Quitting the barrack-yard, the prince, at the head of his friends and adherents, now endeavoured to enter the old town. They found the gate closed, nor did their united efforts suffice to unhinge it.
The enterprise had failed. The chiefs of the popular movement, who were to second the military rising, having inferred from the non-arrival of the prince on the morning of the 5th that something had occurred, either in London or at sea, to put the French authorities on the scent, had decamped from the town. Forestier, who reached Boulogne towards noon on the 5th, with the news that the prince would land next morning, had arrived too late.
Nothing now remained but to endeavour to save the prince. He himself wished to die—to be shot or cut down by his enemies; but the friends who were with him fairly dragged him down to the sea-shore in the hope of getting him safely on board the Edinburgh Castle. This vessel lay some distance out at sea, and the signals made to her to approach the land were unanswered, as though she had already been seized by the authorities.
On the sand, however, a small boat was found. “The prince,” says Orsi, “was still offering the greatest resistance. Time was precious. The ridges of the cliffs were already covered with gendarmes, followed by the National Guard. The soldiers of the 42nd regiment had been shut up in barracks. The work of pursuing us was left to the National Guard and to the gendarmes. The former behaved like savages. Firing soon began from the height of the hill, and gradually increased. We could hear the whistling of the bullets, but not one of us had yet been hit.”
The prince at last got into the boat with Colonel Voisin, Count Persigny, and Galvani, whilst Orsi and another rushed into the waves to push the little craft into deep water. Then the National Guard opened a brisker fire. Galvani and Voisin were wounded, the former in the right hip, while the latter had the elbow of his left arm entirely shattered. The boat had now in the confusion got capsized, and the prince and his friends disappeared under her. As she lay keel upwards there was a terrible discharge of musketry, which cut open the bottom of the boat and fractured the keel into matchwood. Had not the prince and his friends been at that instant immersed, they must have perished.
For some time the prince and Count Persigny remained under water, and Count Orsi began to apprehend that they might be drowning, when both appeared at a good distance from the shore swimming towards the Edinburgh Castle. The National Guard now pointed all their muskets at the prince, but by some miraculous accident failed to hit him. At last, just as he was reaching the steamer—which was already in the hands of the Boulogne authorities—a boat, with several officials on board coming out of the harbour, cut off his retreat, and both he and his fellow-swimmer Persigny found themselves prisoners. They were taken to the Vieux-Château, where all the Imperialists were confined who could anywhere be discovered.
The few days which followed the seizure of the Edinburgh Castle and the arrest of the prince’s party were employed by the Boulogne judicial authorities in examining the English captain—by name Crow—and his crew as to what they had seen, known, or imagined to be the object of the expedition, and as to the particular part played by each person on board.
One morning the prisoners were all, with the exception of the prince, brought together in a room, where Captain Crow and his first mate were requested to look at every one of them, and see if they could distinguish the man who had given orders for the steamer to anchor off Wimereux. Both pointed to Count Orsi.
As soon as the preliminary judicial formalities had been gone through at Boulogne the prince was conveyed to Paris, to be arraigned with his associates before the Court of Peers on a charge of having engaged in an expedition whose object was to overthrow the existing Government. At length, two months later, the day of the trial arrived.
The prince was defended by the eloquent[{124}] advocate M. Berryer, assisted by M. Marie. On being called upon himself to speak he claimed the whole responsibility of the enterprise, and concluded with these magnanimous words:—