STRUGGLE WITH THE SOVEREIGN
Provincial prisons--Loches, in Touraine, still standing--Favorite
gaol of Louis XI--The iron cage--Cardinal La Balue, the
Duc d'Alençon, Comines, the Bishops--Ludovico Sforza,
Duke of Milan, and his mournful inscriptions--Diane
de Poitiers and her father--Mont St. Michel--Louis
Napoleon--Count St. Pol--Strongholds of Touraine--Catherine
de Medicis--Massacre of St Bartholomew--Murder of Duc de
Guise--Chambord--Amboise--Angers--Pignerol--Exiles and the Isle St.
Marguerite.
The early history of France is made up of the continuous struggle
between the sovereign and the people. The power of the king, though
constantly opposed by the great vassals and feudal lords, steadily grew
and gained strength. The state was meanwhile torn with dissensions and
passed through many succeeding periods of anarchy and great disorders.
The king's power was repeatedly challenged by rivals and pretenders.
It was weakened, and at times eclipsed, but in the long run it always
triumphed. The king always vindicated his right to the supreme
authority and, when he could, ruled arbitrarily and imperiously, backed
and supported by attributes of autocracy which gradually overcame all
opposition and finally established a despotic absolutism.
The principal prisons of France were royal institutions. Two in
particular, the chief and most celebrated, Vincennes and the Bastile,
were seated in the capital. With these I shall deal presently at
considerable length. Many others, provincial strongholds and castles,
were little less conspicuous and mostly of evil reputation. I shall
deal with those first.
Loches in the Touraine, some twenty-five miles from Tours, will go down
in history as one of the most famous, or more exactly, infamous castles
in mediæval France. It was long a favored royal palace, a popular
residence with the Plantagenet and other kings, but degenerated at
length under Louis XI into a cruel and hideous gaol. It stands to-day
in elevated isolation dominating a flat, verdant country, just as the
well-known Mont St. Michel rises above the sands on the Normandy coast.
The most prominent object is the colossal white donjon, or central
keep, esteemed the finest of its kind in France, said to have been
erected by Fulk Nerra, the celebrated "Black Count," Count of Anjou
in the eleventh century. It is surrounded by a congeries of massive
buildings of later date. Just below it are the round towers of the
Martelet, dating from Louis XI, who placed within them the terrible
dungeons he invariably kept filled. At the other end of the long
lofty plateau is another tower, that of Agnes Sorel, the personage
whose influence over Charles VII, although wrongly acquired, was
always exercised for good, and whose earnest patriotism inspired him
to strenuous attempts to recover France from its English invaders.
Historians have conceded to her a place far above the many kings'
mistresses who have reigned upon the left hand of the monarchs of
France. Agnes was known as the lady of "Beauté-sur-Marne," "a beauty in
character as well as in aspect," and is said to have been poisoned at
Junièges. She was buried at Loches with the inscription, still legible,
"A sweet and simple dove whiter than swans, redder than the flame."
The face, still distinguishable, preserves the "loveliness of flowers
in spring." After the death of Charles VII, the priests of Saint-Ours
desired to expel this tomb. But Louis XI was now on the throne. He had
not hesitated to insult Agnes Sorel while living, upbraiding her openly
and even, one day at court, striking her in the face with his glove,
but he would only grant their request on condition that they surrender
the many rich gifts bestowed upon them at her hands.
It is, however, in its character as a royal gaol and horrible prison
house that Loches concerns us. Louis XI, saturnine and vindictive,
found it exactly suited to his purpose for the infliction of those
barbarous and inhuman penalties upon those who had offended him, that
must ever disgrace his name. The great donjon, already mentioned, built
by Fulk Nerra, the "Black Count," had already been used by him as a
prison and the rooms occupied by the Scottish Guard are still to be
seen. The new tower at the northwest angle of the fortress was the work
of Louis and on the ground floor level is the torture chamber, with
an iron bar recalling its ancient usage. Below are four stories, one
beneath the other. These dungeons, entered by a subterranean door give
access to the vaulted semi-dark interior. Above this gloomy portal is
scratched the jesting welcome, "_Entrez Messieurs--ches le Roi nostre
maistre_,"--"Come in, the King is at home." At this gateway the King
stood frequently with his chosen companions, his barber and the common
hangman, to gloat over the sufferings of his prisoners. In a cell on
the second story from the bottom, the iron cage was established, so
fiendishly contrived for the unending pain of its occupant. Comines,
the "Father of modern historians," gives in his memoirs a full account
of this detestable place of durance.
