“National Assembly, Aug. 17, 1792.“I. It appears to this Assembly that there is just ground for accusation against M. de La Fayette, heretofore commander of the army of the North.“II. The executive power shall, in the most expeditious manner possible, carry the present decree into execution; and all constituted authorities, all citizens, and all soldiers are hereby enjoined, by every means in their power, to secure his person.“III. The Assembly forbids the army of the North any longer to acknowledge him as a general, or to obeyhis orders; and strictly enjoins that no person whatsoever shall furnish anything to the troops, or pay any money for their use, but by the orders of M. Dumouriez.”
“National Assembly, Aug. 17, 1792.
“I. It appears to this Assembly that there is just ground for accusation against M. de La Fayette, heretofore commander of the army of the North.
“II. The executive power shall, in the most expeditious manner possible, carry the present decree into execution; and all constituted authorities, all citizens, and all soldiers are hereby enjoined, by every means in their power, to secure his person.
“III. The Assembly forbids the army of the North any longer to acknowledge him as a general, or to obeyhis orders; and strictly enjoins that no person whatsoever shall furnish anything to the troops, or pay any money for their use, but by the orders of M. Dumouriez.”
This decree was widely circulated throughout the army. Against such a hydra-headed demon of persecution it was useless to attempt to contend. La Fayette’s only safety lay in flight. For his king and his country he had sacrificed all that was dear to him in life; and this was his thankless reward.
At this time La Fayette thus wrote to his wife:—
“I make no apology to you or my children for having ruined my family; no one among you would wish to owe fortune to conduct contrary to my conscience.” Surely the actions of his heroic wife and brave children fully confirmed his exalted opinion of them.
After taking every necessary precaution for the safety of his army, La Fayette and his three friends, Messieurs Latour-Maubourg, Bureaux de Pusy, and Alexandre Lameth, with a little party of twenty-three exiles, departed from France and turned their faces towards the Netherlands. Reaching Rochefort, La Fayette and his friends endeavored to obtain passports. But La Fayette was quickly recognized, and the commandant instantly despatched a messenger to the Austrian general at Namur, with the startling intelligence that he held in safe-keeping the illustrious La Fayette, one of the bravest generals of France. The Austrian general, Moitelle, could scarcely credit this astounding piece of good fortune. “What!” exclaimed he, “La Fayette?La Fayette?” Turning to one officer, he cried, “Run instantly and inform the Duke of Bourbon of it”; to another the order was given, “Set out this moment and carry this news to his Royal Highness at Brussels”; and sending others here and there tospread the wonderful intelligence: before many hours the news had been despatched to half the princes and generals in Europe, that the illustrious La Fayette was a captive in the hands of the allies. The prisoners were conducted to Namur, then to Nivelles, and afterwards to Luxembourg, where an attempt was made to assassinate La Fayette by some of the French refugees. The Austrians finally decided that La Fayette and his three companions should be given over into the power of the Prussians. The captives were accordingly closely guarded and hurried to Wessel. Here they were separated and thrown into different cells. The many shameful indignities which they suffered and the hardships of their cruel prison life soon prostrated La Fayette, and he became dangerously ill, and for a time his life was despaired of. No mitigation of his confinement was, however, allowed him. Once the king of Prussia offered him aid if he would assist in the plans forming against France. La Fayette received this base message with indignant scorn, and bade the officer return and inform his master “that he was stillLa Fayette.”
The king, foiled in his attempt to weaken the stanch loyalty of the heroic marquis, who would not swerve one hair‘s-breadth from his conscientious principles, even for the longed-for boon of liberty, determined to wreak his mortified pride by inflicting further cruelties upon the helpless captives, whom, though he could not bribe to dishonor, he might still torture to death.
The monarch resolved to gratify his malignity by removing them to still more dismal and unhealthy dungeons. Whereupon, the prisoners were conducted to Magdebourg; and as they were thrown into the loathsome vaults of that prison, they were informed that they should never again behold the light of day. Here theyexisted, desolate and despairing, for a year. Frederic William occasionally sent to learn if their sufferings were sufficiently intense to satisfy his fiendish cruelty, and then devised new torments. La Fayette dared not send letters to his wife, fearing that his writing would be recognized, and accordingly addressed them to a friend in England, hoping that his family would in some manner receive them. He thus describes his situation:—
“Imagine an opening made under the rampart of the citadel, and surrounded with a strong high palisade; through this, after opening four doors, each armed with chains, bars, and padlocks, they come, not without some difficulty and noise, to my cell, three paces wide, five and a half long. The wall is mouldy on the side of the ditch, and the front one admits light, but not sunshine, through a little grated window. Add to this two sentinels, whose eyes penetrate into this lower region, but who are kept outside the palisade, lest they should speak; other watchers not belonging to the guard; and all the walls, ramparts, ditches, guards, within and without the citadel of Magdebourg, and you will think that the foreign powers neglect nothing to keep us within their dominions.
