sent to Torre di Nova, and from thence he was taken back again to the
Castle of St. Angelo. The mad governor, incensed with a prisoner who had
dared to brave him, threw the unfortunate artist into a subterranean
cell, which only admitted the sun’s rays for about an hour and a half
each day. He remained there four months, with nothing to occupy his time
but the reading of the Bible and the Chronicles of Villani, which had
been sent to him by his tormentor. This poor maniac felt that he was
dying; and attributing his death to Benvenuto, he sometimes redoubled
his cruelty towards him, though at others he treated him with greater
tenderness. He had him removed from his first dungeon to another and a
deeper one, particularly famed since a certain preacher named Foiano had
died there of starvation. Meanwhile Montluc, the ambassador of France,
had very energetically demanded Cellini’s liberty, in the name of his
master, Francis I., and after a time, the governor, whose reason was
restored a few days before his death, also urged his release. At length
Cardinal Ferrara, on his arrival from France, went to pay his respects
to the Pope, who kept him to dinner, “Thinking,” says Cellini, “that a
good meal loosens the tongue, and wishing to hear his Eminence talk on
several important subjects.” The cardinal, an accomplished diplomatist,
accepted the invitation, and entertained the Pope with the pleasures and
the amusements of the Court of France, till he saw that he had put his
Holiness into an excellent humour, when he implored him in the name of
the King to pardon Cellini. The Pope consented, and said to him with a
loud burst of laughter, “Take him away at once with you.” The necessary
orders were given, and without so much as waiting for the morrow, the
cardinal sent immediately for Cellini, who left the Castle of St.
Angelo, never to return to it again.
_MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS._
1568.
When the confederate Scotch lords had taken Mary Stuart prisoner after
her defeat at Carberry Hill, and had resolved to dethrone her, they sent
her for safe custody to the castle of Loch Leven, situate on a small
island in the middle of the lake of that name. They chose this gloomy
place, not only because it was nearly inaccessible, but because the
hapless lady would there be in the keeping of that most watchful of all
gaolers, a mortal enemy. Margaret Erskine, mother of William Douglas,
the owner of the castle, had had a son by James V., whom it pleased her
to regard as the legitimate heir to the throne of Scotland, and she
hated Mary as an obstacle to her schemes of ambition. Religious
differences intensified this feeling, for Margaret was a zealous
Presbyterian. In short, her character, her faith, her family pride, and
the natural harshness of her temper, all conspired to make her an
inexorable guardian of the unfortunate Queen.
After Mary had been compelled by violence to renounce the crown in
favour of her son, she was placed in the most rigorous confinement, the
strictest watch being kept over her to prevent her, not only from
effecting her escape, but from holding any sort of communication with
the outer world. Many of the sovereigns of Europe were well disposed
towards her, but she was not allowed to write to her friends, though she
sometimes found an opportunity of doing so while the daughters of
Margaret, who shared her chamber, were asleep, or at their meals. The
cruelty of these restraints defeated their end, for it touched the very
son her gaoler, George Douglas, with compassion for the captive Queen,
and led him to form a plan for her escape. But his first attempt to aid
her was unsuccessful. It was arranged that the Queen should leave the
castle in the dress of the laundress who brought her linen to Loch
Leven, and that George Douglas and a number of his partisans should be
ready to receive her as soon she had crossed the lake. The appointed
day came; the young man was at his post, and the Queen, thanks to her
disguise, had actually got clear of the castle, and reached the boat,
when one of the boatmen, struck by the figure of the pretended
laundress, attempted to lift her veil, and the hasty gesture with which
the Queen resisted his touch, revealed a hand too white and too
delicately formed to be that of a hard-working girl. The man at once
guessed her real rank, but even at that moment Mary did not lose her
presence of mind. She declared her name and title, and ordered him, on
pain of death, to row her across the lake. The name of Margaret Erskine
had, however, greater terror for the fellow than that of Mary Stuart;
and the Queen was taken back to captivity again.
As the penalty of this unfortunate attempt of the 25th March, George
Douglas was sent away from the island. This did not, however, make him
one whit the less eager to succeed in his noble design; and he confided
the Queen to the care of one who was equally devoted to her--his
brother, a youth of fifteen or sixteen, called the “Little Douglas,” and
employed as page to his mother.
