It was eight o'clock at night, a few leagues from the French border.
Their horses were weary and spent. The road approached the village
of Rochefort in such a way that they could see nothing of the town
until almost upon it, and the gleam of this camp-fire was their first
intimation of the presence of the Austrians. It would have availed
nothing to turn back. If they went toward the left they would almost
certainly fall in with French patrols, or those of the _émigrés_ who
were at Liège. To the right a whole chain of Austrian posts stretched
toward Namur. "On all sides there was an equality of inconvenience,"
as Lafayette said. One of the party rode boldly forward to interview
the commandant and ask permission to spend the night in the village
and continue the journey next day. This was granted after it had been
explained that they were neither _émigrés_ nor soldiers on their way to
join either side, but officers forced to leave the French army, whose
only desire was to reach a neutral country.
[Pg 222]A guide was sent to conduct them to the village inn. Before
they had been there many minutes Lafayette was recognized, and it was
necessary to confess the whole truth. The local commander required a
pass from the officer at Namur, and when that person learned the name
of his chief prisoner he would hear nothing more about passports,
but communicated in joyful haste with his superior officer, the Duc
de Bourbon. At Namur Lafayette received a visit from Prince Charles
of Lorraine, who sent word in advance that he wished "to talk about
the condition in which Lafayette had left France." Lafayette replied
that he did not suppose he was to be asked questions it might be
inconvenient to answer, and when the high-born caller entered with his
most affable manner he was received with distant coolness by all the
prisoners.
From Namur they were taken to Nivelles, where they were presented with
a government order to give up all French treasure in their possession.
Lafayette could not resist answering that he was quite sure their
Royal Highnesses would have brought the treasure with them had they
been in his place; and the amusement of the Frenchmen increased as the
messenger learned, to his evident discomfiture, that the twenty-three
of them combined did not have enough to keep them in comfort for two
months. That same day the prisoners were divided into three groups.
Those who had not served in the French National Guard were given
their liberty and told to leave the country. Others were sent to
the citadel at Antwerp and kept there for two months. Lafayette and
[Pg 223]three companions who had served with him in the Assembly,
Latour Maubourg, a lifelong friend, Alexander Lameth, and Bureaux de
Pusy, were taken to Luxembourg. There was only time for a hurried
leave-taking. Lafayette spent it with an aide who was to go to Antwerp.
Feeling sure he was marked for death, he dictated to this officer a
message to be published to the French people when he should be no more.
Before leaving Rochefort he had found means of sending a letter to his
wife, who was at Chavaniac overseeing repairs upon the old manor-house.
It was from this letter that she learned what had befallen him, and
she carried it in her bosom until she was arrested in her turn. The
message to Adrienne began characteristically on a note of optimism.
"Whatever the vicissitudes of fortune, dear heart, you know my soul
is not of a temper to be cast down." He told of his misfortune in a
gallant way, saying the Austrian officer thought it his duty to arrest
him. He hurriedly reviewed the reasons that led up to his flight, said
that he did not know how long his journey "might be retarded," and bade
her join him in England with all the family. His closing words were: "I
offer no excuses to my children or to you for having ruined my family.
There is not one of you who would owe fortune to conduct contrary
to my conscience. Come to me in England. Let us establish ourselves
in America, where we shall find a liberty which no longer exists in
France, and there my tenderness will endeavor to make up to you the
joys you have lost."
[Pg 224]His journey was "retarded" for five years, and for a large
part of that time seemed likely to end only at the grave, possibly by
way of the executioner's block. It is to be hoped that his sense of
humor allowed him to enjoy one phase of his situation. He had been
driven from France on the charge that he favored the king, yet he
was no sooner across the border than he was arrested on exactly the
opposite charge; that of being a dangerous revolutionist, an enemy to
all monarchs. When he demanded a passport he received the sinister
answer that he was to be kept safely until the French king regained
his power and was in a position to sentence him himself. He was sent
from prison to prison. First to Wezel, where he remained three months
in a rat-infested dungeon, unable to communicate with any one, and
watched over by an officer of the guard who was made to take a daily
oath to give him no news. "One would think," said Lafayette, "that
they had imprisoned the devil himself." He was so thoroughly isolated
that Latour Maubourg, a few cells away, learned only through the
indiscretion of a jailer that he was seriously ill. Maubourg asked
permission, in case the illness proved fatal, to be with him at the
last, but was told that no such privilege could be granted. But
Lafayette did not die and even in the worst of his physical ills had
the spirit to reply, "The King of Prussia is impertinent!" when a royal
message came offering to soften the rigors of his captivity in return
for information about France. The message was from that "honest prince"
who in Lafayette's opinion "would never have the genius of his uncle."
