Love and Liberty: A Thrilling Narrative of the French Revolution of 1792

Of all the remarkably interesting events connected with the French Revolution, perhaps the one most worthy of notice is the flight of Louis XVI, and his capture at Varennes.

At the time when I determined to take the trip of which I will give you some details, and which put me in possession of the memoirs I am about to publish—that is to say, about the 19th of June, 1856—I had read almost all that had been written concerning the above-mentioned flight.

I wish to start from Châlons, because from the fact of the King being recognized there, came the train of events which ended at Varennes on the evening of his arrest.

The capture of Louis at Varennes was the culminating point of royalty. For although it took seven hundred and four years to arrive at Varennes, it took but nineteen months to descend from Varennes to the Place de la Revolution.

It is not because the heads of three persons, who were in the carriage that took royalty to the precipice, fell on the scaffold, that we mark out the event as the greatest in the French Revolution, and, indeed, in the whole history of France. No! It is because the arrest of the King in the little town of Varennes, unknown on the 22nd of June, and on the morrow fatally immortalized, was the source of the political convulsions which have since occurred.

My resolution to go to Varennes once taken, I started from Paris on the 19th of June, 1856, and on the 20th of the same month, at one o’clock next morning, I arrived at Châlons.

I was, as you know, in search of details actually seen by eye-witnesses. I soon discovered two old men who could give me the necessary information. One was a Monsieur Ricaise, at Châlons—one of the postilions who drove the King; the other, Monsieur Mathieu, notary, at St. Menehould, who had seen the horses changed at the moment that Drouet recognized the King.

But it was especially necessary to discover some one at Varennes who remembered some incidents connected with the affair; because at Varennes occurred the most dramatic part of the whole catastrophe.

I first asked a keeper of the records whether he knew any one who had seen the King, and assisted to arrest him?

He mentioned Colonel Réné Besson.

I asked him to give me his address.

“I will do better,” said he,—“I will take you to him.”

At the very moment that we entered by the Rue de l’Horloge, that place where Louis XVI was arrested, which, singularly enough, has the shape of the axe of the guillotine, my guide put his hand on my shoulder.

“Eh!” said he; “here is the very man we want.”

And he showed me, at the corner of the Place Latry and the Rue de la Basse, a fine old man, warming himself in the rays of the sun, and sitting in a large arm-chair before his door.

It was Colonel Réné Besson.

We drew near to him.

Imagining that we had some business with him, he arranged himself more comfortably in his chair, and waited an explanation.

“Ah, ah! is it you, Monsieur Leduc?” said he.

“Yes, Colonel, it is I; and in good company, too, as you may see,” my companion replied.

“Colonel, I call on you in right of being the son of one of your old companions in arms; for you took a part in the Egyptian campaign, under General Desaix?”

“Yes, sir, I did,” answered he.

“The fact of being the son of an old companion in arms,” I continued, “and of bearing the name of the conqueror of Murad Bey, induced me to take the liberty of calling on you, and asking for information on certain points. To commence. Were you at the battle of Valmy?”

“I was with my regiment six days before, on the 2nd of September; and I just missed leaving my bones at La Force, in trying to rescue a woman—a princess, I should say.”