Part 1
WONDERFUL ESCAPES.
WONDERFUL ESCAPES
_REVISED FROM THE FRENCH OF F. BERNARD AND ORIGINAL CHAPTERS ADDED._
BY RICHARD WHITEING.
With Twenty-six Plates.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO. 1871.
Illustrated Library of Wonders.
PUBLISHED BY Messrs. Charles Scribner & Co., 654 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.
Each one volume 12mo. Price per volume, $1.50.
_Titles of Books._ _No. of Illustrations_
THUNDER AND LIGHTNING, 39
WONDERS OF OPTICS, 70
WONDERS OF HEAT, 90
INTELLIGENCE OF ANIMALS, 54
GREAT HUNTS, 22
EGYPT 3,300 YEARS AGO, 40
WONDERS OF POMPEII, 22
THE SUN, BY A. GUILLEMIN, 53
SUBLIME IN NATURE, 50
WONDERS OF GLASS MAKING, 63
WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART, 28
WONDERS OF THE HUMAN BODY, 45
WONDERS OF ARCHITECTURE, 50
LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHTSHIPS, 60
BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN, 68
WONDERS OF BODILY STRENGTH AND SKILL, 70
WONDERFUL BALLOON ASCENTS, 30
ACOUSTICS, 114
WONDERS OF THE HEAVENS, 48
* THE MOON, BY A. GUILLEMIN, 60
* WONDERS OF SCULPTURE, 61
* WONDERS OF ENGRAVING, 32
* WONDERS OF VEGETATION, 45
* WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD, 97
CELEBRATED ESCAPES, 26
* WATER, 77
* HYDRAULICS, 40
* ELECTRICITY, 71
* SUBTERRANEAN WORLD, 27
* In Press for early Publication.
_The above works sent to any address, post paid, upon receipt of the price by the publishers._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Aristomenes the Messenian 1
Hegesistratus 2
Demetrius Soter 4
Marius 6
Attalus 10
Richard, Duke of Normandy 15
Louis II., Count of Flanders 17
The Duke of Albany 19
James V., King of Scotland 22
Secundus Curion 25
Benvenuto Cellini 26
Mary, Queen of Scots 41
Caumont de la Force 45
Charles de Guise 54
Mary de Medicis 56
Grotius 60
Isaac Arnauld 63
The Duke of Beaufort 65
Cardinal de Retz 69
Quiquéran de Beaujeu 76
Charles II. 78
Blanche Gamond 90
Jean Bart and the Chevalier de Forbin 96
Duguay Trouin 99
The Abbé Count de Bucquoy 101
Jacobite Insurrectionists 108
Charles Edward 111
Stanislaus Leczinski 118
Baron Trenck 122
Cassanova de Seingalt 160
Latude 214
Beniowski 229
Twelve Priests saved by Geoffroy St. Hilaire 236
De Chateaubrun 238
Sydney Smith 239
Pichegru, Ramel, Barthelemy, etc. 241
Colonel de Richemont 248
Captain Grivel 254
Lavalette 255
Giovanni Arrivabene, Ugoni, and Scalvini 262
Political Prisoners, 1834 265
Monsieur Rufin Piotrowski 267
Prince Louis Napoleon 284
James Stephens 298
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
I. They came at last to an opening, 2
II. Marius sent away from Minturnæ, 10
III. I then tore them up into long bands, 29
IV. Cellini attacked by the dogs, 36
V. Escape of Mary, Queen of Scots, from Loch Leven Castle, 44
VI. “Hush!” said the man, “keep quiet, they are still there,” 48
VII. She lifted the lid of the chest, and her master leaped out safe and sound, 62
VIII. He let himself drop into the sea, 78
IX. They grew very angry at my rudeness, 88
X. I was obliged to support myself with one arm, 92
XI. My foot got stuck, and the sentinel seized it, 127
XII. Trenck escaping with Lieutenant Schell, 138
XIII. The first grenadier I knocked down, 155
XIV. I heard the sound of a door being unbolted, 174
XV. I told him to be very careful not to spill the sauce, 186
XVI. Balbi rolled down into my arms, 197
XVII. The monk clung to my waistband, 202
XVIII. I told him I was going to bury him, 213
XIX. I saw on the parapet the soldiers of the grand round, 224
XX. Stop, thief! 228
XXI. The woodman pulled out a knife and did so, 239
XXII. He affected great surprise, 241
XXIII. I held my handkerchief to my eyes, 258
XXIV. They fell exhausted to the ground, 264
XXV. The sight of the seal was sufficient, 278
XXVI. Osmond carrying off Duke Richard, _Frontispiece_.
WONDERFUL ESCAPES.
