him on the occasion, was waiting for him at the top of the tower,
holding a cord in his hand, with a piece of wood tied transversely to
the end of it, to form a seat for the duke and facilitate his descent.
When all was ready the valet let the cord go gently, and his master
reached the ground in safety. The man then fastened the rope firmly to a
stake, and at greater peril followed the duke, who had already hurried
away along the course of the river, and whom he did not overtake till he
reached Saint-Côme.
“The guards were in great consternation. Rouvray, the Governor of Tours,
sent the news of the escape in all directions, with orders to the
neighbouring population to take up arms and put themselves on the track
of the fugitives. He had previously broken open the door of the tower;
but the men employed in the work, finding no traces of their former
prisoner, joined their companions, who were running wildly about the
city. A great deal of time was wasted in the search for the keys of the
bridge gate and the various doors of the chateau, for all the doors
were opened at hazard, as it was not known what direction the fugitives
had taken.”
“As soon as the duke reached the ground,” says Davila, “he took the road
into the country by the Loire, and soon found two men holding a horse
ready for him to mount. Galloping hard, he presently joined the Baron de
Maison, son of the Lord de la Chastre, who, with three hundred horsemen,
attended him beyond the Cher, and who sent the escort on with him to
Bourges, where he not only found safety but was received with every
demonstration of joy.” (_Ludovic Lalanne: Curiosities of Biography._)
_MARY DE’ MEDICIS._
1619.
Mary de’ Medicis, after the assassination of her favourite, Concini,
seeing herself shut out from all participation in affairs by the
intrigues of Luynes, asked for and obtained permission to retire to
Blois (May, 1617), where she soon became a prisoner. Luynes surrounded
her with spies, and placed two companies of cavalry in the neighbouring
villages, with orders to watch her slightest movements. But the Duke
d’Épernon and other malcontent lords, who had retired from the court,
wishing to give more importance to their party, sought to deliver the
Queen-mother and to place her at their head.
M. d’Épernon was chiefly urged on to this enterprise by a devoted
adherent of the Queen-mother, named De Ruccellai, who had no other
thought than how to serve his mistress, and no other inspiration than a
passionate desire to see her at liberty. After long meditation over
various plans, Ruccellai thought that no person could be made so useful
to him as M. de Bouillon, on account both of that nobleman’s reputation
among all classes of his countrymen, particularly among the Huguenots,
and of the security which was afforded by his retreat at Sedan. He
accordingly made a secret journey to Blois, and obtained the
Queen-mother’s permission to speak to M. de Bouillon, and to promise him
whatever might be necessary, in her name. He then sought out M. de
Bouillon, but at very great peril, for he was obliged to travel by night
and alone, for fear of being discovered. M. de Bouillon, however,
excused himself from all participation in the design on account of his
age, his infirmities, and his good understanding with the King, which he
was unwilling to risk, as he had no other wish than to enjoy the
benefits of that mercy which had been extended to him after the death of
Marshal d’Ancre, and to end his days in peace. He, however, referred the
Queen-mother’s messenger to M. d’Épernon, who, being extremely
ill-satisfied with De Luynes, and having, besides, a number of large
establishments in the kingdom, would be likely to prove far more
serviceable in the cause than himself.
Ruccellai, having written to the Queen-mother and obtained her consent
to this change of plan, laid his proposals before M. d’Épernon. The
latter at first received them with some suspicion, but he was finally
won over. At the end of a secret conference at his house, which lasted
several days, he authorised Ruccellai to tell the Queen that if she
could once contrive to escape from the chateau, and to pass the bridge
on the Loire, he would await her arrival on the other side of the river,
with such an escort as would conduct her safely, in spite of every
obstacle, to Angoulême, or any other part of the kingdom to which she
might choose to go. The Queen replied that nothing would be more easy;
and Ruccellai pressed D’Épernon to hasten the execution of his part of
the plan; but the latter insisted on putting off the enterprise till the
February of the following year.