Comines fell into disgrace with Anne of Beaujeu by fomenting rebellion
against her administration as Regent. He fled and took refuge with
the Duke de Bourbon, whom he persuaded to go to the King, the
infant Charles VIII, to complain of Anne's misgovernment. Comines
was dismissed by the Duke de Bourbon and took service with the Duke
d'Orleans. Their intrigues were secretly favored by the King himself,
who, as he grew older, became impatient of the wise but imperious
control of Anne of Beaujeu. In concert with some other nobles,
Comines plotted to carry off the young King and place him under the
guardianship of the Duke d'Orleans. Although Charles was a party to
the design he punished them when it failed. Comines was arrested at
Amboise and taken to Loches, where he was confined for eight months.
Then by decree of the Paris parliament his property was confiscated and
he was brought to Paris to be imprisoned in the Conciergerie. There
he remained for twenty months, and in March, 1489, was condemned to
banishment to one of his estates for ten years and to give bail for his
good behavior to the amount of 10,000 golden crowns. He was forgiven
long before the end of his term and regained his seat and influence in
the King's Council of State.
"The King," says Comines, "had ordered several cruel prisons to be
made; some were cages of iron and some of wood, but all were covered
with iron plates both within and without, with terrible locks, about
eight feet wide and seven feet high; the first contriver of them was
the Bishop of Verdun (Guillaume d'Haraucourt) who was immediately put
into the first of them, where he continued fourteen years. Many bitter
curses he has had since his invention, and some from me as I lay in
one of them eight months together during the minority of our present
King. He (Louis XI) also ordered heavy and terrible fetters to be made
in Germany and particularly a certain ring for the feet which was
extremely hard to be opened and fitted like an iron collar, with a
thick weighty chain and a great globe of iron at the end of it, most
unreasonably heavy, which engine was called the King's Nets. However,
I have seen many eminent men, deserving persons in these prisons with
these nets about their legs, who afterwards came out with great joy and
honor and received great rewards from the king."
Another occupant beside d'Haraucourt, of this intolerable den, so
limited in size that "no person of average proportions could stand up
comfortably or be at full length within," was Cardinal la Balue,--for
some years after 1469. These two great ecclesiastics had been guilty
of treasonable correspondence with the Duke of Burgundy, then at war
with Louis XI. The treachery was the more base in La Balue, who owed
everything to Louis, who had raised him from a tailor's son to the
highest dignities in the Church and endowed him with immense wealth.
Louis had a strong bias towards low-born men and "made his servants,
heralds and his barbers, ministers of state." Louis would have sent
this traitor to the scaffold, but ever bigoted and superstitious,
he was afraid of the Pope, Paul II, who had protested against the
arrest of a prelate and a prince of the Church. He kept d'Haraucourt,
the Bishop of Verdun, in prison for many years, for the most part
at the Bastile while Cardinal La Balue was moved to and fro: he
began at Loches whence, with intervals at Onzain, Montpaysan, and
Plessis-lez-Tours, he was brought periodically to the Bastile in order
that his tormentor might gloat personally over his sufferings. This was
the servant of whom Louis once thought so well that he wrote of him as
"a good sort of devil of a bishop just now, but there is no saying what
he may grow into by and by." He endured the horrors of imprisonment
until within three years of the death of the King, who, after a long
illness and a paralytic seizure, yielded at last to the solicitations
of the then Pope, Sixtus IV, to release him.
The "Bishops' Prison" is still shown at Loches, a different receptacle
from the cages and dungeons occupied by Cardinal La Balue and the
Bishop of Verdun. These other bishops did their own decorations akin
to Sforza's, but their rude presentment was of an altar and cross
roughly depicted on the wall of their cell. Some confusion exists as to
their identity, but they are said to have been De Pompadour, Bishop of
Peregneux, and De Chaumont, Bishop of Montauban, and their offense was
complicity in the conspiracy for which Comines suffered. If this were
so it must have been after the reign of Louis XI.
Among the many victims condemned by Louis XI to the tender mercies of
Loches, was the Duc d'Alençon, who had already been sentenced to death
in the previous reign for trafficking with the English, but whose life
had been spared by Charles VII, to be again forfeited to Louis XI, for
conspiracy with the Duke of Burgundy. His sentence was commuted to
imprisonment in Loches.
