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                          WONDERFUL ESCAPES.

           [Illustration: Osmond carrying off Duke Richard.]




                           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

[Illustration: They came at last to an opening.]

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