De Luynes, ever suspicious, and wishing to discover the real feelings of
the Queen, sent one of his creatures to her, to say that the King was
shortly going to Blois, and that he would fetch her away with him. The
envoy also made repeated protestations of service on the part of De
Luynes, and assured the Queen that she would in future be treated
exactly in accordance with her own desires; but he never failed, while
proffering these services, to narrowly watch the countenances of the
Queen and all who approached her, to gather what he could of their real
feelings. But not one of the Queen’s people was yet aware of her design;
and as she had already sworn without scruple, so she did not hesitate to
swear again, and that so well, that the agent of De Luynes went back
firmly persuaded that she was impatient for the coming of the King, and
was perfectly ready to be on good terms with his master and forget
everything.
D’Épernon, having completed his measures, went to Confolens, where the
Archbishop of Toulouse was waiting for him, with two hundred of his
friends; but he did not find the expected news of the Queen-mother. He
had, however, gone too far to recede; and he at once sent M. du Plessis
to the Queen, to warn her of his arrival and to learn her wishes. When
M. du Plessis had delivered his message, the Queen decided on setting
out that same night.
She then for the first time took others into her confidence, and broke
the matter to the Count de Brennes, her master of the horse, to M. de
Merçay, and another officer of her body guard, and to the Signora
Caterine, her woman of the bedchamber. She ordered the Count de Brennes
to be at the door of her room at five the next morning, and to see that
her travelling chariot with six horses was at the same time beyond the
bridge. The others she kept with her all night, to pack up her jewels
and wearing apparel.
With these three gentlemen then, and a single woman of the bedchamber,
she left the place on the 22nd of February, at six in the morning, by
the window of a room looking out upon the terrace, from which, owing to
a broken wall, it was easy to reach the ground without passing by the
door of the chateau. After the Queen had let herself glide down this
ruin, and had regained her feet, she made her way to the bridge, where
she met two men, one of whom, seeing her almost alone at that early
hour, passed a very uncharitable judgment upon her. The other, however,
recognised her, guessed her purpose, and wished her “God speed.”
On the other side of the bridge she found her carriage, and entering it,
with her attendants she went to Montrichard, where she came up with one
of her gentlemen, who had preceded her to make sure of the passage of
the Cher. She remained there two days, during which time she wrote to
the King, and then she set out for Angoulême.
After long conferences and innumerable intrigues, in which De Luynes and
Richelieu, then Bishop of Luçon, displayed all their ability, Mary de’
Medicis, seeing all her partisans abandoning her interests in their
anxiety to carry on a quarrel among themselves, left Angoulême for
Tours, where Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria were waiting for her. They
received her at about two leagues from the city, and lavished upon her
the most affectionate caresses. She passed seven or eight days with
them, and then withdrew for a time to Chinon, until the preparations
were completed for her grand entry into Angers.--(_Memoirs of
Fontenay-Mareuil._)
_GROTIUS._
1621.
Grotius was involved in the ruin of Barneveldt, for whom he had a very
great admiration, and whose partisan he had been; and was sentenced to
perpetual imprisonment, and the confiscation of all his property. He was
confined in the castle of Louvenstein, near Gorcum. This was in 1619,
when he was in his thirty-sixth year. He was very closely guarded, and
the only consolation he enjoyed was that of the company of his wife,
Marie de Reygesberg, who had obtained permission to visit him. The boon
was accompanied by this cruel condition, that if she left the prison she
would not be allowed to return to it. After a time, however, the
severity of this rule was slightly relaxed, and she was allowed to leave
the place twice a week.
Grotius had been some eighteen months at Louvenstein, when Muys van
Holi, one of his declared enemies, who had also been one of his judges,
warned the States-General that he had received certain information of
the prisoner’s intention to escape. An agent was at once sent to the
castle, to examine into the truth of the report, but he returned without
having been able to find anything in confirmation of it. It was,
however, so far true, that Marie de Reygesberg was constantly occupied
with a design for effecting her husband’s liberation.
