United States or Mozambique ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There was talk among Napoleon's suite, which now included Montholon, Las Cases, and Lallemand, of attempting flight from the Gironde, or in the hold of a small Danish sloop then at Rochefort, or on two fishing boats moored to the north of L'Ile de Ré; but these plans were given up in consequence of the close watch kept by our cruisers at all points.
This has determined me to send for my horses and carriages, which I left at Milan. Bernadotte wrote to Bonaparte on the 24th Fructidor as follows: The arrested deputies are removed to Rochefort, where they will be embarked for the island of Madagascar. Paris is tranquil. The people at first heard of the arrest of the deputies with indifference.
On the occasion of Noir's funeral my father and myself were in the Champs Elysees when the tumultuous revolutionary procession, in which Rochefort figured conspicuously, swept down the famous avenue along which the victorious Germans were to march little more than a year afterwards. Near the Rond-point the cortege was broken up and scattered by the police, whose violence was extreme.
"The Marechale de Rochefort," I replied, without taking any fright, "is aged, and almost always sick; a lady of honour having her appearance will make a contrast with her office. As to the other, she still has beauty and elegance; but do you imagine, Sire, that the Court of Bavaria and the Court of France have forgotten, in so short a time, the pleasant and burlesque name of the poet Scarron?"
"There's Mary Rochefort," she answered, "and there's Robert Pollen, who's supposed to be the most alluring man alive." "Is it doing him any good?" "Well " Mrs. Ennis looked up with a laugh. "You don't like him? Or perhaps you do?" Mrs. Ennis knit her brows in thought, her blue eyes dark with conjecture. "I don't know," she said at length. "Sometimes I think I do, and sometimes I think I don't.
He slept at Rambouillet on the 29th of June, on the 30th at Tours, on the 1st of July he arrived at Niort, and on the 3d reached Rochefort, on the western coast of France, with the intention of escaping to America; but the whole western seaboard was so vigilantly watched by British men-of-war that, after various plans and devices, he was obliged to abandon the attempt in despair.
His chase to the West Indies was a masterpiece of prescience which saved the British possessions, and, but for the clumsy intelligence he received, the French would have been a hammered wreck and the projected ruse to combine it with the Rochefort squadron off Ireland blown sky-high.
In his original intention the execution of the main effort was intrusted to Latouche Tréville, by far and away the best admiral he had. Upon his death, the Toulon fleet was committed to Villeneuve. Its sailing was to take place as nearly as possible at the same time as that of the Rochefort division.
Captain Maitland denied that any snare was laid for Bonaparte, either by himself or by the English Government, and stated that the precautions for preventing the escape of Napoleon from Rochefort were so well ordered that it was impossible to evade them; and that the fugitive was compelled to surrender himself to the English ship.
Trochu had become its President, and Jules Favre its Vice-President and Minister for Foreign Affairs. Henri Rochefort, released that afternoon by his admirers from the prison of Sainte Pelagie, was included in the administration, this being in the main composed of the deputies for Paris. Only one of the latter, the cautious Thiers, refused to join it.
Word Of The Day