[Pg 225]Another answer, equally inconsiderate of royal feelings,
resulted in the transfer of the prisoners to Magdebourg, where they
were kept a year. On these journeys from place to place they served as
a show to hundreds who pressed to see them. There were even attempts
to injure them, but Lafayette believed he saw more pitying faces than
hostile ones in the crowds. Once fate brought them to an inn at the
same moment with the Comte d'Artois and his retinue, all of whom,
with a single exception, proved blind to the presence of their former
friends. We have details of the way in which Lafayette was lodged and
treated at Magdebourg, from a letter he managed to send to his stanch
friend, the Princesse d'Hénin in London.
"Imagine an opening under the rampart of the citadel, surrounded by a
high, strong palisade. It is through that, after opening successively
four doors each guarded with chains and padlocks and bars of iron, that
one reaches, not without some trouble and some noise, my dungeon, which
is three paces wide and five and a half long. The side wall is covered
with mold; that in front lets in light, but not the sun, through a
small barred window. Add to this two sentinels who can look down into
our subterranean chamber, but are outside the palisade so that we
cannot speak to them.... The noisy opening of our four doors occurs
every morning to allow my servant to enter; at dinner-time, that I may
dine in presence of the commandant of the citadel and of the guard; and
at night when my servant is taken away to his cell." The one ornament
[Pg 226]on his prison wall was a French inscription, in which the
dismal words _souffrir_ and _mourir_ were made to rhyme. The one break
in the prison routine had been an execution, upon which, had he chosen,
Lafayette could have looked from his window as from a box at the opera.
After a year of this he was moved again and turned over to the
Emperor of Prussia, his prison journeys ending finally at the gloomy
fortress of Olmütz in the Carpathian Mountains. Something may be said
in defense of the severity with which his captors guarded him. He
steadfastly refused to give his parole, preferring, he said, to take
his liberty instead of having it granted him. This undoubtedly added
a zest to life in prison which would otherwise have been lacking, and
very likely contributed not a little to his serenity and even to his
physical well-being. It transformed the uncomfortable prison routine
into a contest of wits, with the odds greatly against him, but which
left him honorably free to seize any advantage that came his way. He
foiled the refusal to allow him writing materials by writing letters as
he wrote that one to Madame d'Hénin, with vinegar and lampblack in a
book on a blank leaf which had escaped the vigilant eye of his guard.
Knowing very little German, he dug out of his memory forgotten bits of
school-day Latin to use upon his jailers. He took every bit of exercise
allowed him in order to keep up his physical strength. He believed he
might have need of it. He even lived his life with a certain gay zest,
and took particular delight in celebrating the Fourth of July, 1793, in
[Pg 227]his lonely cell by writing a letter to the American minister at
London. He gave his vivid imagination free rein in concocting plans of
escape.
Friends on the outside were busy with plans, too; and though he got
no definite news of them, his optimism was too great to permit him to
doubt that they were doing everything possible for his release. At the
very outset of his captivity he applied to be set free on the ground
that he was an American citizen, though there was small chance of the
request being granted. He was sure Washington would not forget him;
he knew that Gouverneur Morris had deposited a sum of money with his
captors upon which he might draw at need. Madame de Staël, the daughter
of Necker, and the Princesse d'Hénin were in London, busy exercising
feminine influence in his behalf. General Cornwallis and General
Tarleton had interceded for him, and later he learned that Fitzpatrick,
the young Englishman he had liked on their first meeting in London, the
same who afterward carried letters for him from America, had spoken
for him in Parliament. Fox and Sheridan and Wilberforce added their
eloquence; but the cautious House of Commons decided it was none of its
business and voted against the proposal to ask for Lafayette's release,
in the same proportion that the citizens of Paris had rejected him for
mayor.