A few more words about Loches. Descending more than a hundred steps
we reach the dungeon occupied by Ludovico Sforza, called "Il Moro,"
Duke of Milan, who had long been in conflict with France. The epithet
applied to him was derived from the mulberry tree, which from the
seasons of its flowers and its fruit was taken as an emblem of
"prudence." The name was wrongly supposed to be due to his dark Moorish
complexion. After many successes the fortune of war went against Sforza
and he was beaten by Trionlzio, commanding the French army, who cast
him into the prison of Novara. Il Moro was carried into France, his
destination being the underground dungeon at Loches.
Much pathos surrounds the memory of this illustrious prisoner, who for
nine years languished in a cell so dark that light entered it only
through a slit in fourteen feet of rock. The only spot ever touched by
daylight is still indicated by a small square scratched on the stone
floor. Ludovico Sforza strove to pass the weary hours by decorating his
room with rough attempts at fresco. The red stars rendered in patterns
upon the wall may still be seen, and among them, twice repeated, a
prodigious helmet giving a glimpse through the casque of the stern,
hard looking face inside. A portrait of Il Moro is extant at the
Certosa, near Pavia, and has been described as that of a man "with the
fat face and fine chin of the elderly Napoleon, the beak-like nose of
Wellington, a small, querulous, neat-lipped mouth and immense eyebrows
stretched like the talons of an eagle across the low forehead."
Ludovico Sforza left his imprint on the walls of this redoubtable gaol
and we may read his daily repinings in the mournful inscriptions he
recorded among the rough red decorations. One runs: "My motto is to
arm myself with patience, to bear the troubles laid upon me." He who
would have faced death eagerly in open fight declares here that he
was "assailed by it and could not die." He found "no pity; gaiety was
banished entirely from his heart." At length, after struggling bravely
for nearly nine years he was removed from the lower dungeons to an
upper floor and was permitted to exercise occasionally in the open air
till death came, with its irresistible order of release. The picture of
his first passage through Paris to his living tomb has been admirably
drawn:--"An old French street surging with an eager mob, through which
there jostles a long line of guards and archers; in their midst a tall
man dressed in black camlet, seated on a mule. In his hands he holds
his biretta and lifts up unshaded his pale, courageous face, showing
in all his bearing a great contempt for death. It is Ludovico, Duke of
Milan, riding to his cage at Loches." It is not to the credit of Louis
XII and his second wife, Anne of Brittany, widow of his predecessor
Charles VIII, that they often occupied Loches as a royal residence
during the incarceration of Ludovico Sforza, and made high festival
upstairs while their wretched prisoner languished below.
The rebellion of the Constable de Bourbon against Francis I, in 1523,
implicated two more bishops, those of Puy and Autun. Bourbon aspired
to create an independent kingdom in the heart of France and was backed
by the Emperor Charles V. The Sieur de Brézé, Seneschal of Normandy,
the husband of the famous Diane de Poitiers, revealed the conspiracy
to the King, Francis I, unwittingly implicating Jean de Poitiers, his
father-in-law. Bourbon, flying to one of his fortified castles, sent
the Bishop of Autun to plead for him with the King, who only arrested
the messenger. Bourbon, continuing his flight, stopped a night at Puy
in Auvergne, and this dragged in the second bishop. Jean de Poitiers,
Seigneur de St. Vallier, was also thrown into Loches, whence the
prisoner appealed to his daughter and his son-in-law. "Madame," he
wrote to Diane, "here am I arrived at Loches as badly handled as any
prisoner could be. I beg of you to have so much pity as to come and
visit your poor father." Diane strove hard with the pitiless king, who
only pressed on the trial, urging the judges to elicit promptly all
the particulars and the names of the conspirators, if necessary by
torture. St. Vallier's sentence was commuted to imprisonment, "between
four walls of solid masonry with but one small slit of window."
The Constable de Bourbon made St. Vallier's release a condition of
submission, and Diane de Poitiers, ever earnestly begging for mercy,
won pardon at length, which she took in person to her father's gloomy
cell, where his hair had turned white in the continual darkness.
The wretched inmates of Loches succeeded each other, reign after
reign in an interminable procession. One of the most ill-used was de
Rochechouart, nephew of the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, who was mixed
up in a court intrigue in 1633 and detained in Loches with no proof
against him in the hopes of extorting a confession.