_ARISTOMENES THE MESSENIAN._
ABOUT 684 B.C.
Aristomenes, the Messenian general, fighting at the head of his troops against very superior numbers of the Lacedemonians, commanded by the two kings of Sparta, received a severe blow on the head from a stone, and fell insensible and to all appearance dead. He was taken prisoner, with fifty of his soldiers, and dragged to Sparta, where the Lacedemonians condemned them all to be thrown into the Cœada, a hideous gulf formed by a fissure in the earth, in whose depths already lay the bones of hundreds of criminals who had been put to death. The barbarous sentence was actually carried out; and Aristomenes, with all his surviving soldiers, was hurled into the gulf. The latter perished to a man in the fall; but their general, on this as on so many other occasions, was saved--as the historian Pausanias has it, by the favour of a god. The most enthusiastic chroniclers of his exploits say that an eagle flying towards him sustained his body on its extended wings, and thus bore him unharmed to the bottom of the ravine. A happy chance revealed to him a means of egress from this dismal prison. When he reached the bottom, he lay for some time on the ground, wrapped in his mantle, and in momentary expectation of death. He scarcely stirred from this position for two days; on the third day of his entombment, however, he heard a noise, and uncovering his face, saw a fox creeping along in the gloom towards a heap of corpses. Judging from this that there must be an opening in the ravine, he waited until the animal approached him, and then seized its leg with one hand, thrust his mantle into its mouth with the other when it turned to bite, and suffered himself to be dragged through the passages of his subterranean prison. They came at last to an opening just large enough to give a passage to the fox and to admit a feeble ray of light into the cavern. The animal bounded forward into the daylight, and disappeared as soon as Aristomenes let go his hold, leaving the captive general to follow after he had enlarged the opening with his hands. This escape of Aristomenes was considered a manifest proof of the favour and protection of the gods. (_Pausanias: Description of Greece_, bk. iv., ch. xviii.)
_HEGESISTRATUS._
ABOUT 475 B.C.
Mardonias had for an augur, according to the Greek rites, Hegesistratus of Elea. This man, at one time, was in the power of the Spartans, to whom he had wrought very great harm, and he lay heavily ironed in prison, and condemned to death. In this extremity, knowing that he had to expect, not only to lose his life, but to suffer the most frightful tortures before his execution, he performed an incredible exploit. He was fastened to a heavy wooden fetter bound with iron, and by the aid of a scrap of the same metal which he found by accident in his prison, he accomplished the
most courageous action ever recorded; for, having carefully measured off as much of his foot as he could manage to drag out of the fetters, he cut it away from the rest by the tarsal bone. He then contrived, although the prison was strictly guarded, to pick a hole in the wall of his dungeon, and escape to Tegea, walking, or rather hobbling along, by night, and hiding during the day. He arrived at Tegea on the third night, after eluding all the vigilance of the Lacedemonians, who had, indeed, been struck with almost ludicrous astonishment when they found only the half of the man’s foot in their safe keeping and the owner gone. As soon as Hegesistratus was cured, he provided himself with a wooden foot, and became the declared enemy of the Lacedemonians. His hatred of them was about equalled by his love of gain; and he was enabled to gratify both passions by sacrificing, and by drawing divinations for the Persians at the battle of Platea, for which he was most liberally paid by Mardonius. But his enmity to the Spartans brought him to a bad end, for he was captured by them at Zacynthus, where he was following his trade of divination, and put to death. (_Herodotus_, bk. ix., § xxxvii.)
In the time of Herodotus, the term “tarsus” was applied, not only to that part of the foot so designated by modern anatomists, but also to that immediately above the toes. It would even seem to follow, from a passage in Hippocrates, that the term tarsus was employed specially to designate those portions now called metatarsal, and to the second row of the bones of the tarsus, from which he distinguishes those in direct communication with the leg. From the text of Herodotus, however, it is sufficiently clear that Hegesistratus cut off his foot at the part where the tarsus and metatarsus join.