“The noisy opening of the four doors is repeated every morning to admit my servant; at dinner, that I may eat in the presence of the commandant of the citadel and of the guard; and at night, to take my servant to his prison. After having shut upon me all the doors, the commandant carries off the keys to the room where, since our arrival, the king has ordered him to sleep.
“I have books, the white leaves of which are taken out, but no news, no newspapers, no communications,—neither pen, ink, paper, nor pencil. It is a wonder that I possess this sheet, and I am writing with a toothpick.My health fails daily.... The account I have given you may serve for my companions, whose treatment is the same.”
At length, despairing of making La Fayette yield by any cruelties, however barbarous, the Prussian king, fearing that the peace which he was concluding with France would require the surrender of La Fayette, he determined to transfer him, with Maubourg and De Pusy, to the Austrians.
Olmütz was selected by their new jailers, and the prisoners were accordingly carried thither.
ThoughThoughplaced within the same castle, and occupying cells in the same corridor, the friends were as completely guarded against all intercourse with each other, and all knowledge of each other’s condition, as if an ocean or a continent separated them. As they entered their cells, it was declared to each of them, “that they would never come out of them alive; that they would never see anything but what was enclosed within the four walls of their respective cells; that they would hold no communication with the outer world, nor receive any kind of information of persons or things there; that their jailers were even prohibited from pronouncing their names; that in the prison reports and government despatches they would be referred to only by the number of their cells; that they would never be suffered to learn anything of the situation of their families, or even to know of each other’s existence; and that, as such a situation of hopeless confinement would naturally incite to suicide, knives and forks, and all other instruments by which they might do violence to themselves, would be thenceforth withheld from them.”
Such were Austria’s improvements upon the cruelties of Prussia.
In a dark and loathsome dungeon, the walls of which were twelve feet thick, and guarded by doors of wood and iron, covered with bolts and bars, the only air admitted into the cell coming through a loophole in the wall, beneath which was a ditch of stagnant water whose poisonous effluvium stifled the suffering victim on a bed of rotten straw filled with vermin, by the side of which stood a worm-eaten table and broken chair, lay the sick and tortured La Fayette, whose keen anxieties regarding the fate of his adored wife and children were added to the bodily torments which his enemies inflicted upon him. Again he became ill. His physician represented to the authorities that fresh air was absolutely necessary; three times the brutal answer was sent, “He is not yet sick enough.” At length, however, he was allowed a daily walk of a few moments under the eye of his jailer.
The news of the imprisonment of La Fayette had been received with profound sorrow throughout the world. Many efforts had been put forth in his behalf from time to time. While La Fayette was at Magdebourg, the American minister in France took upon himself the responsibility of directing the banker of the United States, at Hamburgh, to advance ten thousand florins, which were sent to La Fayette, and was the means of procuring for him many needed comforts. This act was afterwards ratified by Congress under the head of military compensation.
The imprisonment of his loyal and devoted young friend caused the warm heart of Washington the deepest anguish, but, as the president of a neutral nation, his public acts were governed by caution; though his personal influence as a man in behalf of his friend was strong in endeavoring to secure the release ofthe marquis. To Mr. Pinckney, then in Europe, he thus wrote:—
“I need hardly mention how much my sensibility has been hurt by the treatment this gentleman has met with, or how anxious I am to see him liberated therefrom; but what course to pursue as most likely and proper to aid the measure is not quite so easy to decide on. As President of the United States, there must not be a commitment of the government by any interference of mine; and it is no easy matter in a transaction of this nature for a public character to assume the garb of a private citizen in a case that does not relate to himself. Yet such is my wish to contribute my mite to accomplish that desirable object, that I have no objection to its being known to the imperial ambassador in London, who, if he think proper, may communicate it to his court, that this event is an ardent wish of the people of the United States, to which I sincerely add mine. The time, the manner, and even the measure itself, I leave to your discretion; as circumstances, and every matter which concerns this gentleman, are better known on that than they are on this side of the Atlantic.”
At length a young German physician, Dr. J. Erick Bollman, filled with admiration for the illustrious and persecuted La Fayette, although he had never seen him, nevertheless enthusiastically espoused his cause, and determined to attempt the liberation of the marquis. Meeting at Vienna Francis Kinlock Huger, the son of Colonel Huger, of South Carolina, at whose house La Fayette was first received when he landed in America, the two young men resolved to attempt at all risks tothemselves his releasethemselves his release. They were so far successful, that by their aid La Fayette eluded his jailers, while out for exercise, and mounted a horse provided by his friends,and succeeded in reaching Sternberg, but was there again arrested and carried back to endure still greater tortures in his loathsome prison at Olmütz. His two devoted friends were also captured and obliged to suffer imprisonment for six months, as a punishment for their unselfish deed; while La Fayette was informed by his cruel tormentors that his zealous friends were to be executed for their attempt in his behalf.