Mary was, of course, made to suffer more heavily, and every fresh
precaution against her escape took the form of a new torture. Her life
became almost unendurable. She wrote to Elizabeth, to Catherine de’
Medicis, and to Charles IX., supplicating them for aid, but before any
of them could move in her favour other help was at hand. George Douglas
had never forgotten his promise to set her free. He used the liberty
gained by his banishment from the castle in extending the circle of her
friends. He engaged the powerful families of the Seatons and the
Hamiltons in her cause, and with their aid formed a more carefully
prepared plan than the last for her escape. It was arranged that on a
given night they should be waiting for her where he had formerly waited.
The page, young Douglas, undertook the rest. Sunday, the 2nd May, 1568,
was the day fixed for the execution of the project. The whole household
at Loch Leven took their meals in a common hall; and while they were
together the keys of the fortress were placed on the table by the
governor’s side. At supper time on the appointed night the young page
watched his opportunity; and while he held out his plate to be filled,
he contrived to get possession of the keys without being for the moment
observed. He at once ran to Mary’s chamber and released her, and then
led her to the boat, locking every door behind him on his way to
diminish the chances of pursuit. He then threw the keys into the lake,
and took the oars, after handing the Queen and her waiting-woman into
their seats, and pulled vigorously for the shore. Before leaving the
castle he had placed a signal light in one of the windows, so that when
the Queen stepped from the boat she found her friends waiting to receive
her. She at once took horse, and accompanied by Lord Seaton, galloped
hard for that nobleman’s house at Niddry, in East Lothian, whence after
a few hours’ repose she made her way to the more strongly fortified
castle of the Hamiltons. She was received there by the Archbishop St.
Andrew’s and Lord Claude, who had gone out to meet her with fifty
horses. The news of this escape, according to Scott, spread through
Scotland with the rapidity of lightning, and the Queen was greeted
everywhere with enthusiasm. The people remembered her affability, her
grace, her beauty, and her misfortunes; and if they remembered her
errors too, it was only to say that she had been punished for them too
severely. On Sunday Mary had been a sad captive, abandoned to her
enemies in a solitary tower; and on the Saturday
[Illustration: Escape of Mary, Queen of Scots, from Loch Leven
Castle.]
following she found herself at the head of a powerful confederation, in
which nine counts, eight lords, nine bishops, and a great number of
gentlemen of the highest rank were engaged to defend her and to restore
her to her throne. But this ray of hope only illumined her sombre
destiny for an instant.
The keys thrown into the lake by the page were found by a fisherman in
1805, and are now placed at Kinross. The place where the fugitive Queen
landed, on the southern shore of the lake, is still called Mary’s Knoll.
_CAUMONT DE LA FORCE._
1572.
During the massacre of St. Bartholomew the murderers found their way
into the Rue de la Seine, where lived Monsieur de la Force and his two
sons, who were noted for their courageous profession of the condemned
doctrines. Monsieur de la Force was strongly urged by his brother to
escape, but he refused, because his eldest son, who had been very ill,
was not yet able to travel, and he would not leave him behind. He had
barely taken his heroic resolution before he was surrounded and made
prisoner by a band of zealots, red-handed from the work of death. They
threatened him, but desisted for a time when he offered their chief two
thousand crowns of ransom. He was then led away with his two sons to a
house in the Rue des Petits-Champs, and left there in the custody of two
Swiss soldiers, after he had given his solemn word of honour that he
would not try to escape. The soldiers felt some pity for the hapless
gentleman, and gave him to understand that they would not stand in the
way of his flight; but he was a slave to his word, and he refused either
to move himself or to allow even his youngest son to be taken to a place
of safety.
On the next day, according to the Memoirs of La Force, Count Coconas,
with a party of fifty soldiers, came to the house in the Rue des
Petits-Champs, and told Monsieur de la Force that he had come to fetch
him by order of Monsieur the King’s brother. There was a purposed
vagueness in the words which did not escape the unhappy gentleman’s
notice, and he asked where he was to be taken, at the same time
beginning to make some few alterations in his dress, as if he thought it
best to pretend to believe what he had heard. But Coconas spared him
this trouble, and at the same time relieved himself of the irksomeness
of concealment, by tearing hat and cloak out of his hands before he
could put them on. Then both father and sons knew what was intended for
them, and began to prepare their minds for death. It soon became evident
that they were not being conducted to the apartments of Monsieur in the
Louvre; but when De la Force pointed this out to the escort, and
complained bitterly of the breach of faith towards him after his offer
of ransom had been accepted, they answered not a word, but pushed their
victims on towards the slaughterhouse.