French voices also were raised in his behalf. One of the earliest
and most courageous was that of Lally Tollendal, who as member of
the French Assembly had quarreled with Lafayette for being so much
[Pg 228]of a monarchist. But later he changed his mind and acted as
go-between in the negotiations for Lafayette's final plan to remove the
royal family to Compiègne. From his exile in London Lally Tollendal now
addressed a memorial to Frederick William II, telling him the plain
truth, that it was unjust to keep Lafayette in jail as an enemy of the
French king, because it was an effort to save Louis which had proved
his ruin. "Those who regard M. de Lafayette as the cause, or even one
of the causes, of the French Revolution are entirely wrong," this
friend asserted. "He has played a great role, but he was not the author
of the piece.... He has not taken part in a single one of its evils
which would not have happened without him, while the good he did was
done by him alone."
Then Lally Tollendal went on to tell how on the Sunday after Louis
was arrested and brought back from Varennes Lafayette by one single
emphatic statement had put an end, in a committee of the Assembly, to
an ugly discussion about executing the king and proclaiming a republic.
"I warn you," he had said, "that the day after you kill the king the
National Guard and I will proclaim the prince royal." Lally Tollendal
expatiated upon how evenly Lafayette had tried to deal out justice to
royalists and revolutionists alike; how in the last days of his liberty
he had said in so many words that the Jacobins must be destroyed; and
that he had with difficulty been restrained from raising a flag bearing
the words, "No Jacobins, no Coblenz," as a banner around which friends
of the king and conservative republicans might rally. But the strict
[Pg 229]impartiality this disclosed had little charm for a king of
Prussia and the appeal bore no fruit.
There were more thrilling efforts to aid him close at hand. "It is
a whole romance, the attempt at rescuing Lafayette," says a French
biographer. The opening scene of this romance harks back to the night
when Lafayette made his first landing on American soil, piloted through
the dark by Major Huger's slaves. The least noticed actor in that
night's drama had been Major Huger's son, a very small boy, who hung
upon the words of the unexpected guests and followed them with round,
child eyes. Much had happened to change two hemispheres since, and even
greater changes had occurred in the person of that small boy. He had
grown up, he had resolved to be a surgeon, had finished his studies in
London, and betaken himself to Vienna to pursue them further. There
in the autumn of 1794 in a café he encountered a Doctor Bollman of
Hanover. They fell into conversation, and before long Bollman confided
to Huger that he had a secret mission. He had been charged by Lally
Tollendal and American friends of Lafayette then in London to find out
where the prisoner was and to plan for his escape. In his search he
had traveled up and down Germany as a wealthy physician who took an
interest in the unfortunate, particularly in prisoners, and treated
them free of charge. For a long time he had found no clue, but at
Olmütz, whose fortifications proved too strong in days past even for
Frederick the Great, he had been invited to dinner by the prison doctor
[Pg 230]and in turn had entertained him, plying him well with wine.
They talked about prisoners of note. The prison doctor admitted that he
had one now on his hands; and before the dinner was over Bollman had
sent an innocent-sounding message to Lafayette. Later he was allowed to
send him a book, with a few written lines purporting to be nothing more
than the names of some friends then in London.
When the book was returned Bollman lost no time in searching it for
hidden writing. In this way he learned that Lafayette had lately
been allowed to drive out on certain days a league or two from the
prison for the benefit of his health, and that his guard on such
occasions consisted of a stupid lieutenant and the corporal who drove
the carriage. The latter was something of a coward. Lafayette would
undertake to look after both of them himself if a rescuer and one
trusty helper should appear. No weapons need be provided; he would
take the officer's own sword away from him. All he wanted was an extra
horse or two, with the assurance that his deliverers were ready. It
was a bold plan, but only a bold plan could succeed. There were too
many bolts and bars inside the prison to make any other kind feasible.
Lameth had been set at liberty; his two other friends, Latour Maubourg
and Bureaux de Pusy, were in full sympathy with the plan, and to make
it easier had refrained from asking the privilege of driving out
themselves. Bollman added that he could not manage the rescue alone
and had come away to hunt for a trusty confederate. Huger had already
[Pg 231]told of his unforgotten meeting with Lafayette, and there was
no mistaking the eagerness with which he awaited Bollman's next word
or the joy with which he accepted the invitation to take part in the
rescue. He was moved by something deeper than mere love of adventure.
"I simply considered myself the representative of the young men of
America and acted accordingly," he said long after.