Mont St. Michel as a State prison is of still greater antiquity than
Loches, far older than the stronghold for which it was admirably suited
by its isolated situation on the barren sea shore. It is still girt
round with mediæval walls from which rise tall towers proclaiming its
defensive strength. Its church and Benedictine monastery are of ancient
foundation, dating back to the eighth century. It was taken under the
especial protection of Duke Rollo and contributed shipping for the
invading hosts of William the Conqueror. Later, in the long conflict
with the English, when their hosts over-ran Normandy, Mont St. Michel
was the only fortress which held out for the French king. The origin
of its dungeons and _oubliettes_ is lost in antiquity. It had its cage
like Loches, built of metal bars, but for these solid wooden beams
were afterwards substituted.
Modern sentiment hangs about the citadel of Ham near Amiens, as the
prison house of Louis Napoleon and his companions, Generals Cavaignac,
Changarnier and Lamoricière, after his raid upon Boulogne, in 1830,
when he prematurely attempted to seize supreme power in France and
ignominiously failed. Ham had been a place of durance for political
purposes from the earliest times. There was a castle before the
thirteenth century and one was erected on the same site in 1470 by the
Count St. Pol, whom Louis XI beheaded. The motto of the family "_Mon
mieux_" (my best) may still be read engraved over the gateway. Another
version is to the effect that St. Pol was committed to the Bastile and
suffered within that fortress-gaol. He appears to have been a restless
malcontent forever concerned in the intrigues of his time, serving
many masters and betraying all in turn. He gave allegiance now to
France, now England, now Burgundy and Lorraine, but aimed secretly to
make himself an independent prince trusting to his great wealth, his
ambitious self-seeking activity and his unfailing perfidies. In the end
the indignant sovereigns turned upon him and agreed to punish him. St.
Pol finding himself in jeopardy fled from France after seeking for a
safe conduct through Burgundy. Charles the Bold replied by seizing his
person and handing him over to Louis XI, who had claimed the prisoner.
"I want a head like his to control a certain business in hand; his body
I can do without and you may keep it," was Louis's request. St. Pol,
according to this account, was executed on the Place de la Grève. It
may be recalled that Ham was also for a time the prison of Joan of Arc;
and many more political prisoners, princes, marshals of France, and
ministers of state were lodged there.
The smiling verdant valley of the Loire, which flows through the
historic province of Touraine, is rich in ancient strongholds that
preserve the memories of mediæval France. It was the home of those
powerful feudal lords, the turbulent vassals who so long contended for
independence with their titular masters, weak sovereigns too often
unable to keep them in subjection. They raised the round towers and
square impregnable donjons, resisting capture in the days before siege
artillery, all of which have their gruesome history, their painful
records showing the base uses which they served, giving effect to the
wicked will of heartless, unprincipled tyrants.
Thus, as we descend the river, we come to Blois, with its spacious
castle at once formidable and palatial, stained with many blood-thirsty
deeds when vicious and unscrupulous kings held their court there.
Great personages were there imprisoned and sometimes assassinated.
At first the fief of the Counts of Blois, it later passed into the
possession of the crown and became the particular property of the
dukes of Orleans. It was the favorite residence of that duke who became
King Louis XII of France, and his second queen, Anne of Brittany. His
son, Francis I, enlarged and beautified it, and his son again, Henry
II, married a wife, Catherine de Medicis, who was long associated with
Blois and brought much evil upon it. Catherine is one of the blackest
female figures in French history; "niece of a pope, mother of four
Valois, a Queen of France, widow of an ardent enemy of the Huguenots,
an Italian Catholic, above all a Medicis," hers was a dissolute wicked
life, her hands steeped in blood, her moral character a reproach to
womankind. Her favorite device was "_odiate e aspettate_," "hate and
wait," and when she called anyone "friend" it boded ill for him; she
was already plotting his ruin. She no doubt inspired, and is to be held
responsible for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the murder of
the Duc de Guise in this very castle of Blois was largely her doing.
It was one of the worst of the many crimes committed in the shameful
reign of her son Henry III, the contemptible king with his unnatural
affections, his effeminate love of female attire, his little dogs,
his loathsome favorites and his nauseating mockeries of holiness. His
court was a perpetual scene of intrigue, conspiracy, superstition, the
lowest vices, cowardly assassinations and murderous duels. One of the
most infamous of these was a fight between three of his particular
associates and three of the Guises, when four of the combatants were
killed.
