#olmutz

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OLMUTZ / Olmütz / Olomouc / Ołomuniec - CZECH REP.

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OLMUTZ / OLOMOUC / OŁOMUNIEC - CZECH REP.

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“Interview of Gen. La Fayette with his wife & daughters in the prison of Olmutz” Library of Congress collection   

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Do you know if Lafayette was worried about Adrienne being sent to the guillotine? Since he fled all on his own, without her or their family

Incredibly. The trouble was, if he attempted to return to Paris, he would have been arrested and most likely murdered by the angry mobs in the city. The French Revolution, more often than not, was a violent, cycling blame game. There was so much crowd hostility that if Lafayette had been captured by the masses, it is probable that they would have made a quick example of him and his family, executing them in their home, the street, or by a quick trip to the guillotine. By extricating himself from the situation, his family (inadvertently or otherwise)  stood a better chance of survival and escape. It was his intention to meet with Adrienne and the children in London and then to secure passage to the United States. When he was arrested at the border, however, those plans fell to pieces.

I once read a story about Lafayette’s first long-term prison stay before Olmütz. I haven’t verified its authenticity yet, but it is nevertheless a good reflection of what he was likely going through and how dearly he longed to see his family again. The anecdote paints a depressing picture: Lafayette began despairing of ever being freed from confinement. After a year or two of silence from family and friends in both America and France, he began to suspect that no one knew what had become of him (which was accurate; most thought he had either been KIA or had fled to an undisclosed exile). In his mind, it would eventually become apparent to his captors that he had outlived his usefulness and that, one day, they would remove him from the cell, take him out to some ditch, kill him, and bury him in a shallow grave…leaving his family to wonder what had become of him. Fearing he would die without anyone knowing he had been alive, he scratched a note on a piece of wood in his cell. Because he wasn’t convinced that his family was even alive, he wrote a farewell of sorts with promises of love until his dying day. That way, if anyone ever stumbled across the scribbling, they would know what had become of him.

As a final note, when Adrienne and his two daughters arrived at Olmütz, Lafayette was overcome with emotion. No real word on his loved ones’ whereabouts had been sent to him in almost five years. Seeing them alive and well right before his eyes must have been one of the fondest moments of his life.

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Lafayette in Prison at Olmütz, 1795-97 -  Tompkins Harrison Matteson, 1850

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It's a little bit of an odd question, but what exactly Lafayette had to face during his time in prison? Was he tortured? Was he isolated? How bad was it? ( sorry for my english and grammar)

Thank you for your patience, Nony. I’m not feeling well today, so I’ve been sleeping. Your English and grammar are perfectly readable.

Here’s a timeline for Lafayette’s prison stay. The link will give you full details of each stop on his prison journey. For this ask, I’ll answer more in terms of how he suffered as a whole rather than as a step-by-step, date-by-date reference. 

Lafayette endured a variety of trials as a prisoner. 

Isolation: One of the biggest offenders was the lack of contact with the outside world. Lafayette had no idea if his family had been killed, if France had fallen into the sea, if America still cared for him…nothing. He was often placed in tiny cells or solitary confinement. He was certain his guards were waiting to make him ‘disappear’…and he grew so despondent at one point that he found a piece of wood and etched a goodbye to his wife and children in it in the hopes that if he was murdered and tossed in a ditch somewhere, they would find the note and know he had been there.

Ill Health: Little known fact…Lafayette had weak lungs. Being confined in subterranean cells with mold growing on the walls (he wrote about this in a letter once) did little to ease his breathing. Just before being transferred to Olmutz, a fever hit him so badly that his life was feared for. The horrible conditions of prison life eventually led to his friends petitioning to allow him time to walk on the grounds, which was granted after some dismissal. It took him a while to recover from that fever…and the lack of basic necessities didn’t help. Over the course of his stay, he would lose his hair due to sickness and malnutrition, and he became so emaciated that Adrienne was frightened when she first saw him.

Wounded: So…a guard almost bit Lafayette’s finger off during an escape attempt. In the scuffle he was roughed up and–yeah–somehow the guard decided the best way to stop him was to bite him? Strange, but true. 

No Basics: At first, Laf was allowed a few things: books, blankets, etc. But after he was moved from his first jail, all of that was largely confiscated. He managed to write a few letters while ‘doing time,’ but they had to be scribbled on parchment with a toothpick and at one point, he resorted to writing in his own blood. In Olmutz, he had no bed or linen, just a pile of straw. There was no place to relieve himself so…yeah. He basically would’ve had to designate a corner of the cell. Bathing wasn’t permitted either.

Silence: No one was allowed to talk in Olmutz. The prisoners were stripped of names and were given numbers. I’m fairly certain Lafayette’s number was State Criminal Number 2…but don’t quote me on that. I can’t seem to find the reference. At any rate, the silence had to have been unbearable. Occasionally, his secretary (who was imprisoned with him for a time) would try to hum to him a song that meant he had news…but the guy almost always got caught and punished. 

Chains: Like in the old movies, Laf was bound after his escape attempt. They put irons on him, including his feet, and fastened a chain around his waist that prohibited him from turning side-to-side. This really did a number on him, as he was already hurting from the injuries he’d received from the affair.

Mental Anxiety: I’ll let Laf tell you:  ‘He was in a feeble state, overcome by fatigue, and suffering greatly from the bruises and wounds received in his late attempt to escape. “His anxieties, his anguish (and despair we may almost say,) at finding himself again in the power of his unrelenting jailor, so affected his nerves, that his fever returned with increased and alarming violence. In this state he was allowed nothing but a little damp and mouldy straw…..No light was admitted into his cell; and he was refused even the smallest allowance of linen. The winter of 1794-95 was very severe, but his inhuman jailors did not relax from the rigour of prescribed and systematic oppression. It seemed, indeed as if their object was to put an end to their victim’s existence by this ingenious device of incessant cruelty. Worn down by disease and the rigour of the season, his hair fell from his head, and he was emaciated to the last degree. To these physical distresses were soon super added those mental anxieties, which perhaps, were still more difficult to endure. The only information he could obtain respecting the fate of his wife and children, for whom he felt the greatest solicitude, was, that they were confided in the prisons of Paris: and in reply to his enquiries concerning his most generous friends, Bollman and Huger, he was informed by his unfeeling tormentors that they were soon to perish by the hands of the hangman.’

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Worn down by disease and the rigour of the season, his hair fell from his head, and he was emaciated to the last degree.

Marquis de Lafayette, Memoirs of General Lafayette. {During his Olmutz captivity in Austria, Lafayette’s jailers subjected him to starvation and torture.}

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OLMUTZ / OLOMOUC -> CZECH REP.