Free When the King Took Flight by Timothy Tackett Page B

must post a rear guard across the road after the king had gone by, blocking any messengers from Paris who might attempt to
spread the alarm .51 As commander of this key position, Bouille
made the curious choice of duke Claude-Antoine-Gabriel de
Choiseul-Stainville, only thirty years old and relatively inexperienced. Although everyone recognized Choiseul's loyalty and honored his aristocratic pedigree, both Fersen and the queen were wary
of his reputation for flightiness and urged the general to find someone else. Fersen referred to him in one letter as "a muddleheaded
young man."55

    Yet Bouille worried far less about his officers than about the loyalty of the troops they would be asked to lead. Throughout the
winter and spring of I791 local patriotic clubs had been vigorously
recruiting the French soldiers garrisoned in their localities and
casting doubt on the loyalty and motivation of their commanding
officers-officers who, almost without exception, were members
of an increasingly mistrusted nobility. Commanders everywhere
watched helplessly as their subordinates became more unruly and
undisciplined, sometimes announcing their intention of following
only orders that they themselves had approved. Under such conditions, Bouille felt no choice but to make plans based entirely on the
use of foreign mercenaries.56 He appealed to the Tuileries for funds
to ensure that his Swiss and German troops were all well paid and
that extra money would be available for the day of reckoning.
Fersen and the queen managed to scrape together nearly a million
French pounds-much of it from Fersen's own fortune-which
they audaciously shipped to Metz wrapped in bolts of white taffeta.
Plans were further jeopardized in the spring, however, when the
new pro-Revolutionary minister of war moved some of the general's best foreign troops to another province."
    But Bouille was also concerned about the reliability of the king
himself. The inclusion of the marquis d'Agoult in the escape party
had been conceived to compensate the monarch's lack of experience
in traveling by himself. Then, at the last minute, the royal family
removed d'Agoult to make room for the royal governess Madame
de Tourzel, who had insisted on traveling with her charges as soon as she learned of the escape plan. Bouille was also haunted by the
fear that the monarch would never summon the determination and
constancy to go through with such a bold plan, that he would back
out at the last minute, leaving the conspirators unprotected and vulnerable to arrest for treason.58 Such fears were only increased by the
king's repeated postponement of his departure date. First scheduled
for late May, then early June, the flight was put off successively to
June 12, 15, and 19.59 More unfortunate still, Bouille learned only on
June 15 that the royal family had rescheduled its departure yet again
to the twentieth. By this time all the general's instructions had been
issued, and his troops were moving into position. The necessary
changes in orders, cobbled together at the last moment, would cause
several minor mistakes and inconsistencies that measurably affected
the success of the enterprise. Perhaps most serious of all, a number
of cavalry contingents would be forced to bivouac an extra day in
towns along the way, arousing great nervousness and suspicion
among the local inhabitants."

    Despite the elaborate plans developed for the king's escape, remarkably little attention seems to have been given to what the king
would do when he actually arrived in Montmedy. Bouille claimed
that he was never informed of the king's intentions. Louis may have
planned to establish a provisional government with his conservative
ex-minister, the baron Breteuil, as prime minister. Breteuil was
asked to draft a policy paper from his exile in Switzerland and to
join the king in Montmedy as soon as possible. But the draft, sent
ahead to Luxembourg for delivery to the monarch,