After taking every necessary precaution for the safety of his army, La Fayette and his three friends, Messieurs Latour-Maubourg, Bureaux de Pusy, and Alexandre Lameth, with a little party of twenty-three exiles, departed from France and turned their faces towards the Netherlands. Reaching Rochefort, La Fayette and his friends endeavored to obtain passports. But La Fayette was quickly recognized, and the commandant instantly despatched a messenger to the Austrian general at Namur, with the startling intelligence that he held in safe-keeping the illustrious La Fayette, one of the bravest generals of France. The Austrian general, Moitelle, could scarcely credit this astounding piece of good fortune. “What!” exclaimed he, “La Fayette? _La Fayette?_” Turning to one officer, he cried, “Run instantly and inform the Duke of Bourbon of it”; to another the order was given, “Set out this moment and carry this news to his Royal Highness at Brussels”; and sending others here and there to spread the wonderful intelligence: before many hours the news had been despatched to half the princes and generals in Europe, that the illustrious La Fayette was a captive in the hands of the allies. The prisoners were conducted to Namur, then to Nivelles, and afterwards to Luxembourg, where an attempt was made to assassinate La Fayette by some of the French refugees. The Austrians finally decided that La Fayette and his three companions should be given over into the power of the Prussians. The captives were accordingly closely guarded and hurried to Wessel. Here they were separated and thrown into different cells. The many shameful indignities which they suffered and the hardships of their cruel prison life soon prostrated La Fayette, and he became dangerously ill, and for a time his life was despaired of. No mitigation of his confinement was, however, allowed him. Once the king of Prussia offered him aid if he would assist in the plans forming against France. La Fayette received this base message with indignant scorn, and bade the officer return and inform his master “that he was still _La Fayette_.” The king, foiled in his attempt to weaken the stanch loyalty of the heroic marquis, who would not swerve one hair‘s-breadth from his conscientious principles, even for the longed-for boon of liberty, determined to wreak his mortified pride by inflicting further cruelties upon the helpless captives, whom, though he could not bribe to dishonor, he might still torture to death.