The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks (6 page)

Maria’s heart must have leaped into her mouth when one of the soldiers jokingly asked, “How come it’s so heavy? Is there an Arminian in it?” but she kept her cool, and said, “No, only Arminian books.” The chest was carried down from the apartment to a boat, where Elyse accompanied it down the river to Gorcum. Maria meanwhile stayed in the apartment, and lit a lamp in the same way her husband always did to aid with his studies. When the governor arrived back later in the day, he looked up at de Groot’s cell window, and came to the obvious conclusion. It was only the next day that the deception was discovered.

By this time de Groot was far away. The trip down the river had been perilous, and the fugitive had had great difficulty keeping quiet during the journey. Elyse persuaded the skipper and his son to carry the chest to their destination, rather than placing it on a sledge, and she demonstrated a similar quickness of mind to her mistress when the son commented that he believed there was something alive within the chest. “Books have life and spirit too,” she said, and the boy said no more.

The chest was delivered to the house of Jacob Daatzelaar, one of de Groot’s Arminian friends. Elyse immediately told him what – or rather who – was inside, but Daatzelaar refused to have anything to do with the escapee. His wife was made of sterner stuff, and sent her servants away so they wouldn’t see de Groot. She then released the prisoner from his chest, and gave him a rule and trowel so he could disguise himself as a mason. De Groot then was able to accompany her brother, another mason, through the streets to a boat, which began his odyssey to Antwerp and then Paris, where he waited for his wife.

The governor was understandably angry with Maria’s actions, and she was kept prisoner at Loevenstein for a fortnight until the order was sent for her release. Her ingenuity, tenderness and courage were recognized. The pair were reunited in France, after de Groot agreed not to return to the Netherlands. De Groot died in 1645 after being involved in a shipwreck from which he did not recover.

De Groot wasn’t the only Dutchman of the period to be assisted in an escape from prison by his wife’s actions. Six months after the flight from Loevenstein, Dominicus Sapma, another Arminian minister, was being held in jail in Amsterdam. His wife had applied to be allowed to visit him, since he wasn’t committed for any “villainous action”, but only because of his religious beliefs. Both she and his sister were given permission.

On 22 September, Sapma’s wife and sister visited the jail around 4 p.m., following the detailed requests he had given them. His wife had a scarf wrapped around her cheek, as if she had terrible toothache. As the gate-bell rang to mark the end of visiting, Sapma put on her clothes, transferred her wedding ring to his hand, and used the scarf to cover his cheek. He then put on his wife’s veil and walked out, accompanied by his sister. His wife remained behind, expecting any minute to hear the alarm being raised by the keeper’s wife, an old, cunning woman whom her husband regarded as the greatest danger to the plan.

In fact, it was this woman who let Sapma out of the prison and she even said something comforting to him, when she saw that “she” was crying. Sapma’s sister quickly replied on his behalf that she could not speak because of both grief and toothache. Even though they were through the gate, they weren’t safe – Sapma was too tall for the woman’s dress he was wearing, and had to go through the streets bent over so the height disparity wouldn’t be obvious. However, they arrived at their hiding place without discovery.

When the deception was uncovered, the magistrates were extremely unhappy, and initially refused to release Sapma’s wife. It probably didn’t help that her first petition said that he had escaped “by the blessing of God” nor that her second claimed that she didn’t think she had “transgressed their Worships’ orders”. The latter was torn to pieces when it was read. A full week later, the court of Burgomasters and Schepens ordered her release.

The delay in releasing her may have been connected to another escape by one of the Arminians, Vezekius; he had taken advantage of the decision by a court in Haarlem to allow his wife and children to visit him and for them all to wander around the prison, where he found an old rusty key. To his amazement, it fit the lock of the prison gate, and he duly let himself out and took shelter in a family friend’s house. His wife ended up in the workhouse in her husband’s place for five days, and was only released when their maid had a serious accident and was unable to bring the youngest child into the workhouse to be suckled.

