fidelity to the Nation, the Law, and the King had met with murmurs of disapproval, until one young captain, making himself spokesman, had declared that Liberty, Equality, and the National Assembly were the only names to which the soldiers could pledge allegiance.
Lafayette still had faith in the future, but the present offered only two alternatives—flight, or staying quietly where he was to be arrested and carried to Paris, where he would be put to death as surely as the sun rose in the east. This was what his Jacobin friends seemed to expect him to do, and they assailed him bitterly for taking the other course. He could not see that his death at this time and in this way would help the cause of civil liberty. He said that if he must die he preferred to perish at the hands of foreign tyrants rather than by those of his misguided fellow-countrymen. He placed his soldiers in the best position to offset any advantage the enemy might gain through his flight, and, with about a score of officers and friends, crossed the frontier into Liège on the night of August 20th, meaning to make his way to Holland and later to England. From England, in case he could not return and aid France, he meant to go to America.
Instead of that, the party rode straight into the camp of an Austrian advance-guard.