It would at first seem incredible that a man could have the resolution to mutilate himself in this way, and, above all, to do subsequently what is here recorded by the Greek author; but facts certainly as extraordinary have been observed among the North American Indians. It is but rarely, however, that among stories of the kind we have collected, even though they may be taken from the gravest historians, some details are not found open to at least the suspicion of exaggeration. We give the name of our authority: the reader must take the story for what it is worth.
_DEMETRIUS SOTER._
162 B.C.
Demetrius had been sent to Rome as a hostage by his father, Seleucus Philopater. Antiochus having afterwards assassinated Seleucus, and made himself King of Syria, Demetrius asked the Senate to restore him his liberty and his throne. But, according to Polybius, although the senators were touched by the words of the young prince, they thought it more to the interest of the Republic to detain him in Rome, and to recognise the son of Antiochus.
Some time after, Demetrius wished to renew his appeal to the Senate, and he consulted Polybius, who tried to dissuade him from it: “Do not,” said the historian, “bruise yourself a second time against the same stone. Believe in yourself and in yourself alone, and prove by your own boldness that you deserve to be king.”
The prince, expecting no doubt advice more in harmony with his intentions, did not follow the counsel of Polybius till he was taught the value of it by a second refusal from the Senate; and then he prepared for flight. Diodorus, who had educated him, arrived very opportunely at that moment from Syria, and assured him that if he were to present himself to his people with but one attendant at his back he would be immediately proclaimed king.
Polybius, Diodorus, and some other friends of the young prince, devoted themselves to his service. They bought a Carthaginian ship lying at the mouth of the Tiber, without much hindrance it would seem from the vigilance of the authorities; for the sale and all the arrangements, including the settlement of the very hour of departure, were effected with the utmost publicity. When the time came Demetrius assembled his friends around him, a limited number of them only being in the secret, and standing pledged to embark with their slaves at a given signal. Polybius was ill, and could not leave his house, but he became apprehensive lest the young man should abandon himself to the pleasures of the table, and forget the hour fixed for his setting out. He therefore sent a slave to him towards nightfall, with orders to approach him as though on business of importance, and to place a letter in his hand reminding him of his duty. Demetrius read the letter, invented a pretext for withdrawing from the table, and returned with his confidants to his own house, whence he sent away his servants to Anagnia with orders to get everything in readiness for a boar hunt on the next day but one--this being his favourite sport, and the one which had first brought him into contact with Polybius. His friends also gave the same orders to their slaves, and in due time all the confederates assembled at Ostia. Demetrius still pretended that he meant to stay at Rome, and that he was merely sending out some trusted friends of his own age with instructions to his brother. The captain of the ship, for his part, was not disposed to be too particular in his inquiries about anything except the money for the voyage; and towards night Demetrius and his companions quietly embarked. At daybreak the anchors were raised, the vessel stood out to sea, and the fugitives were free. (_Polybius_, bk. xxxi., frag. xii.)
MARIUS.
85 B.C.
When Marius felt himself menaced by Sylla’s march on Rome he tried to raise the slaves in his favour, but on the failure of the attempt, he took to flight, knowing that he had no mercy to expect from his rival, whose friends he had so remorselessly slain. He had hardly left the city when his attendants dispersed, and he was obliged to seek refuge alone at Solonium, one of his country retreats. From this place he sent his son to collect food in the grounds of his father-in-law, Mucius, which were not far off. The hunted man at the same time hurried away to Ostia, and without waiting for his son’s return, embarked with his son-in-law, Granius, in a vessel kept in readiness for him by Numerius, one of his friends. The young Marius had meanwhile got a store of provisions; but at daybreak he was alarmed by the approach of the horsemen of Sylla, whose suspicions had led them to the place. They were seen, however, at a distance by Mucius’s faithful steward, who hid the youth in a cart laden with beans, and harnessing his oxen to it, pushed boldly on before the horsemen into the city. The fugitive was then conveyed to his wife’s house, where he waited till nightfall, and then took ship, and reached Africa in safety.
