Plans for the invasion having been thus arranged, Louis XVI. resolved immediately to effect his escape to the frontier. He could then place himself at the head of these foreign armies, and lash France into obedience, and consign those patriots who had been toiling for liberty to the dungeon and the scaffold.
Never was the condition of a nation more full of peril, or apparently more hopeless. This impending destruction was enough to drive any people into the madness of despair. It is hard to wear the fetters of bondage even when one has never known any thing better. But, after having once broken those chains and tasted the sweets of liberty, then to have the shackles riveted anew is what few human spirits can endure.
It was not the intention of the king immediately to leave France. He arranged to go to Montmedy, about two hundred miles from Paris, taking the very retired Chalons road through Clermont and Varennes. The Marquis of Bouillé, a general entirely devoted to the court party, formed a camp at Montmedy to receive the king, under the pretense of watching hostile movements on the frontiers. Small detachments of cavalry were also very quietly posted at different points on the road to aid in the flight. All the arrangements were made for starting on the 20th of June.[272]
The king, though on the whole a worthy man, and possessing some excellent traits of character, was in some points weak almost to imbecility. All the energy of the family was with the queen, and she, with the Marquis of Bouillé, planned the escape. They were often thwarted, however, in their wishes by the obstinacy of the king. La Fayette was entirely deceived, and but few even of the court were intrusted with the secret. Still, rumors of flight had been repeatedly circulated, and the people were in a state of constant anxiety lest the court should carry off the king. They hardly believed that the king himself wished to join the emigrants, and to urge war against the Constitution which he had sworn to accept.
The Swiss Guards still surrounded the Tuileries. They were stationed, however, only at the exterior posts. The interior of the palace, the staircases, and the communications between the rooms were occupied by the National Guard, in whom the nation could place more reliance. It was a long-established custom that troops should be thus stationed throughout the palace, that the royal family might be protected from impertinence or from any irruption of popular violence. Since the terrible scenes of the 5th and 6th of October it became more important than ever that a strong guard should encircle the royal family. But while the ostensible duty of this guard was only to protect the king from insult, it had also a secret mission to prevent the king's escape.
La Fayette, to whom the whole business was intrusted, oppressed with the responsibility of his office, was continually, by night and by day, visiting the posts. To the officers who had charge of the night-watch he had given secret orders that the king was not to be permitted to leave the palace after midnight. Thus the king was truly a prisoner, and he was fully conscious of it, though every possible effort was adopted to conceal from him the humiliating fact.
M. Bouillé and the queen were compelled to yield to the whims of the king, and to adopt measures which threatened to frustrate the plan. The king insisted upon having an immense carriage constructed which could take the whole party, though the unusual appearance of the carriage would instantly attract all eyes; he insisted upon traveling a very unfrequented route, which would excite the curiosity of every one who should see the carriage pass; he insisted upon stationing military detachments along the route, though Bouillé urged that such detachments if small could render no service, and if large would excite suspicion; he insisted upon taking the governess of the children, because the governess said that she loved the children too much to be separated from them, though Bouillé urged that instead of the incumbrance of a governess they should take in the carriage an officer accustomed to traveling, and who could aid in any unexpected emergency. The king, though fickle as the wind upon questions of great moment, was, like all weak men, inflexible upon trifles.[273]
At midnight of the 20th of June, the king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, the sister of the king, the two royal children, and Madame Tourzel their governess, carefully disguised themselves in one of the interior rooms of the Tuileries. Creeping cautiously down, in three successive parties, an obscure flight of stairs, and emerging by a gate which was contrived to be left unguarded, the fugitives, mingling with the groups of people who ever at that time were leaving the chateau, crossed the Carrousel, and, taking different streets, groped along through the darkness until they all met on the Quai des Théatins, where two hackney-coaches awaited them. In breathless silence they took their seats. The Count de Fersen, a Prussian noble, young, handsome, enthusiastic, who was inspired with a chivalric admiration of Marie Antoinette, had made all the arrangements for the escape from the city. Disguised as a coachman, he conducted the king, who led the young dauphin by the hand. The count immediately mounted the box of the coach which contained the royal family, and drove rapidly some twelve miles to the little town of Bondy, where the capacious carriage constructed for the king was waiting before the door of an Englishman, Mr. Crawford. At the same hour in a similar manner the king's brother, Monsieur the Count of Provence, subsequently Louis XVIII., left the Palace of the Luxembourg, and with his family traveled all night toward Flanders, where he crossed the frontiers in safety.