The famous league of the "Sixteen," headed by the Duc de Guise, would
have carried Henry III back to Paris and held him there a prisoner,
but the King was resolved to strike a blow on his own behalf and
determined to kill Guise. The States General was sitting at Blois and
Guise was there taking the leading part. The famous Crillon, one of
his bravest soldiers, was invited to do the deed but refused, saying
he was a soldier and not an executioner. Then one of Henry's personal
attendants offered his services with the forty-five guards, and it was
arranged that the murder should be committed in the King's private
cabinet. Guise was summoned to an early council, but the previous
night he had been cautioned by a letter placed under his napkin. "He
would not dare," Guise wrote underneath the letter and threw it under
the table. Next morning he proceeded to the cabinet undeterred. The
King had issued daggers to his guards, saying, "Guise or I must die,"
and went to his prayers. When Guise lifted the curtain admitting him
into the cabinet one of the guards stabbed him in the breast. A fierce
struggle ensued, in which the Duke dragged his murderers round the room
before they could dispatch him. "The beast is dead, so is the poison,"
was the King's heartless remark, and he ran to tell his mother that he
was "once more master of France." This cowardly act did not serve the
King, for it stirred up the people of Paris, who vowed vengeance. Henry
at once made overtures to the Huguenots and next year fell a victim to
the knife of a fanatic monk at Saint Clou.
Blois ceased to be the seat of the Court after Henry III. Louis XIII,
when he came to the throne, imprisoned his mother Marie de Medicis
there. It was a time of great political stress when executions were
frequent, and much sympathy was felt for Marie de Medicis. A plot was
set on foot to release her from Blois. A party of friends arranged the
escape. She descended from her window by a rope ladder, accompanied
by a single waiting-woman. Many accidents supervened: there was no
carriage, the royal jewels had been overlooked, time was lost in
searching for the first and recovering the second, but at length
Marie was free to continue her criminal machinations. Her chief ally
was Gaston d'Orleans, who came eventually to live and die on his
estate at Blois. He was a cowardly, self indulgent prince but had a
remarkable daughter, Marie de Montpensier, commonly called "La Grande
Mademoiselle," who was the heroine of many stirring adventures, some of
which will be told later on.
Not far from Blois are Chambord, an ancient fortress, first transformed
into a hunting lodge and later into a magnificent palace, a perfect
wilderness of dressed stone; Chaumont, the birth-place of Cardinal
d'Amboise and at one time the property of Catherine de Medicis;
Amboise, the scene of the great Huguenot massacre of which more on a
later page; Chenonceaux, Henri II's gift to Diane de Poitiers, which
Catherine took from her, and in which Mary Queen of Scots spent a part
of her early married life; Langeais, an Angevin fortress of the middle
ages; Azay-le-Rideau, a perfect Renaissance chateau; Fontevrault, where
several Plantagenet kings found burial, and Chinon, a triple castle
now irretrievably ruined, to which Jeanne d'Arc came seeking audience
of the King, when Charles VII formally presented her with a suit of
knight's armor and girt on her the famous sword, said to have been
picked up by Charles Martel on the Field of Tours after that momentous
victory which checked the Moorish invasion, and but for which the
dominion of Islam would probably have embraced western Europe.
Two other remarkable prison castles must be mentioned here, Amboise
and Angers. The first named is still a conspicuous object in a now
peaceful neighborhood, but it offers few traces of antiquity, although
it is full of bloody traditions. Its most terrible memory is that of
the Amboise conspiracy organised by the Huguenots in 1560, and intended
to remove the young king, Francis II, from the close guardianship of
the Guises. The real leader was the Prince de Condé, known as "the
silent captain." The ostensible chief was a Protestant gentleman of
Perigord, named Renaudie, a resolute, intelligent man, stained with an
evil record, having been once sentenced and imprisoned for the crime of
forgery. He was to appear suddenly at the castle at the head of fifteen
hundred devoted followers, surprise the Guises and seize the person of
the young king. One of their accomplices, a lawyer, or according to
another account, a certain Captain Lignières, was alarmed and betrayed
the conspirators. Preparations were secretly made for defence, Renaudie
was met with an armed force and killed on the spot, and his party made
prisoners by lots, as they appeared. All were forthwith executed,
innocent and guilty, even the peasants on their way to market. They
were hanged, decapitated or drowned. The court of the castle and the
streets of the town ran with blood until the executioners, sated with
the slaughter, took to sewing up the survivors in sacks and throwing
them into the river from the bridge garnished with gibbets, and ghastly
heads impaled on pikes. A balcony to this day known as the "Grille aux
Huguenots" still exists, on which Catherine de Medicis and her three
sons, Francis II, the reigning monarch, Charles, afterwards the ninth
king of that name, and Henry II, witnessed the massacre in full court
dress. Mary, Queen of Scots, the youthful bride of her still younger
husband, was also present. The Prince de Condé had been denounced, but
there was no positive evidence against him and he stoutly denied his
guilt, and in the presence of the whole court challenged any accuser to
single combat. No one took up the glove and he remained free until a
fresh conspiracy, stimulated by detestation of the atrocities committed
by the Guises, seriously compromised the prince. Condé was arrested at
Orleans, found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. He was saved
by the death of Francis. Mary Stuart afterward returned to Scotland to
pass through many stormy adventures and end her life on the scaffold.
