'Towards the close of 1791,' he writes, 'I left my dear Father's house, and bade him, as it proved, a lasting farewell, having never seen him since.' At this time, Etienne accompanied his brothers and many other nobles into Germany, to join the French Princes who were endeavouring to bring about a counter-revolution and restore the king, Louis XVI.
On this dangerous journey the young men met with many narrow escapes. Courage came naturally to Etienne. 'I was not the least moved,' he writes in his diary, 'when surrounded by people and soldiers, who lavished their abuses upon us, and threatened to hang me to the lamp-post. I coolly stood by, my hands in my pockets, being provided with three pairs of pistols, two of which were double-barrelled. I concluded to wait to see what they would do, and resolved, after destroying as many of them as I could, to take my own life with the last.'
Happily the necessity for extreme courses did not arise. He was, he says, 'mercifully preserved,' and no violent hands were laid upon him, though he and his companions suffered a short detention, after which they succeeded in safely joining the French Princes and their adherents at the city of Coblentz on the Rhine. Here Etienne spent the following winter and spring surrounded, he tells us, by many temptations.
'I was fond of solitude,' continues the diary, 'and had many retired walks through the woods and over the hills. I delighted to visit the deserted hermitages, which formerly abounded on the Rhine. I envied the situation of such hermits, retired from the world, and sheltered from its many temptations; for I thought it impossible for me to live a life of purity while continuing among my associates. I looked forward wishfully to the time when I could thus retire; but I saw also that, unless I could leave behind me my earthly-mindedness, my pride, vanity, and every carnal propensity, an outward solitude could afford me no shelter.
'Our army entered into France the forepart of the summer of 1792, accompanied by the Austrians and Prussians. I was in the King's Horse Guards, which consisted mostly of the nobility. We endured great hardships, for many weeks sleeping on the bare ground, in the open air, and were sometimes in want of provisions. But that word honour so inflamed us, that I marvel how contentedly we bore our privations.'
Towards the approach of winter, owing to various political changes, the Princes' army was obliged to retire from France, and soon after was disbanded. 'Etienne had been present at several engagements; he had seen many falling about him, stricken by the shafts of death; he had stood in battle array, facing the enemy ready for the conflict; but, being in a reserve corps, he was preserved from actually shedding blood, having never fought with the sword, or fired a gun.'
In after years, he was thankful to remember that although he had been perfectly willing to take life, he had never actually done so in his soldier days. After the retreat of the French army, he and his brothers set out for Amsterdam. On the way, however, they were made prisoners of war, and condemned to be shot. 'The execution of the sentence was each moment expected, when some sudden commotion in the hostile army gave them an opportunity to make their escape.' Their lives thus having been spared a second time they reached Holland in safety.
The young men were puzzled what to do next. They could not bear to leave their beloved parents at distant Limoges, and yet it was impossible to reach them or to help them in any way. France was a dangerous place for people with a 'de' in their names in those days, and for young men of military age most dangerous of all. Finally, Etienne and his brother Joseph settled to go to South America. 'Through the kind assistance of a republican General, a friend of the family, they obtained a passage on board a ship bound for Demerara, where they arrived in the First month of 1793, after a voyage of about forty days.'
Unfortunately this long voyage had not taken them away from scenes of violence. The Revolution in France was terrible, but the horrors of slavery in South America were, if possible, even worse. The New World seemed no less full of tragedy than the Old. Etienne saw there husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters torn apart, most cruelly beaten, often sold like cattle to tyrannical masters, never to see each other's faces again.
Amid such scenes Etienne grew more than ever full of despairing thoughts, more than ever inclined to believe that there could not be a God ruling a world where these evils were allowed to go unpunished.