Jean-Baptiste Drouet

Jean-Baptiste Drouet (8 January 1763 – 11 April 1824) was a French politician of the Revolution and the Empire, best known for his key role in the arrest of King Louis XVI and his family during the Flight to Varennes.

Background Drouet was born at Sainte-Menehould, in the province of Champagne. He enlisted in the Condé-Dragons regiment in 1781, but left seven years later to help his father in his duties as postmaster of Sainte-Menehould.

Flight to Varennes

On 21 June 1791, at around 8.p.m, the berline carrying the disguised royal family on their flight to the frontier made a stop at Sainte-Menehould. About 13 hours earlier, a valet de chambre in the Tuileries had noticed the king's disappearance and alerted the authorities. Shortly after the royal family's arrival, Drouet (by then himself the city's postmaster) recognized the king, under the identity of a valet "Mr. Durand", from his portrait printed on an assignat in his possession, but did not take action immediately. The carriage left Sainte-Menehould around ten minutes later. Just after receiving the news of the king's escape sent from Paris by Lafayette, at around 9.p.m, Drouet set out to the nearby town of Varennes-en-Argonne, along with his friend Guillaume, in the direction he believed the berline had departed to.

Riding separately, with Drouet going through Clermont and Guillaume through the Forest of Argonne in Les Islettes, they arrived with their horses in Varennes just a few minutes after the royal family, and quickly notified the local authority of their presence in town. A bridge over the river Aire on the way to the frontier was then barricaded, and the National Guard, commanded by the future General Étienne Radet, was mobilized to assist in the blockade. The fugitives were finally detained at around 11:10.p.m, and arrested some time later after being formally identified as the royal family by Jacques Destez, a judge who had resided in Versailles. and was later employed in the Committee of Public Safety. He returned to France in December 1795, exchanged with other French revolutionaries and military officers for Marie Thérèse of France, daughter of Louis XVI.

Directory and beyond Drouet then became a member of the Directory's Council of Five Hundred following the Thermidorian Reaction. In 1796 he was accused of involvement in Babeuf's Conspiracy of the Equals and imprisoned at the Prison de l'Abbaye, but shortly made his escape, going first to Switzerland and from there to the Canary Islands, where he took part in the successful resistance to Horatio Nelson's attack on Tenerife in 1797, and later visited India. He returned to France after being accquitted by the High Court.

In the First Empire, Drouet was appointed sub-préfet of Sainte-Menehould by Emperor Napoleon, and was made a member of the Legion of Honor on 7 August 1807. When bestowing Drouet with the order, Napoleon told him, "Mr. Drouet, you have changed the face of the world" (Monsieur Drouet, vous avez changé la face du monde). He served as deputy in the Chamber of Representatives during the Hundred Days, but with the Bourbon Restoration was exiled in January 1816, being deemed a perpetrator of regicide. He soon returned secretly, however, and settled in Mâcon under the name of "Merger", keeping his identity hidden until his death on 11 April 1824.