Let it be noted that here, as is invariably the case throughout the history of the French people, the general mass had easily learned a secret thing: All the bamboozlement had failed—as it is failing to-day in spite of the financial press of Paris, the Secret Societies, and every other instrument of fraud. The vast crowd which hustled round the King’s carriage knew and freely repeated his project of invasion which had now been so carefully and, as it was thought, so secretly plotted for six months.
The French people are accustomed to, and have, as it were, an appetite for, duels in the dark where one of the two combatants must die. There was determination upon the one side—without proof—that the King desired to fly and must be restrained. There was determination upon the other—accompanied by frequent denial—that the King should escape to the French frontier and should be free.
Not the next day, but the day after, Wednesday in Holy Week, the Queen, the Queen herself pulled the trigger. All that blind force of desire for the mere personal safety of her family, which Mirabeau would have controlled, but which in her unguided hands was an unreasoning torrent, impelled her action. She wrote to Mercy that her very life was in danger and that the business must be done with next month at the latest. She mentioned the place of flight, Montmédy.
Eight weeks followed, during which every effort of the royal family was directed to the achievement of a mere flight.
The limits of these pages do not permit me the many details which could make of that early summer a long book of intrigue. When the thing had failed each had his excuses, and Bouillé would have it that with a docile obedience on the part of the Court he could have saved the Court. It may be argued that if the King had gone by way of Rheims he would have escaped. It may be argued that the delay of twenty-four hours (which certainly did take place) made such and such a difference. All these arguments fall to the ground when it is considered that the King did escape from Paris, escaped easily along the road to the frontier, was safe and trebly safe until, as will be seen, two accidents, wholly incalculable and each a clear part of Fate, broke that immemorial Crown of the French Monarchy. The first (as will be seen) was the error—if it was an error—made by young Choiseul on the Chalons road—a mere mechanical one; the second—much more miraculous—was the ride of Drouet, galloping in a dark night under a covered moon wildly through the very difficult ridgeway of Argonne, and even that miracle only just came off by fifteen minutes. It was not delay, whether of twenty-four hours or of a fortnight, which brought them back to Paris. It was that other force for which we have no name, but which one may call if one likes Necessity or Something Written.
FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF THE ADDRESS TO THE FRENCH PEOPLE,
WRITTEN BY LOUIS XVI BEFORE HIS FLIGHT
Fersen, who loved the Queen and whom the Queen loved, had stood in the centre of the plot, had seen all the conspirators, and brought to its climax everything. He was now to risk his life. The great travelling-carriage, called a berline (which easily held three people upon either side), was waiting in its shed in the stables of the house he had hired, as the summer solstice-a date fatal to the Bourbons—approached. Fersen himself in disguise was to drive them, disguised also, from their palace by night in a cab to where that travelling-coach awaited them. Their passports were ready; the children’s governess, the Duchess of Tourzel, was to play the part of the chief personage and to be called the Baroness of Korff. The Queen was to be the governess of her children, the King her valet, his sister a maid; the children were to be Madame de Korff’s children, and the Dauphin was dressed as a girl and called by a girl’s name.