History: Only for the berline, everything might have been different. No death by guillotine for the King and Queen of France, the Revolution turned on another course, an alternative history, for better or worse, for the 19th century and even the 20th - yes, the berline was a mistake. A berline, a large travelling-carriage that only the wealthiest could afford, was not the vehicle to choose if you wanted to travel unremarked, let alone incognito, writes Anne Haverty.
The berline, built in the spring of 1791 for the Royal family's escape from revolutionary Paris and an uncertain future, was huge and opulent, an almost comical symbol of the vanity and denial of reality that had brought the monarchy to this pass. Black, with a bright yellow frame, it was lined with leather and taffeta and equipped with ample luggage-compartments, picnic gear, bottle-racks and a leather-covered chamber-pot. Three bodyguards, nobles acting as footman and outriders, accompanied it, dressed in matching bright yellow coats. Yellow was also the livery of the Duc de Conde, a hated anti-revolutionary.
There were other mistakes of course, inevitable in the clandestine and complex operation courageously managed by the Queen's lover, Count Fersen. The family had to be got out of the palace, a virtual prison teeming with staff and courtiers, out of the city and across miles of countryside full of fervid revolutionaries, to the safety of the border in the north-east, where they would be met by friendly Austrian troops.
However, apart from the odd, non-fatal hitch everything was going more or less according to plan until at the relais of Sainte-Menehould a man called Drouet recognised the Queen, galloped ahead to the next relais in the town of Varennes and raised the alarm.
If on that evening a modest cabriolet had rolled into his yard, instead of this rare and luxurious conveyance, Drouet might not have given its occupants more than a passing glance.
Drouet, of course, was a stroke of bad luck. In those pre-media times few people knew what their king and queen looked like. But Drouet had served in the cavalry and saw the Queen when he was stationed in Versailles. At Varennes, a man who was known to have seen the monarchs in the flesh was brought from his bed to examine the faces of the couple claiming to be a Madame de Korff and her land agent. He proved the case by falling to his knees. Monsieur Sauce, who invited the entourage into the apartment above his shop, was courteous but firm. The refugees must return to Paris.
In his scrupulous yet superbly atmospheric account, Timothy Tackett is especially good on the poignancy of the return. It took four days, the longest and hottest of the summer. The exhausted occupants of the berline, and the yellow-coated nobles on top with their hands tied, were choked by the dust raised by thousands of national guardsmen tramping alongside, their numbers swelled by swarms of people armed with muskets, pitchforks, pikes or sickles. Some, celebrating Corpus Christi, were in a festive mood, others were hostile. The men on the coach had a terrifying but excellent view of the murder of a Count Dampierre when he rode up to salute the King.
Here, Tackett, primarily concerned with the consequences of the aborted flight, swaps his novelist's hat for the historian's. It fundamentally affected the course of the revolution, he argues, arousing well-founded fears of foreign invasion, hardening opinion against monarchy and tradition and legitimising action against counter-revolutionaries. Deeply interesting for sure - but it's a disappointment, since any expert historian could do the same with his material, that Tackett hasn't employed his rare narrative skills to give us the denouement, when his characters are tried and beheaded - not for sensation, but because he has made us care.
A berline also makes an appearance in Prince of Europe. The Prince de Ligne had one built for his constant travels around Europe and lent it to the Emperor of Austria on occasion. The monarchs who took flight also appear, as the prince was devoted to Marie Antoinette. But then the prince was devoted to every crowned head he knew and he made it his business to know them all.
The Prince de Ligne was a phenomenon but sadly, one cannot but think at the end of this long and hectic read, a phenomenon of no great importance. Sad, because the prince always wanted to be important. He was Flemish, a Prince of the Austrian Netherlands and a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, which put him on a par with sovereigns. When young, he saw clearly the absurdity of artistocratic privilege but exploited it anyway. He had two, probably contradictory ambitions, glory on the battlefield and literary fame. His tragedy, if it can be called that since he lived, a hale and ebullient gadabout, to be an old roué, was that he achieved neither.
His wish to win glory in battle was a conventional one for aristocrats of his time. Europe in the 18th century was enthusiastically bellicose, a patchwork of kingdoms and provinces and territories to be invaded or carved up by their neighbours. He was given his own regiment by the Empress, Maria Teresa, but of his exploits there is little to be said. He did fight in Bohemia against his friend Prince Henry of Prussia.
But, disappointingly, there was no pitched battle and he had 20 or 30 people to lunch every day instead. In his late 70s he was begging the Emperor to allow him to lead the Austrian army against Napoleon.
He wrote, copiously. Every archive in Europe has his letters, often amusing and perceptive, but also florid, rhetorical and insincere. He wrote eulogistic verse in the formal style. The work by which his name survives is his Mémoirs, no more reliable than most, running to several volumes, and, as he had "gardenmania", a book about gardens, Coup d'Oeil sur Beloeil.
Best friends with everyone who was anyone - Voltaire, Catherine the Great, Frederick of Prussia, a succession of Hapsburgs, Madame de Staël, Goethe - he was charming, gay (often in both senses), gallant, always enthusiastic and ebullient, and very intelligent. He claimed modishly to have his moments of melancholy and simplicity but one suspects that was an affectation. He was also hypocritical, a lightweight, a flatterer. He adored everyone and was malicious about nearly everyone. Casanova-style, he was tireless in his libertinism and, indeed, the two old debauchees cultivated a warm friendship in Vienna in the 1790s.
The Prince was a flower of the 18th century, wilted by the bracing winds of the 19th, and seems now completely dated. Yet, he was very talented and probably big-hearted. In another time he would not have had so enjoyable and privileged a life but might have achieved more.
Philip Mansel gives us a rich and evocative account of this life of courts and personages and deadly amusements but, like his subject, he hops around a great deal and his narrative lacks clarity. One is not very sorry to see the end of Ligne - at the Congress of Vienna in 1814 from going to too many balls and receptions - and his world.
Anne Haverty's most recent novel is The Far Side Of A Kiss
When The King Took Flight. By Timothy Tackett, Harvard University Press, 270 pp. £16.50
Prince of Europe: The Life of Charles Joseph de Ligne. By Philip Mansel
Weidenfeld & Nicolson , 338pp. £25