In fact, there was almost an epidemic of prison breaks by members of the Arminian movement. From 1619, ministers Johann Grevius and Prins were held at the workhouse in Amsterdam under a strict regime. Their families weren’t allowed to visit, candles were withdrawn so they couldn’t read in the evenings and after they made a slight complaint, the fires weren’t lit. However, around the middle of June 1621, conditions improved for a short time, and Dominicus Sapma was involved with planning an abortive break out using ladders to ascend the walls. When Sapma himself was arrested, the plans were put on hold in case he was sent to the same workhouse; however the day after Sapma had used his wife’s clothes to escape from the jail to which he had been consigned, some of the Arminians tried again, and only narrowly escaped without being discovered.

Nothing further happened until the summer of 1622, when word came that Grevius and Prins were going to be moved to Loevenstein Castle. Sapma knew that any rescue attempt had to be tried before that took place and on the night of 12 June, ladders dyed black were placed against the high walls of the workhouse. A group of men then ascended to the top of the wall, and let rope ladders down the far side into the inner courtyard. It didn’t help that the local dogs were roused by the noise of the men bringing the ladders and the rest of their gear to the prison walls, and it was quite surprising that no one within was woken to raise the alarm.

As the first group were rappelling down the ladders as quickly as they could to get to the rooms where the prisoners were sleeping, and a second group was sitting on the roof, a local man came storming out of his house, his sword drawn, to attack the men who were waiting at the base of the ladders. He tried to raise the alarm, claiming that the men were thieves who were trying to steal the money from the almshouses, next door to the workhouse. The conspirators tried their best to shut him up, and in the end told him the truth – they were helping the Arminian ministers to escape. According to the contemporary report, “the man stood as if he had been thunder-struck, left off crying, looked a little at the work, and then wishing them good success, but in such foul language as the mob are used to utter, retired into his house.” As if that weren’t enough, one of the criminals inside the workhouse heard the noise of the escape attempt, and cried out, “The Arminians are getting out!” Luckily the guards at the workhouse were used to hearing him scream odd things at different times and ignored him.

By this point, the raiding party had reached the cell doors, and used copy keys that they had previously been able to make to open the two locks. Grevius and Prins were quickly assisted to ascend the rope ladders, and go down the other side. Three other prisoners joined in the escape, with all of them getting clean away. The next morning authorities were baffled when they found the empty cells. The locks were still fastened: how could the men have disappeared? It was only when two of the ladders were found outside the prison that all became clear.

Many of the Arminians went into exile until the death of their prime persecutor, Prince Maurice of Orange in 1625; they were formally allowed to reside in all parts of the Republic from 1630. Their propensity for escape has, with the exception of Hugo de Groot, been mostly forgotten over the years!

Sources:

Davies, Charles Maurice:
History of Holland from the Beginning of the Tenth to the End of the Eighteenth Century
(Parker, 1842)

Murray, John:
A hand-book for travellers on the continent
(John Murray, 5th edition, 1845)

Brandt, Gerard:
The history of the Reformation and their Ecclesiastical Transactions in and about the Low Countries
(John Nicks, 1723)

Slot Loevenstein website:
www.slotloevestein.nl/
(History/Hugo Grotius pages)

Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, 1985: “Grotius and the Socioeconomic Development of the United Provinces around 1600”

European Journal of International Law, 2003: “Rebels with a Cause? Terrorists and Humanitarian Law”

It doesn’t matter what your station in life is: you can be a king or a commoner, a dictator or a peasant. There’s a chance that at some point, you may be locked up. And if you are – particularly if you feel that you have been locked up unfairly, perhaps while your country is being left to the devices of those you feel are your inferiors, and even common decency is being ignored – then you will want to escape. The nephew of Emperor Napoleon I, Louis-Napoleon, later known as Napoleon III, felt that way when he was imprisoned at the Castle of Ham in 1840; he had tried to restore the Bonaparte succession on two separate occasions, and failed each time.

