Even during the few words of this conversation, the crowd had continued to increase, and with the crowd the armed men. It occurred to the King to command; he did it paternally, with a “Now then,” and a “Come, come,” bidding the postillions go forward. Nothing happened. He looked out of the window and saw that the postillions had dismounted, and there came again, now from a great number of levelled muskets, the threat to fire. There was but one faint and last chance against discovery: to pretend no more than an inconvenience, and to do as they were bid.
The family got down wearily (for twenty-four mortal hours they had been cramped upon that journey), entered the house of Sauce the Procurator just opposite, and waited for the morning. Meanwhile in the street outside the clamour of Ste. Menehould was repeated, the tocsin sounded and the drum, the men of the town armed by tens and by hundreds, and at last all the population, children and old men and women, were crowding the street and filling it with perpetual noise.
It was not yet light when the Hussars, Choiseul and his Hussars, came blundering out of the wood. Mercenary troops have great advantages. If the troops are foreign the advantages are greater still; but a disadvantage attaches to such troops, which is the need of interpreters. They could understand nothing of what was going on around them; they could not understand the speech that was made urging them to save “their” King.
They were ordered to charge, and did so, clearing the street, and they formed after the short charge in front of the mean house which held the royal family. There could be no further doubt in the townsmen’s minds; it was indeed the King.
The Hussars and the King and the Queen, their gaolers, the Municipality, all were in a general agreement that with the dawn the Royal Family should continue its journey. But meanwhile that incalculable element, the populace, swelled out of all knowledge. When the first light showed in the streets far more than the population of Varennes was there. They poured in from the country-sides; the men going to the fields to catch the grass with their scythes before the dew was off it heard the news and came; those coming in for market to the lower town heard the news and came; the Men of the Forest came. And the rumour that Bouillé was on the march with his army, at the head of the hired German cavalry, did but increase the crowd.
It was full day. For a second time under the increasing menace the Hussars were ordered to charge. They hesitated; and against them, now in rank, were the armed men of the local National Guard. The sun had risen. Goguelat tried to force his way forward, trusting that if he did so his Hussars would follow. But these looked on in a kindly German way, bewildered, and the officer of the National Guard shot Goguelat, who fell from his horse. The crowd, already morally impassable for its determination and its arms, was now physically so. All down the street to the bridge and all round, up the courts and alleys, one could see nothing but the crowd; and the proportion of Militia uniforms among them, the number of bayonets that showed above their shoulders, increased as the hours passed, as four o’clock struck, and five, and six. The King’s green coat had been seen a moment at the window; the cheers that met it (for they were cheers, not groans) were now swelled by the voices of some ten thousand armed men, and already the cry was raised “for Paris.” ... Already had the scouts of Bouillé’s Uhlans appeared far off upon the sky-line of the eastern hills.
He could never have passed the bridge in time. Nothing but artillery could have cleared the town. The general and popular decision was made and grew; no discipline, no individual command could meet it. The cry of “Paris” filled the air, now with a meaningless noise, now with a comic rhythm, such as impatient audiences make in theatres or soldiers on the march. There were negotiations, but with every mention of “Montmédy” the shout of “Paris” grew louder.
The couple of guns, which the National Guards of the town were allowed by law, had at their head, as was only right, a gunner. It was this gunner who brought the good news out at last and said that the King had consented to return.
By seven the whole swarm of thousands, with the berline wedged in the midst, were off back westward again upon the Paris road, a vast dust about them, songs, and—what is more curious—speed, but a speed which was soon crushed under the pressure of such a multitude. As they lost the horizons of Varennes, the last sight they saw behind them was the main body of Bouillé’s German cavalry as it came over and formed upon the hill beyond the river, baffled. By ten, in a violent heat of the sun, the throng had crawled to Clermont; the first, the only doubtful and the fatal stage of the capture and the return was accomplished.