The prisoner had been allowed to borrow books of his friends, and when
he had read them they were sent away in a large trunk, together with his
linen, which was washed at Gorcum. During the first year the guards had
never once failed to make a close search of this trunk whenever it was
sent out of the prison; but tired at length of turning over nothing but
dirty linen and books, they used to allow it to pass without
examination. Their negligence did not escape the notice of the
prisoner’s wife, and it occurred to her that she might take advantage of
it. She discussed her plans with her husband, and persuaded him to let
himself be shut up in the trunk, first taking care to bore several small
holes in it at either end for the admission of air. When all was ready,
the intended escape was rehearsed. The prisoner was shut up in the trunk
during the time usually occupied by the journey to Gorcum, and this
experiment was repeated several times, until he had grown tolerably
accustomed to all the inconveniences of the situation. The adventurous
pair then awaited nothing but a favourable moment for carrying out their
design.
This soon came: the commandant of the fortress left the place for a
short time on business; and before his departure the brave wife sought
an interview with him, and obtained his permission to send away the
trunk full of books, alleging as a reason that her husband being very
weak, she wished to place the temptation to study beyond his reach. On
leaving the commandant she immediately returned to the apartment
occupied by Grotius, and shut him up in the trunk. His valet and a
female servant were in the secret, and she caused them to spread the
report of her husband’s illness among the soldiers, so that his
temporary absence from his accustomed place of resort within the castle
might occasion no surprise. Two soldiers were then brought in to carry
the trunk, and one of them finding it very heavy, observed: “There must
be an Arminian inside,” in allusion to the sect, flourishing at this
epoch, to which Grotius belonged. The wife replied calmly, “In truth
there are some Arminian books.” The chest was then lowered to the ground
by means of a ladder, though not without great difficulty. The soldier
who had found it too heavy was by no means satisfied with the
explanation he had received; and he insisted that the trunk should be
opened, in order that he might see what it really contained. He even
went so far as to communicate his suspicions to the wife of the
commandant, but the lady, either through negligence, or with the
deliberate intention of refusing to notice what she had no desire to
see, declined to listen to him. She replied, that the trunk contained
nothing but books, as the wife of Grotius had assured her, and that it
might be taken to the boat. This was done, and the female servant was
allowed to take charge of it and to convey it to a certain house in
Gorcum, as she had been ordered to do. She steadily refused, on its
arrival at the landing-place, to have it placed on a sledge along with
the rest of the luggage, on the ground that it was full of very fragile
articles, which might easily be damaged. It was accordingly lifted into
a hand barrow, and wheeled to the house of David Dazelaër, a friend of
Grotius, and a relation of Marie de Reygesberg. When the woman found
herself alone with her charge, she lifted the lid of the chest, and her
master leaped out safe and sound, though he had suffered somewhat from
his long confinement in a space three feet and a half in length. He at
once assumed the dress of a mason; and taking a rule and trowel in his
hand, he left the house by a back door
[Illustration: She lifted the lid of the chest, and her master leaped
out safe and sound.]
and made his way across the square of Gorcum to a gate of the city
leading to the river. Here he again took boat and went to Valvic, in
Brabant, whence, after making himself known to some Arminian friends, he
set out by coach for Anvers, using great precautions on the way to
prevent discovery.
Meanwhile, the report of his illness was still current at Louvenstein;
and his wife, in order to gain time for him, assured every one that he
was in great danger. As soon, however, as she learned, by the return of
the servant, that he had reached Brabant, and was, consequently, in
safety, she boldly told the guards that their bird had flown. The
commandant, who had just returned, ran at once to the prisoner’s
apartment and ordered the courageous woman to say where her husband was
hidden. She suffered him to spend some time in a fruitless search, and
then informed him of the stratagem by which he had been duped. She was
at once imprisoned, more rigorously than ever Grotius had been; but she
petitioned the States-General, and in a few days was permitted to rejoin
the husband for whose liberty she had risked so much.
_ISAAC ARNAULD._
1635.
