| FRED‘K WILLIAM II. | FRANCIS I. |
| KING OF PRUSSIA. | EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA. |
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.
Though[Though] placed 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 of the 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.”