THE ESCAPE OF MARSHAL BAZAINE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 118, 16 October 1874, Page 3

THE ESCAPE OF MARSHAL BAZAINE.

The Times correspondent, writing from Paris on August 11th, sent the following particulars of this important event: — “ Early on August 11th a rumour got into circulation that ex-Marshal Bazaine had escaped from the Island of Ste Mu guerite. Bome of the morning papers mentioned it under reserve, but on the appearance of the official journal all doubt was removed, for it announced that the escape happened on Sunday night, August 9th, and that the Government had ordered an inquiry. 1 Those,’ it added, ‘ who procured or facilitated the escape will be punished according to law. The Government are resolved not lo let such acts be committed with impunity.’ The despatch announcing the escape was sent off from Ste Marguerite at 11 on August 10th, and reached the Government about two, while Marshal Mac.Mahon was opening the exhibition organised by the Central Union at the Palace of Industry The Minister of the Interior immediately telegraphed for further particulars, and directed measures to be taken for facilitating the inquiry about to lie instituted. The first inquiry will be confined to a very limited area, for two persons only— Madame Bazaine and Colonel Villette—were authorised to stay in the island, and that on condition of scrupulously conforming to the same rules as the prisoner himself. M. Bazaine, as has been already mentioned, was constantly soliciting a relaxation of the rules imposed on him, and the refusal reemed to irritate him a good deal. In the course of Sunday, August 9th, Madame Bazaine left the island and repaired to the mainland, M. Bazaine remaining at Ste. Marguerite with Colonel Villette. During that afternoon the prisoner had a long conversation with the governor of the prison, walking with him and Colonel Villette on the terrace overlooking the sea. Without betraying the least anxiety, he retired about ten o’clock, bidding the governor good night. It has been ascertained that the tffee separate locks which shut in his .apartments were not tampered with, while there is no indication of his having escaped by a window, which is three and a half metres from the ground, so that a man of his age and corpulence could not have leapt from it. It seems equally clear that the escape was effected after five o’clock on the morning of August 10th, for two soldiers have declared that at half-past five they saw the prisoner on the terrace below his apartments. This, indeed, is probable enough. A sentinel, who had received the most, stringent orders, was on watch on the terrace till five o’clock, when be was relieved, because daylight was supposed to dispense with the necessity for his presence. Once on the terrace, which overhangs the stream, Bazaine is thought to have descended by means of a knotted rope, and to have been received by a boat which had stationed itself theic before dawn, and which immediately conveyed him to a steamer plying between Marseilles and the Italian coast, which had diverged from its route in order to await the boat. M. Bazaine is said to have landed on the coast at San Remo, and to have there taken the Turin and Basle train, reaching Brussels at seven the next morning; the latter part of this statement seems improbable. It is difficult to conceive M. Bazaine lowering himself by a knotted rope from the precipitous rocks overhanging the sea ; the agility requisite for such a feat requires a younger and more supple man. The story of the boat proceeding stealthily at night under rocks against which it would infallibly have been dashed to pieces is also improbable, and the mathematical precision with which this boat met a steamer under way appears incredible. This portion of the story must be accepted with extreme icserve, and the escape will very likely prove to have been neither so romantic nor so perilous. However this may be. the Cabinet hastily convened approved ihe steps to be first taken, and decided on announcing the fact in the official journal. The magistrates immediately proceeded to the island and commenced the inquiry, while Colonel Villette, by order of the Procureur of the Republic at Marseilles, was arrested at the railway station of that town on his way to Paris, and was conveyed to Fort St Nicolas. Another version, equally requiring confiima-

tion. is that Madame Bazaine and one of his cousins awaited M. Bazaine in the boat under the rocks. The Ministry of the Interior, to whom is entrusted the surveillance of the island, is now. curiously enough, filled by General do (,'habaud-Latour, who was one of Buzaine’s judges, and was supposed to be not the most lenient amongst them towards him. The escape, however effected, presents nothing at all suprising from the moment when the prisoner resolved on attempting it. lie was not treated or watched like an ordinary prisoner. As soon as the sentence of death had been commuted by his old companion in arms, he was considered a kind of prisoner on parole. A Marshal of France before bis condemnation, it might have been supposed that he would bear bis misfortunes with exemplary dignity. Simply judging the acts which led to his trial under their most favorable aspect, he was expiating the inflexibihility of military laws and the rigorous exigencies of military honor. He was bound in that case, as also by his former rank in the French army, to support his severe 'rials with courage and resignation. He knew it could not l»e doubted that he would not have to wait too long for the end of those t ials and that be would then exchange Ste Marguerite for a foreign soil without limitation of locality. By thus escaping ho has given himself the most deadly blow by which be could have been struck, and be will perhaps soon perceive that his reputation was not really destroyed by bis condemnation until the day when, scorning the judgment of history, he ceased to be the prisoner of Sle Marguerite.”