During the winter of 1635, Isaac Arnauld was governor of Philipsburg--a
place well fortified by earthworks and a large ditch (the water of which
was constantly frozen), but very insufficiently garrisoned. “The
Imperialists, who were well informed of everything,” says the Abbé
Arnauld, in his “Memoirs,” “had little difficulty in forming their plan
of attack and putting it into execution.” When they entered the place
they found the garrison under arms, but too weak to sustain a general
assault. All the courage and conduct of the governor availed him nothing
but to make a desperate defence and to sell his liberty dearly, after
nearly all the garrison had been put to the sword. He was obliged to
surrender, with a few companions who survived the slaughter; and after
having been imprisoned in several places, was at length taken to
Esslingen.
To add to the miseries of his situation, he was doomed to hear that he
was openly accused, at the Court of France, of having lost Philipsburg
by his negligence. From that moment he had but one thought--namely, how
he could escape and clear his character before his sovereign; and with
this view he steadily refused to become a prisoner on parole. His design
was not easy of execution, for he was constantly guarded by soldiers,
who accompanied him, even in his walks in the grounds of the fortress,
and slept outside the door of his room at night. These difficulties,
however, served only to give a stimulus to his invention. He carefully
measured with his eye the exact height of his window which opened on the
ditch of the fortress, and he became convinced that he had only to make
the descent in safety to gain his liberty. He began by gaining the
connivance of some French cavalry soldiers who were in the service of
the Emperor, with the promise of giving them employment in his own
regiment of carabineers, on his return to France; and he afterwards kept
his word. The great and almost the only difficulty was to find rope for
the descent, for there was but little to fear from the watchfulness of
the garrison, the ditch beneath his window being very poorly guarded. To
that end he always urged his confederates, when he was taking exercise,
to pretend to be amusing themselves with various games, which they were
always the more ready to do as he never failed to encourage them with
liberal supplies of drink. After a short time, indeed, they proposed the
games themselves, and seemed to take a real pleasure in them. One of
these games, called Girding the Ass, was peculiarly favourable to his
design, for it involved the use of a cord for binding the principal
player. Arnauld always found a piece of silver for the purchase of this
cord, and never asked for the change. When the game was over, the cord,
being too small to seem worth keeping, used to be thrown away, and those
who were in the prisoner’s interest took care to pick it up and give it
him without attracting attention. When he had as many pieces as he
judged necessary for his purpose, he put his scheme into execution, and
escaped with the soldiers who had helped him; and he used such diligence
that his friends first received the news of his liberty from his own
lips.
On his arrival at Paris he constituted himself, by his own act, a
prisoner in the Bastille, and demanded a full inquiry into the
allegations against him. He remained there several months, until he had
cleared his character, and he then consented to be set free. (_Memoirs
of the Abbé Arnauld._)
_THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT._
1648.
The Duke of Beaufort, one of the chiefs of the party of the Fronde, was
accused of having tried to assassinate Cardinal Mazarin, and was
arrested at the Louvre, by order of Anne of Austria, and imprisoned in
the tower of Vincennes. He remained there five years, but at length
made his escape by the aid of his friends. The story is best told in the
words of Madame de Motteville:--
“On the Day of Pentecost, the 1st of June, 1648, the Duke of Beaufort,
who had been confined for five years at Vincennes, escaped from his
prison at about twelve at noon. He found means to break his fetters,
through the skill of his friends and of some of his own people, who
served him faithfully on this occasion. He was closely watched by an
officer of the body-guard, and by seven or eight soldiers, who slept in
his room and had orders never to lose sight of him. He was waited on,
besides, by the King’s own servants, and was not allowed to have one of
his own men near him; and, moreover, Chavigny, the Governor of
Vincennes, was unfriendly to him. The officer in charge of him, La
Ramée, yielding to the request of some companions, had secretly given an
asylum in the prison to a certain person, who alleged that he had fought
a duel and that he wished to escape the penalty of his offence. There is
some reason, however, to believe that he had been taken to Vincennes by
the creatures of Beaufort, and probably with the knowledge of the
officer; but I cannot speak positively as to this circumstance, and I am
unwilling to deceive myself by mere appearances.
