The Escape of Marshal Bazaine – Trial of Col.Villette and his Accomplices

Marshal Bazaine was sentenced to death by the government of the Third Republic following the war, his sentence was commuted to 20 years imprisonment in exile, from which he subsequently escaped.

MacMahon, who was a fellow Foreign Legion Officer and had served in many campaigns alongside Bazaine, was visibly disgusted when he received the news of the Court’s decision and was incensed by their attempt to pass responsibility to him. The government wanted to banish Bazaine for life; MacMahon first proposed life imprisonment, though he softened and commuted the punishment of death to twenty years’ imprisonment and remitted the disgrace of the formalities of a military degradation. Bazaine wrote to thank his fellow legionnaire, though he added, tongue in cheek, that he might have let his feelings run away with him. It was an academic concession for a man nearing sixty-three. Bazaine was incarcerated on the Île Sainte-Marguerite and treated rather as an exile than as a convict. During the night of 10 August 1874, using parcel rope supplied by Angelo Hayter, (son of the Court Painter Sir George Hayter) and baggage straps which he knotted into a rope, the 63-year-old Marshal attached one end to his body and tied the other end to a gargoyle and climbed down the 300 foot cliffs to a boat which his wife had brought out from Cannes. They sailed to Genoa in Italy, and from there Bazaine came to London with his young family where he stayed for a time with his Hayter relations.

From the original edition of The Graphic.