The fiendish butchery just described was the last great tragedy Amboise
witnessed, but it received one or two notable prisoners as time went
on, more particularly Fouquet, the fraudulent superintendent of
finances whom Louis XIV pursued to the bitter end; and Lauzun le Beau,
the handsome courtier who flew too high "with vaulting ambition, but
fell" into the depths of a dungeon. A detailed account of both these
cases will be found in another chapter.
In quite recent years Amboise was occupied by a very different
prisoner, the intrepid Arab leader Abd-el-Kader, who after his capture
by the Duc d'Aumale in 1847, in the last Algerian war, was interred in
the heart of France in full view of the so-called "Arab camp" where his
Saracen ancestors had gone so near to enslaving Christian Europe.
Angers, once called Black Angers, from the prevailing hue of its dark
slate buildings, was the capital of Anjou and the seat of its dukes,
so nearly allied with the English Plantagenet dynasty. When Henry II
of England held his court there, Angers was reputed second only to
London in brilliancy and importance. The French king, Louis XI, after
the expulsion of the English, joined the dukedom of Anjou to the
Kingdom of France. The venerable castle, a most striking object with
its alternate bands of white stone let in between black rough slate, is
still considered from its massive proportions and perfect preservation
the finest feudal castle in France. The part overlooking the river,
which was the palace of the counts, is now in ruins, but the high tower
called Du Moulin or Du Diable, and the south tower called La Tour
Dixsept, which contains the old dungeons of the State prisons, is still
standing. The miserable fate of their sad occupants may still be noted,
and the rings to which they were chained still remain embedded in the
rocky walls and the stone floors.
[Illustration: _The Isle St. Marguerite_
One of two rocky, pine-clad islets near the shore at Cannes, and has an
ancient history. Francis I began his captivity here after the Battle of
Pavia. Marshal Bazaine was also imprisoned here. It was at one time the
prison where the mysterious "Man with the Iron Mask" was confined.]
Three famous prisons in their way were Pignerol, Exiles and the island
fortress of St. Marguerite. Pignerol was a fortified frontier town of
Piedmont, which was for some time French property, half bought and half
stolen from Italy. It stands on the lower slopes of the southern Alps,
twenty miles from Turin, fifty from Nice and ninety east of Grenoble.
It was a stronghold of the princes of Savoy, capable of effective
defence, with a small red-roofed tower and many tall campaniles
gathering round an inner citadel, raised on a commanding height. This
central keep is a mass of rambling buildings with solid buttressed
walls, essentially a place of arms. Pignerol has three principal
gateways. One served for the road coming from the westward and was
called the gate of France; another from the eastward, was that of
Turin; and the third was a "safety" or "secret" gate, avoiding the
town and giving upon the citadel. This last gate was opened rarely
and only to admit a prisoner brought privately by special escort. It
was a French garrison town inhabited largely by Italians. There was a
French governor in supreme command, also a king's lieutenant who was
commandant of the citadel, and the head gaoler, who held the prison
proper; and these three officials constituted a sovereign council of
war.
Exiles was an unimportant stronghold, a fort shaped like a five pointed
star, surrounding a small château with two tall towers which served
as prisons. St. Marguerite is one of the Iles de Lerins, a couple of
rocky pine clad islets facing the now prosperous southern resort of
Cannes and only fifteen hundred yards from the shore. The two islands
called respectively St. Honorat and St. Marguerite have each an
ancient history. The first was named after a holy man who early in the
fifth century established a monastery of great renown, while upon the
neighboring island he struck a well which yielded a miraculous flow
of sweet water. Francis I of France began his captivity here after his
crushing defeat at the battle of Pavia. The royal fort at the eastern
end of St. Marguerite was for some time the abode of the so-called "Man
with the Iron Mask," and many scenes of the apocryphal stories of that
exploded mystery are laid here.
The island fortress became to some extent famous in our own day by
being chosen as the place of confinement for Marshal Bazaine, after his
conviction by court martial for the alleged treacherous surrender of
Metz to the Germans. As we know, he did not remain long a prisoner, his
escape having been compassed by an American friend.