The two men returned to Olmütz and put up at the inn where Bollman had
stayed before. They managed to send a note to Lafayette. His answer
told them he would leave the prison on November 8th for his next drive,
how he would be dressed, and the signal by which they might know he was
ready. It was a market day, with many persons on the road. They paid
their score, sent their servants ahead with the traveling-carriage and
luggage to await their arrival at a town called Hoff, while they came
more slowly on horseback. Then they rode out of the gray old town.
Neither its Gothic churches, its hoary university, nor the ingenious
astronomical clock that had rung the hours from its tower for three
hundred and seventy years; not even the fortifications or the prison
itself, built on a plain so bare that all who left it were in full view
of the sentinels at the city gates, interested these travelers as did
the passers-by. Presently a small phæton containing an officer and a
civilian was driven toward them, and as it went by the pale gentleman
in a blue greatcoat raised his hand to pass a white handkerchief over
his forehead. The riders bowed slightly and tried to look indifferent,
but that was hard work. Turning as soon as they dared, they saw that
[Pg 232]the carriage had stopped by the side of the road. Its two
passengers alighted; the gentleman in blue handed a piece of money to
the driver, who drove off as though going on an errand. Then leaning
heavily upon the officer, seeming to find difficulty in walking, he
drew him toward a footpath. But at the sound of approaching horsemen,
he suddenly seized the officer's sword and attempted to wrench it from
its scabbard. The officer grappled with him. Bollman and Huger flew to
his assistance. In the act of dismounting Bollman drew his sword and
his horse, startled by the flashing steel, plunged and bolted. Huger
managed to keep hold of his own bridle, while he helped Bollman tear
away the officer's hands that were closing about Lafayette's throat.
The Austrian wrenched himself free and ran toward the town, shouting
with all his might.
Here were three men in desperate need of flight, the alarm already
raised, and only two horses to carry them to safety--one of these
running wild. Huger acted with Southern gallantry and American speed.
He got Lafayette upon his own steed, shouted to him to "Go to Hoff!"
and caught the other horse. Misunderstanding the injunction, Lafayette,
who thought he had merely been told to "Go off," rode a few steps,
then turned back to help his rescuers. They motioned him away and he
disappeared, in the wrong direction. The remaining horse reared and
plunged, refusing to carry double. Huger persuaded Bollman to mount
him, since he could be of far greater use to Lafayette, and saw him
[Pg 233]gallop away. By that time a detachment of soldiers was bearing
down upon him, and between their guns he entered the prison Lafayette
had so lately quitted.
At the end of twenty miles Lafayette had to change horses. He appealed
to an honest-looking peasant, who helped him to find another one, but
also ran to warn the authorities. These became suspicious when they saw
Lafayette's wounded hand, which had been bitten by the officer almost
to the bone. They arrested him on general principles and he was carried
back to a captivity more onerous than before. He was deprived of all
rides, of course, of all news, even of the watch and shoe-buckles which
up to this time he had been allowed to retain. Bollman reached Hoff and
waited for Lafayette until nightfall, then made his way into Silesia.
But he was captured and returned to Austria and finally to Olmütz.
The treatment accorded Lafayette's would-be rescuers was barbarous in
the extreme. Huger was chained hand and foot in an underground cell,
where he listened to realistic descriptions of beheadings, and, worse
still, of how prisoners were walled up and forgotten. Daily questions
and threats of torture were tried to make him confess that the attempt
was part of a wide-spread conspiracy. As his statements and his courage
did not waver, the prison authorities came at last to believe him,
and he was taken to a cell aboveground where it was possible to move
three steps, though he was still chained. He found that Bollman was
confined in the cell just above him. The latter let down a walnut [Pg
234]shell containing a bit of ink and also a scrap of paper. With these
Huger wrote a few lines to the American minister at London, telling of
their plight and ending with the three eloquent words, "Don't forget
us!"--doubly eloquent to one who knew those stories of walled-up
prisoners underground. They bribed the guard to smuggle this out of the
prison, and in time it reached its destination. The American minister
did not forget them. Through his good offices they were released and
told to leave the country. They waited for no second invitation, which
was very wise, because the emperor repented his clemency. He sent an
order for their rearrest, but it arrived, fortunately, just too late to
prevent their escape across the border.
[Pg 235]XXV