The elder Marius had weighed anchor, and was carried along the coasts of Italy by a favourable wind; but he ordered the sailors to stand off from Terracina, because he feared his enemy Geminius, one of the principal inhabitants of that place. They were in the act of obeying him when a gale began to blow, which soon swelled to such a furious tempest that it seemed impossible for the boat to live. This, joined to the illness of Marius, who was prostrated by sea-sickness, obliged them to make for the coast of Circæi, where they landed with great difficulty.
They were scarcely a league from Minturnæ when they saw a troop of horsemen approaching, and quite by chance perceived a couple of barks afloat. They at once turned in terror from the horsemen, and plunged into the sea to swim to the barks. Granius easily reached one of the boats and made for the island of Enaria, situated opposite to this point of the coast; but Marius, who was then seventy years of age, was dragged with great difficulty towards the other by two slaves, and had hardly been placed in it when his pursuers reached the bank and ordered the sailors to row him ashore, or else to throw him overboard and go wherever they pleased without him. Marius had recourse to supplications and to tears, and his companions, after hesitating a little while, refused to abandon him. But his enraged pursuers had hardly left the shore when the sailors again changed their minds and steered towards the land. They cast anchor at the mouth of the Liris (the Garigliano), the waters of which formed a marsh, and they urged Marius to land in order to take some nourishment and recover from his sea-sickness and to await a more favourable wind. He confided in them and followed their advice; and when they had put him ashore he hid himself in a meadow, little thinking of what was to follow, for he had hardly left the vessel when they weighed anchor again and left the place, as though thinking it would neither be honest in them to deliver him to his enemies, nor safe to try to save his life.
Left thus alone and abandoned by all, Marius for a time lay stretched upon the shore, without the power to rise or to utter a single word; but at length, lifting himself up with difficulty, he began to totter painfully along a pathless waste of land. After crossing several deep marshes he came by chance to the cottage of an old labouring man, and falling at his feet he besought him to save one who, if he escaped from his present dangers, would have it in his power to bestow an unhoped-for recompense upon his deliverer. The old man, either knowing him or detecting something of his real importance in his bearing, replied that if he wished for rest he might find it in the cottage, but if he sought for safety from his enemies he would hide him in a more secret place. Marius begged him to do so, and the peasant, leading him into the marsh, told him to crouch in a hole on the bank of a river, and covered him up with reeds and other light things, which effectually concealed him, without oppressing him with their weight.
He had not lain there long when he heard a slight uproar and the sound of voices coming from the cottage. Geminius of Terracina had, in fact, sent a number of people in pursuit of him, and some of them, who had penetrated to that place, were trying to frighten the old man by charging him with having harboured the enemy of Rome. Marius then foolishly revealed himself by crawling out of his hiding-place and plunging naked into the filthy waters of the marsh, where he was at once seen by his pursuers. They dragged him out half suffocated and covered with mud, and took him to Minturnæ, where the magistrates thought it prudent to deliberate on his fate, although the decree ordering his pursuit and immediate execution when captured had been published in all the cities. They decided at last on placing him for safe custody in the house of a woman named Fannia, whom he had formerly injured, and who, it was thought, would be very evilly disposed towards him. Fannia, however, on this occasion showed him no animosity; indeed, the sight of her supposed enemy did not appear to recall one bitter feeling to her mind, for she placed food before him and exhorted him to take courage. He told her he had just seen a favourable omen and was full of confidence, and ordered her to close the door of his chamber, as he wished for repose.
Meanwhile, the authorities of Minturnæ had decided that he should be put to death without delay, but not one citizen could be found to undertake his execution. At length a horse-soldier--a Gaul according to some, and according to others a Cimbrian--took a sword and entered the woman’s dwelling. The room in which the captive lay was very badly lit, and was indeed in almost total darkness; and the Cimbrian (so runs the story) thought he saw two fierce eyes darting flames, and heard a terrible voice calling to him out of the gloom, “Wretch! darest thou slay Caius Marius?” At all events, he at once threw down his sword in terror and ran away, exclaiming, as he leaped headlong over the threshold, “No, I dare not kill Caius Marius.” The whole city was seized with astonishment, and then with pity and repentance, and the people reproached themselves for their cruel and ungrateful resolution against a man who had saved Italy, and whom it had once been a crime to refuse to aid. “Let him go where he will to meet his destiny,” they said; “and, for our part, let us supplicate the gods to pardon us for having cast him out naked and helpless from our midst.”