The father, bareheaded and without his cloak, walked first; the sons, in
the same half-naked condition, followed--the elder, who could scarcely
move, but to whom terror had given a little strength, being second; and
the younger the last in the dismal column. In this way they were taken
the entire length of the Rue des Petits-Champs, until they came to the
rampart, when the officer in charge, without a word of warning, called
out, “Kill! kill!” and in an instant, a circle of soldiers was formed
round the victims, and the daggers were at work. The eldest son fell
first with the cry, “O my God, I am dead!” The father, turning
instinctively to help him, was struck as he was bending over the body,
and fell across him--his shield even in death. The youngest son, by
nothing less than a miracle of presence of mind, repeated his brother’s
cry before a single dagger had reached him, and fell with the others,
though his skin was not so much as scratched. But his body was covered
all over with the blood that welled from their wounds, and the assassins
stripped him almost naked without once suspecting that he had not
received a mortal thrust. When they had treated all their victims in
this way, they left their naked and still warm bodies with the
contemptuous expression, “There they lie, all three.”
The eldest son was quite dead; his diseased frame had probably offered
no resistance to the shock of the first blow; the father was mortally
wounded, but he lay a long while gasping out his life, while the frame
of his youngest and unhurt child, who had nestled close to him the
better to feign death, vibrated to every shudder. The child was, of
course, quite conscious, and perhaps his position was the more pitiable
of the two, for he lay side by side with death, or worse than death,
without daring to stir or to utter a single cry of horror, lest he
should bring the assassins back. He remained in this sickening
companionship till about four in the afternoon, when some persons crept
out of the neighbouring houses to look at the bodies and secure what few
valuables the soldiers had left behind. One of these marauders, a marker
at tennis, in taking off the stockings of the living child, turned him
over with his face to the sky, with the exclamation, “Alas! poor little
one, what harm has he done?” “I am not dead,” whispered young Caumont,
raising himself gently: “pray, pray, save my life!”
“Hush!” said the man; “keep quiet: they are still there,” and pointing
to a group of the murderers who were still hovering about the place, he
went away, but returned after a little while, when the coast was clear,
and told the child to get up. He had brought a tattered, dirty cloak
with him, which he threw over Caumont’s naked shoulders; and in this
guise of poverty and wretchedness he drove the child before him through
the streets, pretending that he was chastising a runaway nephew who had
sold his clothes. By this ruse he contrived to pass almost unquestioned
through several groups both of citizens and of soldiers, and to lead the
boy to the miserable garret in which he and his family lived.
Caumont hid himself for a while in the straw of the marker’s bed, and
tried to get a little sleep. In the meantime the man had observed that
he wore several rings of great value; and he asked for them in return
for his hospitality as soon as the child awoke. Caumont unhesitatingly
drew them one by one off his fingers with the exception of a certain
diamond, which had been his mother’s gift; and in answer to a question
by the marker’s wife, he told her why he wished to keep it. The woman
angrily replied that he ought to grudge nothing to persons who had shown
him so much kindness, and who could not afford to be out of pocket by
their good actions; and the child knowing how much he was in their
power, reluctantly yielded up the coveted reward. She then gave him a
meal of very unpalatable food, and her husband offered to guide him to
any place of safety he might select. The child at first chose the
Louvre, where his sister, Madame de Larchant, was near
[Illustration: “Hush!” said the man, “keep quiet, they are still
there.”]
the person of the Queen; but the man positively refused to take him
there on account of the great risk of his being recognised by some of
the guards. “Take me to the arsenal then,” said young De Caumont, “to
the house of Madame de Brisambourg, my aunt.” “Agreed,” replied the
tennis-marker; “it is a long way, but we will go round by the ramparts,
and perhaps we shall be so lucky as not to meet a single person on the
road.”
