France in the Nineteenth Century. Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer
The governor of Ham, it must be premised, was a man wholly uncorruptible. He was kind to his prisoner, with whom he played whist every evening, but he was bent on fulfilling his duty.
This duty obliged him to See the prince twice a day, and at night to turn the key upon him, which he put into his pocket.
The fortress of Ham forms a square, with a round tower at each of the angles. There is only one gate. Between the towers are ramparts, on one of which the prince daily walked, and in one corner had made a flower-garden. A canal ran outside the ramparts on two sides; barracks were under the others. Thélin, the prince's valet, was suffered to go in and out of the fortress at his pleasure. On the 23d of May, 1845, Thélin went to St. Quentin, the nearest large town, and hired a cabriolet, which was to meet him the next day at an appointed place upon the high-road. The prince's plan depended on there being workmen in the prison, and he had been about to make a request to have his rooms papered and painted, when the governor informed him that the staircase was to be repaired. The day before the one chosen for the attempt, two English gentlemen, probably by a previous understanding, had visited the prisoner, and he asked one of them to lend his passport to the valet Thélin.
"Very early on the morning of May 25th, the prince, Dr. Conneau, and Thélin were looking out eagerly for the arrival of the workmen. A private soldier whose vigilance they had reason to dread had been placed on guard that morning, but by good luck he was called away to attend a dress parade.
"The workmen arrived. They proved to be all painters and masons—which was a disappointment to the prince, who had hoped to go out as a carpenter. But at once he shaved off his long moustache, and put over his own clothes a coarse shirt, a workman's blouse, a pair of blue overalls much worn, and a black wig. His hands and face he also soiled with paint; then, putting on a pair of wooden shoes and taking an old clay pipe in his mouth, and throwing a board over his shoulder, he prepared to leave the prison. He had with him a dagger, and two letters from which he never parted—one written by his mother, the other by his uncle, the emperor.
"It was seven o'clock by the time these preparations were made. Thélin called to the workmen on the staircase to come in and have a glass of wine. On the prince's way downstairs he met two warders. One Thélin skilfully drew apart, pretending to have something to say to him; the other was so intent on getting out of the way of the board carried by the supposed workman that he did not look in the prince's face, and the prince and Thélin passed safely into the yard."
As he was passing the first sentinel, the prince let his pipe fall from his mouth. He stooped, picked it up, and re-lighted it deliberately.
"Close to the door of the canteen he came upon an officer reading a letter. A little farther on, a few privates were sitting on a bench in the sun. The concierge at the gate was in his lodge, but his attention was given to Thélin, who was following the prince, accompanied by his dog Ham. The sergeant, whose duty it was to open and shut the gate, turned quickly and looked at the supposed workman; but a movement the prince made at that moment with his board caused him to step aside. He opened the gate: the prince was free.
"Between the two drawbridges the prince met two workmen coming towards him on the side his face was exposed. He shifted his board like a man weary of carrying a load upon one shoulder. The men appeared to eye him with suspicion, as if surprised at not knowing him. Suddenly one said: 'Oh! it is Berthon;' and they passed on into the fortress."
The prince hastened with Thélin to the place where the cabriolet engaged the day before was waiting for them. As Louis Napoleon was about to fling away the board he had been carrying, another cabriolet drove by. As soon as it was out of sight, the prince jumped into his own, shook the dust off his clothes, kicked off his wooden shoes, and seized the reins. The fifteen miles to St. Quentin were soon accomplished. The prince got out at some distance from the town, and Thélin entered it alone, to exchange the cabriolet for a postchaise. The mistress of the post-house offered him a large piece of pie, which he thankfully accepted, knowing that it would be a godsend to his master. A woman, whom they had passed upon the highway on entering the town, took Thélin aside and asked him how he came to be driving with such a shabby, common man that morning; for Thélin was well known in the neighborhood.
Before he rejoined the prince with the pie and the postchaise, Louis Napoleon had become very impatient. Seeing a carriage approach, he stopped it, and asked the occupant if he had seen anything of a postchaise coming from St. Quentin. The traveller proved afterwards to have been the prosecuting attorney of the district (le procureur du roi).
It was nine in the evening when the prince, Thélin, and the dog Ham were safely in the carriage. They reached Valenciennes at a quarter to three A. M., and had to wait more than an hour at the station for the train. The prince had discarded his working clothes, but still wore his black wig. The train arrived at last. By help of the Englishman's passport the prince safely crossed the frontier, and soon reached Brussels. Thence he went by way of Ostend to London.
He was not in time to see his father, who died in Florence before he could get permission from the German States to cross the continent.
All the French papers treated his escape as a matter of no consequence. Immediately on reaching London, he wrote a letter to Louis Philippe, pledging himself to make no further attempt to disturb the peace of France during his reign. He probably judged that the end of the Orleans dynasty might be near.
His escape from prison was not known until the evening. Dr. Conneau gave out that he had been very ill during the night, but under the influence of opiates was sleeping quietly. The governor insisted on remaining all day in the sitting-room, and finally upon seeing him. In the dim light of the sick chamber he saw only a figure, with its face turned to the wall, covered up in the bed-clothes.
At last he became suspicious. Thélin's prolonged absence seemed unaccountable. A closer examination was insisted on, and the truth was discovered. Nobody was punished except Dr. Conneau, who suffered a few months' imprisonment.
CHAPTER IV.
TEN YEARS OF THE REIGN OF THE CITIZEN KING.
Besides the affairs of the Duchesse de Berri, of Louis Napoleon, of Fieschi and his infernal machine, and difficulties attending on the marriage of the Duke of Orleans, the first ten years of Louis Philippe's reign were full of vicissitudes. France after a revolution is always an "unquiet sea that cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt." Frenchmen do not accept the inevitable as Americans have learned to do, through the working of their institutions.
One of the early troubles of Louis Philippe was the peremptory demand of President Jackson for five million dollars—a claim for French spoliations in 1797. This amount had been acknowledged by the Government of Louis Philippe to be due, but the Chambers were not willing to ratify the agreement. In the course of the negotiations the secretary of General Jackson, having occasion to translate to him a French despatch, read, "The French Government demands—" "Demands!" cried the general, with a volley of rough language; "if the French Government dares to demand anything of the United States, it will not get it."
It was long before he could be made to understand the true meaning of the French word demande, and his own demands were backed with threats and couched in terms more forcible than diplomatic. The money was paid after the draft of the United States for the first instalment had been protested, and France has not yet forgotten that when she was still in the troubled waters of a recent revolution, she was roughly treated by the nation which she had befriended at its birth.
The greatest military success in Louis Philippe's reign was the capture of Constantine in Algeria. So late as 1810 Algerine corsairs were a terror in the Mediterranean, and captured M. Arago, who was employed on a scientific expedition.[1] In 1835, France resolved to undertake a crusade against these pirates, which might free the commerce