After the final fall of his uncle in 1815, Louis-Napoleon’s parents had been removed from their positions as rulers of Holland, and the young Louis was raised in Switzerland and Germany. In 1830, Louis-Philippe had established the July Monarchy in France, and his opponents, including the Bona-partists, saw Louis-Napoleon as a potential rallying point since he was the legitimate heir within his generation, following the death of Louis’ cousin, the Duke of Reichstadt. (His other uncle, Joseph, was the next in line, but lived in America between 1817 and 1832.) In 1836, Louis-Napoleon tried to stage a Bonapartist coup in Strasbourg, but the soldiers arrested him rather than follow him. Louis returned to voluntary exile in Switzerland, but when his presence there became an embarrassment to the government, Louis chose to leave, and moved to Royal Leamington Spa in Britain. He bided his time there for two years, before trying another coup, this time in Boulogne in August 1840. This too failed to ignite popular support, and this time the French establishment decided to keep him where they could see him – in moderately luxurious quarters (certainly compared with the average prison cell) at a fortress in the town of Ham, part of the Somme region of northern France.

The Château had been originally built in the thirteenth century, but it was heavily fortified during the fifteenth, and proved to be an excellent holding place for the would-be Emperor. Its moat, high walls and heavy guard were a serious deterrent, particularly when seen from the inside. If Louis went for a walk, even if it was only on the ramparts, then he was accompanied. Warders were stationed at each door and on the stairs to make sure that he was always in sight. Ironically, some of the soldiers sent to guard him were from the two regiments that he had tried to use in his coups in 1836 and 1840, from Strasbourg and Boulogne respectively.

Resigned to his situation, at least initially, Louis-Napoleon spent much of his time writing pamphlets and essays, a few of which discussed his claim to the throne of France, as well as setting out some of the principles by which he would govern. Otherwise he would spend his time cultivating flowers, or playing games of whist with the commandant, General Montholon, and fellow prisoner Dr Conneau.

In 1844, his uncle Joseph died, leaving just Louis-Napoleon’s own father, Louis, between him and the throne – if he were ever to gain it back. There were rumours around the same time of a general amnesty for political prisoners, but Louis did not want to exchange his jail cell for a life of exile. The possibility of travelling to Central America to oversee the building of a canal in Nicaragua was mooted. At the start of 1846, he asked if he could be permitted to visit his father, who was dying in Florence, Italy, but was told that it would only be feasible if he acknowledged his debt to King Louis-Philippe for allowing this. Louis-Napoleon refused to kowtow in this way, and decided that the only way that he would be released to see his father was if he escaped.

Once he’d made that decision, the first thing Louis-Napoleon needed to do was persuade the Commandant that he was waiting for an amnesty, so couldn’t possibly be thinking of planning an escape. By dropping hints in their conversations, he was able to make the Commandant believe that an amnesty was likely to happen in June. At the same time, he decided that the best plan of escape was to arrange for some workmen to come to the fortress, and then disguise himself as one of them, walking out under the noses of the guards.

Even though Commandant Montholon was pretty sure that no escape plan was under way, he didn’t relax his vigilance over his charges, and most of the soldiers under his command thought his precautions were ridiculous. During the night, the guard was doubled; during the day, two guards were stationed at the foot of the staircase leading to Louis’ rooms. However, one of these guards disappeared each day for a quarter of an hour to fetch the newspapers. This brief space would be the only chance that Louis would have.

Luck was on the future Emperor’s side. As Louis was trying to think of a way to organize this, the Commandant informed him that, at long last, permission had been given for repairs to be carried out to the part of the fortress in which Louis was housed. For eight days, Louis-Napoleon carefully monitored their movements, and the way that the guards watched them.

Montholon was taking no chances with the workmen: they normally came in and went out together. On their entrance, they walked in single file past two guards, and the same procedure was followed on their exit in the evening. If they had to work separately within the fortress, each was carefully watched, but, as Louis realized to his delight, if they had to go back out to collect items, then the scrutiny was more lax. The direct road from the fortress to the town was clearly visible from the walls of the fortress, so were they to do anything unusual, there would be plenty of time to spot it. It was this minor chink in the armour that Louis decided to exploit.