Early the next morning little Caumont, once more disguised in the
dirtiest garments, and wearing a red hat bearing a leaden cross, set out
with the tennis-marker for the arsenal, which they reached without any
noteworthy incident. At the outer gate, Caumont told his guide to go no
farther, but to wait until some one should return to him with the dress
and thirty crowns. The child at the same time stood ready to enter the
arsenal, but he could not summon up courage to call out to the soldiers
to open the gate. At length, however, some one came out, and he passed
in without having to submit to the dreaded scrutiny. He traversed the
first court, and saw several people whom he thought he knew; but he was
so effectually concealed in his rags that none of them had a moment’s
suspicion of his real identity.
In the massacre in which Caumont had so narrowly escaped death, a page
named La Vigerie, and called L’Auvergnat, to distinguish him from a
namesake, had met with an equally miraculous preservation. He was with
M. de la Force and his two sons in the house in the Rue des
Petits-Champs when the Count de Coconas and his party arrived; and he
was about to follow his master, when one of the Swiss soldiers said to
him, “Look out for yourself; they are going to be killed.” He
accordingly stayed behind; and as soon as the party had left he stole
quietly out of the house, and followed them at a distance without
attracting notice, for he wore the livery of the Count de la Marck, one
of the chiefs of the massacre. He watched the assassins at their bloody
work, and then hurried away to Madame de Brisambourg at the arsenal,
with the news of her brother-in-law’s death. He was kindly received, and
though the lady was well-nigh overwhelmed with grief, she took ample
measures to provide for his safety.
The young De la Force had stood for some time trembling before Madame de
Brisambourg’s door, when it was opened from within, and he saw this page
standing in the entry. He called out to him, but in so weak a voice that
he was not heard, and the door was closed again. But shortly after it
opened a second time, and then he made himself heard, calling out two or
three times in the energy of his misery and his despair, “Auvergnat!
Auvergnat!” The page ran out, and for a time failed to recognise his
young master in the dirty and ill-dressed little boy who began to appeal
to him for protection. “Do you not know me, Auvergnat?” inquired the
child, looking him full in the face. The Auvergnat returned his gaze,
and when at length he found out who it was, his astonishment at this
return to life of one slain, as he thought, before his very eyes was
almost ludicrous to witness. He at once seized Caumont by the hand, and
hurried away with him to a gentleman of the household, by whom he was
taken to Madame de Brisambourg. The lady fell on his neck, and for some
time could not speak for sobs.
When she was a little recovered Caumont told her his story, and her
first care was to have his dress changed, and to send back the bundle of
dirty clothes with the promised reward of thirty crowns to the
tennis-marker at the outer gate. She then had him put to bed in the
room occupied by her waiting-women. After he had slept a little he got
up, and dressing himself, by his aunt’s direction, in the livery of the
Marshal de Biron, Grand Master of the Artillery, was taken to see that
nobleman, and allowed to enter his service as a page, with the Auvergnat
for a play-fellow.
He had not been more than two days in the marshal’s apartments when word
was brought that the King had heard of fugitives being concealed there,
and had directed that the place should be searched. The marshal was
greatly incensed, and he ordered four pieces of cannon to be pointed
against the principal gate of the arsenal, to repel any attempt at
intrusion. Whatever truth there may have been in this particular rumour,
the Queen-mother had certainly heard of the escape and concealment of
young De la Force; for a very few days after his arrival at the arsenal,
she sent a gentleman to the marshal’s apartments, at the instance of a
certain M. de Larchant, to demand him. While this messenger was
discharging his errand, the child was hurried away into the room of the
marshal’s daughters, and concealed between two beds, on which a few
farthingales were thrown with such an appearance of carelessness that no
one would ever have thought of looking for a fugitive there. When all
was ready, the gentleman was invited to begin his search, and he passed
through all the rooms without finding the boy. He then returned to the
Louvre, with the tidings that the Queen had been deceived by a false
rumour, greatly to the disgust and disappointment of M. de Larchant, for
it was this person in effect who had mainly instigated the Queen-mother
to order the search. He was actuated by the very vilest motives, being
next heir after the three De la Forces to a very considerable property.
His influence was all-powerful at the palace; and but for this
circumstance it is more than probable that none of that family would
have been marked for destruction at the massacre.
When the Queen’s gentleman had gone, young Caumont crept out from
between the beds and went back to his old place of concealment in the
marshal’s apartments. But it was not considered prudent to let him
remain there, and the very next day, M. de Born, Lieutenant-general of
the Artillery, and a friend of his aunt, took him very secretly to his
own lodgings, where they breakfasted. M. de Born then told him that he
was to enter the service of M. Guillon, Controller of the Artillery, as
page, and that when asked his name he was to say he was son of M. de
Beaupuy, a lieutenant under the Marshal de Biron. He at the same time
cautioned him particularly against leaving the house when in M.
