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the king and
queen must be stopped and the Assembly notified. But the people of Varennes had no doubts on the matter: the family must be sent back
to Paris immediately. Beyond the constitutional requirement that
king and Assembly remain in close proximity, everyone was anxious
about the local military situation. They were still expecting an attack from General Bouille, and they could only hope that their town
might be spared if the king were sent elsewhere. And so at half past
seven, the sun already high and becoming hot, the municipal leaders
and the royal party approaching exhaustion from their night without sleep, the two carriages were turned about and driven through
the archway and back up the hill out of town. Accompanied now by
thousands of national guardsmen, the king, the queen, and the royal
children began the long trek back to Paris.

    THE NIGHT the king suddenly appeared in a small town in northeastern France is arguably one of the most dramatic and poignant
moments in the entire French Revolution. For the local inhabitants
the experience was unforgettable, and in some cases it would entirely reshape their lives. Drouet would soon find himself elected to
the National Convention, largely on the basis of his actions that
night. Sauce would be tracked for years by fanatical royalists for
whom he became the embodiment of evil. His wife would fall to
her death as she attempted to hide in a well to escape the invading
foreign armies in 1792. Indeed, the whole town would be periodically threatened with annihilation by various counterrevolutionary groups. "Varennes, unhappy Varennes," wrote one prophet of
doom: "your ruins will soon be plowed into the earth."31 By contrast, patriots from all over France flooded the town with letters of
gratitude. An enormous sum of close to 200,000 French pounds
was offered by the National Assembly as a reward to be divided
among various local citizens. Engravings and flags and handpainted dishes would hail the town and its people, "from the nation, in grateful recognition," and the state would erect a memorial
tower at the site of the inn of the Golden Arm, where the royal
family had been stopped by the national guard. Novelists and historians would make pilgrimages to Sauce's small upstairs apartment throughout the nineteenth century, until it and the whole center of
town were destroyed by the German invasion in August 1914-and
battered once again by the Americans four years later in the Battle
of the Argonne 32

    Yet beyond their effect on the inhabitants of Varennes, the events
of that night would prove a turning point in the history of the Revolution and of the French monarchy, with an enormous immediate
impact on Paris, on the National Assembly, and indeed on the
whole of France and of Europe. It is to this broader context of the
flight to Varennes, how it came about and how it affected the lives
of various social and political groups throughout the kingdom, that
we turn in the following chapters.

     

CHAPTER 2

The King of the French

    AT THE CENTER of the drama was king Louis himself, fifth monarch in the Bourbon line, thirty-six years old at the time of Varennes. He was a curious, enigmatic man, in many respects quite
unlike any of the kings of his family who preceded or followed
him. Even those contemporaries who knew him well found him
difficult to assess, uncommunicative, unpredictable. Whether from
timidity and uncertainty or from political strategy, he spoke very
little, remaining silent and somewhat inscrutable.
    By all accounts he had been a diffident, taciturn child, lacking in
self-esteem and never really comfortable in the world of parade and
flattery and wit that were the essence of court life at the palace of
Versailles, the great royal residence about fifteen miles southwest of
Paris. He had been the second of four boys born to the son of the
previous king, Louis XV, and he invariably came out last in comparisons with his