The test proved conclusive. A large mob, including a number of national guards, assembled at the palace on Easter Sunday. It had been announced that on this day the King would visit St. Cloud to hear mass performed by priests who had not accepted the civil constitution. He was not allowed to proceed. After sitting in his carriage several hours awaiting the moment when the mob would give him passage, he returned to his apartments defeated.
Louis was a prisoner. Not only was he a prisoner, but he was compelled by the assembly to have within the palace only priests whom he considered schismatic, and compelled to appear in the assembly and there declare solemnly that he was a free agent and enjoyed entire liberty of action. This drove him to a definite purpose, and preparations were now secretly begun for the flight to Metz.
On the 20th of June the attempt was made. The King's brother, the Comte de Provence, who afterwards became Louis XVIII, managed his escape well, and was driven over the {117} frontier into the Netherlands,—an experience he was to repeat in 1815. The King's arrangements had been placed in the hands of a Swedish nobleman attached to the Queen, Count Fersen. False passports were obtained. The royal family was smuggled out of the palace in disguise. Several bodyguards dressed as couriers acted as escort. A large travelling carriage was ready. A start was successfully made on the great northeastern road.
All went prosperously until the fugitives reached Varennes, a village in the frontier district not more than 15 miles from Verdun, where Bouillé had a strong garrison. At this point the scheme broke down. Bouillé should have been able to place a large cavalry escort about the King's carriage at Varennes, but his arrangements were defective and went wrong. This was not altogether his fault, for Louis had wasted much precious time on the way, and had shown no sense of the resolution required by the circumstances. And lastly the patriots had discovered who the traveller was; the postmaster of Ste Ménehould had recognised the King, had ridden on ahead, had roused the national guard of Varennes—and now the game was up.
{118} After a slight skirmish between a detachment of Bouillé's cavalry and the national guard of Varennes, Louis was started back for Paris, surrounded by armed contingents from all the near-by villages. The whole course of the Revolution had for an instant wavered, hesitating whether to turn this way or that. Now it had turned in a direction that could not be mistaken. Louis himself speaking to one of the officials of Varennes said to him: "If we return to Paris, we shall die."
It was early on the morning of the 21st of June that Paris learnt that the King had left the capital; intense excitement resulted. No doubt could be felt as to the significance of the event; the King himself had taken care that there should be none by leaving behind a lengthy proclamation of which the upshot was that all the decrees he had signed were null and void because of compulsion. The people answered this in the way that might be expected; every emblem of royalty was torn down through the city.
The assembly was in a state of the greatest uncertainty. It had two dangers to face, one from the King, immediate, another from the people, less immediate yet calling for much prudence. In this moment of crisis and doubt, {119} numerous solutions of the political problem were put forward, of which several demand notice.
Marat, in l'Ami du peuple, declared that a military dictator was the only remedy for the situation; a curiously logical perception of what was to be the outcome of the Revolution. This opinion did not obtain any success.
The duc d'Orléans proposed another solution. This personage was the head of the branch of the French Bourbons that stood next to that holding the throne. He had long been on bad terms with the Court and had assiduously cultivated popularity among the Parisians. During the winter of 1788-89 he had spent much money and effort in charity and the relief of distress, and had his reward on the assembly of the States-General at which, while the Queen was received in stony silence, he had met with an ovation. He did his best to create an Orléans party, to push for the throne, and devoted to the purpose the large sums of money which his great fortune placed at his disposal. At every crisis in the Revolution small groups, mostly subsidized, attempted to provoke demonstrations in his favour. And now, on the 21st of June, with the throne derelict, he thought his opportunity had come, and ostentatiously paraded through {120} the central quarters of the city in hopes of a popular movement. But the popular movement would not come. The duke was too well understood; his vices were too well known; his treachery to his cousin aroused no enthusiasm; the people wanted a more complete solution.
That more complete solution was voiced by the Club of the Cordeliers and by its formidable spokesman Danton. Like Mirabeau, Danton was of large physique and stentorian voice, an orator by nature, a man whose unusual if far from handsome features fascinated the crowd. But, unlike his great predecessor, he could hold the affection of the people, indeed, he proved one of the few conspicuous leaders against whom the people did not turn on the day of going to the guillotine. A lawyer, and of a lawyer's family, he was in lucrative practice when the Revolution broke out, a fine advocate, not overscrupulous in method, flexible, but large in view, generous in heart, irresistible in courage, strong in political instincts, a man of the greatest possibilities. He espoused the popular cause, and the popular cause in the democratic sense. He stood for the sections against the central Commune; he defended Marat and the liberty of the press; he opposed the bourgeois régime and La Fayette {121} at every step; he led the battalion of the Cordeliers section to the Tuileries to prevent Louis' visit to St. Cloud in April 1791. Such was the man who now headed a deputation of the Cordeliers Club to the assembly and presented a petition demanding the deposition of Louis XVI.