Guillon’s service, and against talking, lest he should by some chance
word betray the secret of his identity. The poor child promised
faithfully to observe all these directions, and was led away to the
controller’s house, trotting by the side of his new protector, who was
on horseback because he had a wooden leg, and could not walk without
pain.
Arrived at the house, M. de Born delivered the child over to the
controller, in a speech full of praises of his friend’s goodness of
heart, and lamentations about the disturbed state of the country, which
made it very difficult for persons who had the care of young children
and such helpless folk to know how best to provide for their security.
M. Guillon listened, and readily undertook the charge of young De
Beaupuy, as Caumont was called. This was done simply out of his
friendship for M. de Born, for the two had been long acquainted; and the
fact that, notwithstanding this intimacy, De Born did not think fit to
entrust him with the whole secret, may serve to show in what extreme
peril the young fugitive was judged to be. Guillon guessed it,
nevertheless, from the evident anxiety of his friend, or at least he had
a pretty shrewd suspicion that he had not heard all the truth.
Caumont had been some seven or eight days with the controller, and had
not failed to do everything M. de Born had told him. His master came
home every day to dinner, and it was the new page’s business to let him
in; but one day opening the door in answer to a knock at the usual hour,
Caumont was surprised to see, in place of M. Guillon, a person he had
formerly known. He hastily shut the door in great terror; but the new
comer only knocked more loudly than before, and called out that he had a
very urgent message to deliver from Madame de Brisambourg. When he had
thus gained admittance, he told the child that Madame de Brisambourg had
sent him to say that she was in great trouble about her nephew, and
wished to have news of him. This said he went away, and the terrified
boy still suspecting him, jumped on horseback immediately, and rode to
M. de Born to tell him what had happened. M. de Born took him to Madame
de Brisambourg for an explanation, but the lady was equally astonished
with himself, and said that no messenger had been sent by her.
The peril was immediate, and a council of the child’s friends was held
without delay. It was seen that in the neighbourhood in which he then
was, the safety of the little fugitive could no longer be reckoned on,
and it was resolved to dispatch him into a distant part of the country.
The marshal was accordingly prevailed on to apply to the King for a
passport for his house-steward, whom he was sending with a page to
Guyenne, to look after his affairs in that province. The request was
granted; a trusty gentleman of the marshal’s personated the
house-steward, and the page was, of course, no other than the poor
hunted child. They set out, and thanks to M. de Born, passed safely
through the gates of Paris; but when they were about a two days’ journey
from the capital, the child was horrified at the sight of a fellow
wearing his father’s dressing-gown, whom he recognised as one of the
executioners of the Rue des Petits-Champs. The wretch was boasting of
his exploits, but some chance words dropped by him acquainted Caumont
with the fact that his uncle, with about a hundred of his gentlemen, had
escaped the massacre. Farther on their guide put them all in great peril
by his imprudence, in publicly condemning the massacre in a little inn
in which they stayed. At length, after having escaped many dangers, they
arrived on the eighth day of their journey at the chateau of
Castelnaut-des-Mirandes, in Guyenne, where the child was received in the
arms of his uncle, with every demonstration of gratitude and joy, and
where he found plenty, peace, and security awaiting him after all his
troubles. (_Memoirs of Caumont de la Force._)
_CHARLES DE GUISE._
1591.
Charles de Guise, eldest Son of Henry de Guise, who was assassinated at
Blois, was arrested at the death of his father, in 1588, and confined in
the chateau of Tours. He remained there three years (till 1591) before
he could make his escape.
“The duke,” says the president De Thou, had taken counsel with Claude de
la Chastre and his son, and had resolved to make an effort for liberty
on August 15th, the fête of the Virgin. He took the communion on that
day, in order to deceive his guards and to remove all suspicion of his
intention from their minds. He had remarked that it was their custom to
close the doors after dinner, and to take the keys to the sheriff. On
August 15th, accordingly, when the men were seated at their meal in the
large hall, he quietly locked them in, and ran with great speed to the
top of a high tower which lay nearest to the bridge beyond the city,
first taking care to bolt the door behind him.