Flashman's Christmas by Robert Brightwell

Author:Robert Brightwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical, paris, napoleonic, prison escape, real history, flashman, louis xviii, fouche, sir robert wilson
Publisher: Robert Brightwell

Chapter 6

Over the next few days I spent time with Wilson, Jemima and their family as we celebrated Christmas together. While we exchanged gifts, nothing gave me greater pleasure than watching the court and its officials react to events. You cannot begin to imagine the chaos one man’s escape created in Paris. To convict him, the royalists had described a vast network of Bonapartist agents plotting the emperor’s return, with Lavalette at its centre. That this ‘mastermind’ had escaped on the eve of his execution only served to prove their propaganda. Many were convinced that another coup was imminent, which could only be stopped by recovering the prisoner.

The ambitious Duke of Richelieu took the lead. He ordered that thousands of posters with Lavalette’s image and offers of reward be displayed all over the city, along with dire warning of prosecution for anyone who assisted him. For those who could not read, news sheet vendors down every boulevard yelled of the escape, as well as of the bounty and punishments. Lavalette told me later that he could hear them from his hiding place. As a result, hundreds of bald men were seized and arrested until their identities could be confirmed. All roads out of Paris were blocked and every vehicle was searched for the fugitive. Dozens of wild rumours spread across the city. Some even claimed that Ney had not been executed and a criminal shot in his place. Others insisted that the Royal Navy was sending its Mediterranean fleet to St Helena, to stop a Bonapartist flotilla determined to spring the emperor from his new home.

No one would believe it was simply the act of a desperate wife. Emilie Lavalette found herself trapped in her husband’s cell, undergoing endless interrogations. The jailors, having learned from their previous mistake, did not allow any visitors, even her daughter, and so we knew very little of her fragile state of mind. Yet every day she was questioned must have brought a small smile to her lips, for it confirmed that her husband was still at large.

The Lavalette home was ransacked in a search for its owner. The Ney residence was searched again as was the one owned by the sister of the princess, where she was staying. Anyone with even the slightest association with the Bonapartists was now under suspicion. I was not surprised, then, when a few days after the escape, I found four policemen at my door. They were polite but insistent that they search my rooms as I had been a witness for the defence at Ney’s trial. De Briqueville, Baudus and all the conspirators had their properties searched, but of course they found nothing.

After a week had passed with no sign of the fugitive, the authorities became even more desperate. Richelieu had vowed that Lavalette must be taken alive and that he would personally witness the treacherous villain’s execution. Companies of the National Guard began street searches, going from house to house, disturbing the festive celebrations. If anything, all they succeeded in doing was generating more resentment of the royalists.

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