Of all the decrees which it had yet enacted, this, in some sense, may be regarded as the most monstrous.  It was not only passing a penal sentence on the royal family such as in no country or age any but convicted criminals had even been subjected to, but it was an insult and an injury to every part of the kingdom except the capital, which, by an intolerable assumption, it treated as if it were the whole of France.  Joseph, as has been seen, had wisely pointed out to his brother-in-law that it was one, and no unimportant part, of a sovereign’s duty to visit the different provinces and chief cities of his kingdom, and Louis had in one instance acted on his advice.  We have seen how gladly he was received by the citizens of Cherbourg, and what advantages they promised themselves from his having thus made himself personally acquainted with their situation and wants and prospects; and we can not doubt that other towns and cities shared this feeling, nor that it was well founded, and that the acquisition by a king of a personal knowledge of the resources and capabilities and interests of the great cities, of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, is a benefit to the whole community; but of this every province and every city but Paris was now to be deprived.  It was to be an offense to visit Rouen, or Lyons, or Bordeaux; to examine Riquet’s canal or Vauban’s fortifications.  The king was the only person in the kingdom to whom liberty of movement was to be denied; and the peasants of every province, and the citizens of every other town, were to be refused for a single day the presence of their sovereign, whom the Parisians thus claimed a right to keep as a prisoner in their own district.

It is hardly strange that such open attacks on their liberty made a deeper impression on the queen, and even on the phlegmatic disposition of the king, than any previous act of violence, or that it increased their eagerness to escape with as little delay as possible.  Indeed, the queen regarded the public welfare as equally concerned with their own in their safe establishment in some town to which they should also be able to remove the Assembly, so that that body as well as themselves should be protected from the fatal influence of the clubs of Paris, and of the populace which was under the dominion of the clubs.[6] Accordingly, on the 20th of April, she writes to the emperor[7] that “the occurrence which has just taken place has confirmed them more than ever in their plans.  The very guards who surrounded them are the persons who threaten them most.  Their very lives are not safe; but they must appear to submit to every thing till the moment comes when they can act; and in the mean time their captivity proves that none of their actions are done by their own accord.”  And she urges her brother at once to move a strong body of troops toward some of his fortresses on the Belgian frontier—­Arlon, Vitron, or Mons—­in order to give M. de Bouille a pretext for collecting troops and munitions of war at Montmedy.  “Send me an immediate answer on this point; let me know, too, about the money; our position is frightful, and we must absolutely put an end to it next month.  The king desires it even more than I do.”