France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

The failure was complete. The day before, a party of the prince's friends had been at Boulogne on the lookout for his arrival; but when they found he did not come, they had left the city. All that remained to be done was to attempt to save the prince. He was almost beside himself. Apparently he lost his self-command, and men of more nerve and experience did with him what they would.

He and his party reached the sea at last. The National Guard of Boulogne began firing on them. The prince, Count Persigny, Colonel Voisin, and Galvani, an Italian, were put into a boat. As they pushed off, a fire of musketry shattered the little skiff, and threw them into the water. Colonel Voisin's arm was broken at the elbow, and Galvani was hit in the body. The prince and Persigny came up to the surface at some distance from the land. Colonel Voisin and Galvani, being nearer to the shore, were immediately rescued. Count Orsi says that as the prince swam towards the steamer, still fired on by the National Guard stationed on the heights, a custom-house boat headed him off. But in Boulogne it was reported and believed that he was captured and brought to land in a bathing machine.

The prisoners were tried by a royal decree. No one was sentenced to death, but the prince, Count Montholon, Count Persigny, Colonel Voisin, Major Parquin, and another officer were sent to the fortress of Ham, on the frontier of Belgium, where they occupied the same quarters as Prince Polignac and the other ministers of Charles X. had done. Count Montholon, four months after, made piteous appeals to be let out on parole for one day, that he might be present when the body of Napoleon was brought back to the capital.

The prince passed five years in prison, reading much, and doubtless meditating much on the mistakes of his career. Many plans of escape had been secretly proposed to him, but he rejected all of them, fearing they were parts of a trap laid for him by the authorities. It has always been believed, however, and it is probably true, that Louis Philippe would have been very willing to have the jailers shut their eyes while Louis Napoleon walked out of their custody, believing that the ridicule that had attended his two attempts at revolution had ruined his chances as a pretender to the throne.

During the years Louis Napoleon was imprisoned at Ham, he received constant marks of sympathy, especially from foreigners. He was known to favor the project of an interoceanic canal by the Nicaragua route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Government of Nicaragua proposed to him to become president of a company that would favor its views, expressing the hope that he would make himself as great in America by undertaking such a work, as his uncle has made himself by his military glory.

The illness of his father in Florence gave Prince Louis Napoleon a good reason for asking enlargement on parole from the French Government. Louis Philippe was willing to grant this; but his ministers demurred, unless Louis Napoleon would ask pardon loyalement. This Louis Napoleon refused to do; and having by this time managed to extract a loan of £6,000 from the rich and eccentric Duke of Brunswick, he resolved to attempt an escape.

Here is the story as he told it himself when he reached England. 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.