Marie Antoinette

THE reader or student acquainted with various records of the French Revolution may be tempted to regard the account of Drouet’s Ride in my text as containing too much detail for accurate history; especially as no historian has hitherto done more than vaguely allude to it. I will therefore in this Appendix show the way in which I found it possible to reproduce every circumstance of Drouet’s movements from the time when he left Ste. Menehould until the time of his arrival at Varennes.

The berline left Ste. Menehould shortly after eight. It had to climb to Germeries Wood^[54] on the crest of the forest, four hundred feet in four miles. It could not possibly, therefore, have reached the summit till after nine, and however fast was the run down on to Islettes (just over five miles from Ste. Menehould) that village cannot have been reached before 9.15. From Islettes to Clermont is just four miles, and mostly slightly rising. The best going could not cover the distance in twenty minutes, which puts the earliest possible entry into Clermont at twenty-five or twenty to ten. The change of horses took from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour. Put it at the lowest, and one has for the earliest possible time the berline can have left Clermont that it must have been within ten minutes of ten o’clock.

From Clermont to Varennes is nine miles: a straight road, descending slightly on the whole, but not quite flat. Under the best conditions that day the berline had not covered ten miles in the hour; let it gallop at twelve (a pace it was quite incapable of, save in short spells) and Varennes would still be three-quarters of an hour off.

Now Varennes was entered just on a quarter to eleven. The berline cannot therefore have left Clermont later than ten; and cannot have arrived earlier than ten minutes to ten; so this departure of the Royal Family from Clermont for Varennes, of Drouet’s postillions back from Clermont for Ste. Menehould, took place sometime in those ten minutes.

Now Drouet reached Varennes before eleven. He reached it round about by the forest—not by the main road—and he reached it by a gallop through a pitch dark night in dense wood without a moon.^[55] The shortest line as the crow flies from the last bend of the road before Clermont to Varennes Bridge is ten miles; any deviation through the wood, even in a straight line, would make it nearly twelve. It is very difficult to cover twelve miles in an hour under such conditions, but even if you allow Drouet that pace he must leave the high road about ten.

All this synchronises to within a very few minutes. The postillions leave Clermont to turn back home in the ten minutes before ten; they go fast, for they are riding light; a mile or so up the road they meet their master. It is just here that the forest on the northern side of the ravine touches the modern railway and comes nearest to the road. Drouet takes to the forest certainly not before ten and equally certainly not ten minutes after.

So much for the hour at which he took to the wood.

Now what road did he pursue in the forest? Only one is possible. The forest here covers a high ridge, some three hundred feet above the open plain. Down in the plain, parallel to this ridge and at its base, runs the high road from Clermont to Varennes, with a row of farms and wide fields between it and the edge of the wood. Had Drouet gone anywhere but along the ridge he would have had to cross some twenty streams, to climb and fall over as many ravines (all of clay), to flank a dozen clay ponds and marshes, and with all this there was no continuous path. He could not have done it in two hours, let alone one. He was compelled to follow the ridge. It so happens that there runs all along the ridge a green ride called “the High Ride.” It is a Gaulish track of great antiquity, known to the peasantry as “the Roman Way.” It does not come down as far as Clermont; it leaves the forest at the farm and huts of Lochères. To this farm Drouet must have made his way by the lanes and gates of Jacques and Haute Prise—once at Lochères, a hard gallop along the High Ride brought him in six or seven miles to the Crossed Stone (called also the Dead Girl); here another green ride crosses the main ride of the ridge. He took this cross ride to the right hand: it leads down and out of the forest; one comes out of the wood a mile or so from Varennes with the town right below one and what was then a lane (now it is a county road) through the open valley fields. Just before entering the town a detour (by where the tile-works are now) would get him into the Rue de Mont Blainville, and so to the Bridge: a detour serving the double purpose of avoiding possible troops at the entry to the town and of getting ahead of any carriage coming in from Clermont. He cannot but have taken this detour, have noted the waggon by the bridge as he passed it (he later used it to block the bridge), and then have come up the main street from the river.