What Fleury Went to Do at Mazas

During the same night towards four o’clock the approaches of the Northern Railway Station were silently invested by two regiments; one of Chasseurs de Vincennes, the other of Gendarmerie Mobile. Numerous squads of sergents de ville installed themselves in the terminus. The station-master was ordered to prepare a special train and to have an engine ready. A certain number of stokers and engineers for night service were retained. No explanation however was vouchsafed to any one, and absolute secrecy was maintained. A little before six o’clock a movement was apparent in the troops. Some sergents de ville came running up, and a few minutes afterwards a squadron of Lancers emerged at a sharp trot from the Rue du Nord. In the centre of the squadron and between the two lines of horse-soldiers could be seen two police-vans drawn by post-horses, behind each vehicle came a little open barouche, in which there sat one man. At the head of the Lancers galloped the aide-de-camp Fleury.

The procession entered the courtyard, then the railway station, and the gates and doors were reclosed.

The two men in the barouches made themselves known to the Special Commissary of the station, to whom the aide-de-camp Fleury spoke privately. This mysterious convoy excited the curiosity of the railway officials; they questioned the policemen, but these knew nothing. All that they could tell was that these police-vans contained eight places, that in each van there were four prisoners, each occupying a cell, and that the four other cells were filled by four sergents de ville placed between the prisoners so as to prevent any communication between the cells.

After various consultations between the aide-de-camp of the Elysée and the men of the Prefect Maupas, the two police-vans were placed on railway trucks, each having behind it the open barouche like a wheeled sentry-box, where a police agent acted as sentinel. The engine was ready, the trucks were attached to the tender, and the train started. It was still pitch dark.

For a long time the train sped on in the most profound silence. Meanwhile it was freezing, in the second of the two police-vans, the sergents de ville, cramped and chilled, opened their cells, and in order to warm and stretch themselves walked up and down the narrow gangway which runs from end to end of the police-vans. Day had broken, the four sergents de ville inhaled the outside air and gazed at the passing country through a species of port-hole which borders each side of the ceiling of the passage. Suddenly a loud voice issued from one of the cells which had remained closed, and cried out, “Hey! there! it is very cold, cannot I relight my cigar here?”

Another voice immediately issued from a second cell, and said, “What! it is you? Good-morning, Lamoricière!”

“Good-morning, Cavaignac!” replied the first voice.

General Cavaignac and General Lamoricière had just recognized each other.

A third voice was raised from a third cell. “Ah! you are there, gentlemen. Good-morning and a pleasant journey.”

He who spoke then was General Changarnier.

“Generals?” cried out a fourth voice. “I am one of you!”

The three generals recognized M. Baze. A burst of laughter came from the four cells simultaneously.

This police-van in truth contained, and was carrying away from Paris, the Questor Baze, and the Generals Lamoricière, Cavaignac, and Changarnier. In the other vehicle, which was placed foremost on the trucks, there were Colonel Charras, Generals Bedeau and Le Fl?, and Count Roger (du Nord).

At midnight these eight Representative prisoners were sleeping in their cells at Mazas, when they heard a sudden knocking at their doors, and a voice cried out to them, “Dress, they are coming to fetch you.” “Is it to shoot us?” cried Charras from the other side of the door. They did not answer him. It is worth remarking that this idea came simultaneously to all. And in truth, if we can believe what has since transpired through the quarrels of accomplices, it appears that in the event of a sudden attack being made by us upon Mazas to deliver them, a fusillade had been resolved upon, and that St. Arnaud had in his pocket the written order, signed “Louis Bonaparte.”

The prisoners got up. Already on the preceding night a similar notice had been given to them. They had passed the night on their feet, and at six o’clock in the morning the jailer said to them, “You can go to bed.” The hours passed by; they ended by thinking it would be the same as the preceding night, and many of them, hearing five o’clock strike from the clock tower inside the prison, were going to get back into bed, when the doors of their cells were opened. All the eight were taken downstairs one by one into the clerk’s office in the Rotunda, and were then ushered into the police-van without having met or seen each other during the passage. A man dressed in black, with an impertinent bearing, seated at a table with pen in hand, stopped them on their way, and asked their names. “I am no more disposed to tell you my name than I am curious to learn yours,” answered General Lamoricière, and he passed outside.

The aide-de-camp Fleury, concealing his uniform under his hooded cloak, stationed himself in the clerk’s office. He was charged, to use his own words, to “embark” them, and to go and report their “embarkation” at the Elysée. The aide-de-camp Fleury had passed nearly the whole of his military career in Africa in General Lamoricière’s division; and it was General Lamoricière who in 1848, then being Minister of War, had promoted him to the rank of major. While passing through the clerk’s office, General Lamoricière looked fixedly at him.

When they entered the police-vans the generals were smoking cigars. They took them from them. General Lamoricière had kept his. A voice from outside cried three separate times, “Stop his smoking!” A sergent de ville who was standing by the door of the cell hesitated for some time, but however ended by saying to the general, “Throw away your cigar.”

Thence later on ensued the exclamation which caused General Cavaignac to recognize General Lamoricière. The vehicles having been loaded they set off.

They did not know either with whom they were or where they were going. Each observed for himself in his box the turnings of the streets, and tried to speculate. Some believed that they were being taken to the Northern Railway Station; others thought to the Havre Railway Station. They heard the trot of the escort on the paving-stones.

On the railway the discomfort of the cells greatly increased. General Lamoricière, encumbered with a parcel and a cloak, was still more jammed in than the others. He could not move, the cold seized him, and he ended by the exclamation which put all four of them in communication with each other.

On hearing the names of the prisoners their keepers, who up to that time had been rough, became respectful. “I say there,” said General Changarnier, “open our cells, an............