“At first this man, willing to make himself useful, played more zeal
than any one else in his self-imposed service of watching the prisoner,
and even did not shrink from rudeness, as the Queen was informed when
this story was told to her. But whether he was at first there for the
Duke of Beaufort, or against him, he presently allowed himself to be
gained over by that prince, and he became useful to him by communicating
with his friend and informing him of the schemes that were on foot for
his release. When the time was ripe for the execution of their designs,
the confederates expressly chose the Day of Pentecost, because every one
was engaged in Divine service during that solemn fête. While the guards
were at dinner, the Duke of Beaufort asked La Ramée to allow him to take
a walk in a gallery, to which he had sometimes been permitted to have
access. This gallery, although lower than the donjon in which the duke
was confined, was, nevertheless, at a great height from the ditch, on
which it looked. La Ramée followed his prisoner in his walk, and
remained alone with him in the gallery. Meanwhile, the man whom the duke
had gained had gone to dinner with the others, but, after taking a
little wine, he feigned illness and left the table, as though to seek
the fresh air of the gallery, taking care, on his way, to fasten several
doors that were between his companions and their prisoner. As soon as he
had joined the duke, the two threw themselves upon La Ramée so suddenly
that he had not time to cry out. He was easily overpowered, for the duke
alone was a very strong man. They were unwilling to take his life,
though prudence might have dictated that course; but they gagged and
bound him very securely, and left him on the floor. They then tied a
cord to the window and slid, one after the other, to the ground, the man
going first, as the one who would have been the most severely punished
if their flight had been prevented. The depth of the ditch is so great,
that although their rope was a very long one, they were obliged to drop
a considerable distance. The servant suffered no injury from the fall,
but the duke came to the earth with such violence that he fainted, and
it took some time to bring him to himself. When he was sufficiently
recovered, four or five of his people, who were on the other side of the
ditch, and who had witnessed his sufferings with an anxiety that may
easily be conceived, threw another rope to the fugitives, and by means
of it drew them up by sheer force of arm to their own side--the servant
taking precedence of his master, as before, in accordance with the
engagement between them, which the duke most faithfully observed
throughout the affair. When he reached the bank, the duke was in a very
poor plight, for he had not only been wounded in falling, but his flesh
had been cruelly pressed and cut by the tightened rope. But having a
little recovered his strength, as much by his own natural force of will
as by his fear of losing the reward of all his exertions, he raised
himself and walked into a neighbouring wood, where he found a troop of
fifty horsemen ready to do his bidding. One of his gentlemen, who was
with him at the time, has since told me that the duke’s joy at seeing
himself again at liberty and among his friends was such that it seemed
to cure him in an instant, and that he leaped on horseback and vanished
like a flash of lightning, as though he were mad with joy at the idea of
being able to breathe the air without restraint, and to say with King
Francis, when he set foot in France, on his return from Spain, ‘I am
free!’ A woman gathering herbs by the side of the ditch, with her little
son, saw all that passed; but the men in ambush had so threatened them,
and they had besides, so little interest in preventing the escape of the
duke, that they were perfectly still and became passive spectators of
all that passed. As soon, however, as the fugitives were gone the woman
ran with the news to her husband, the gardener of the place, and the two
together alarmed the guard. But it was too late; it was not for man to
change what God had ordained, for the stars, which seem sometimes to
register the decrees of sovereigns, had already informed many persons,
through an astrologer, named Goësel, that the duke would leave the
chateau that very day. The news had a great effect on the whole court,
and particularly on those who knew something of the duke’s plans. The
minister was, no doubt, a good deal annoyed at the success of the little
plot; but, true to his old habit, he did not make any display of his
feelings.”
Madame de Motteville afterwards adds, “The Queen and Cardinal Mazarin
talk very good-naturedly about it, and say laughingly, that M. de
Beaufort has done right.”
_CARDINAL DE RETZ._
1654.