Noumea

Escape From

A Memory of De Rochefort

By A. G. Miller

SIXTY-NINE years ago, Paris was the scene of a Communist nutsch.

Napoleon 111 surrendered to the Prus sians at Sedan, his lovely Empress fled to England, and the French canital en dured a terrible siege. The Commune fol lowed. Street orators, idealists, anarchists, and cranks seized power.

Among the members of the “National Government” was a lean, quick-tempered journalist named Victor Henri Marquis

de Rochefort. Editor of the Left Wing La Lanterne”, he had been released from gaol by the revolution.

The Versailles Government decided to conquer Paris. While the Prussian Army looked on, Federal batteries shelled the City of Light, Frenchman fought French man on the barricades. Defiant Reds scattered oil and started huge fires, be fore facing execution squads. Prisons and hulks were soon crammed with a weird assortment of prisoners—looters, Apaches Reds, scallywags and honest citizens who were unlucky enough to be caught on the wrong side of the barricades.

De Rochefort, who had fallen out with his colleagues, had left the city, but was arrested at Meaux. A political firebrand, the Marquis was the type who is always “agin the Government’’. A military court ordered his transportation to New Cale donia, along with 3,000 other stormy petrels.

“La Nouvelle” had a sinister reputation.

There were cannibals in its wild ranges, convicts died swiftly in the road-gangs, sharks cruised beyond the reefs. To a Parisian man-of-letters, exile on this re mote island appeared worse than death.

After a long imprisonment, de Roche fort sailed from Brest in August, 1873.

The “Virginie’s” 140 prisoners included four women. One was the notorious Louise Michel, another a West Indian mulatto, “la grosse Victorine”. The old frigate was a slow sailer, quarters were cramped, yet the Marquis seemed annoyed that he was not wearing chains.

In early December, the prison-ship reached Noumea. As his sentence was “life imprisonment in a fortified place”, Henri de Rochefort was confined on Ducos Peninsula, across the bay.

Here political exiles lived in huts, did no work, and suffered mainly from mosquitoes and boredom. Hoping to escape, the Marquis taught his friends to swim.

Hardy convicts had reached Queensland in open boats, but these Parisians knew nothing of navigation and seamanship.

However, Bastien Grandthille, ex-Com mander of the National Guard, was a ticket-of-leave exile, and could wander around Noumea’s dusty water-front. One day the barque “P’.C.E.” arrived from Newcastle. While her cargo of coal was being unloaded, Grandthille had a long talk with Captain Law. £6O changed hands.

TOWARDS sunset on March 19, 1874, de Rochefort, Grousset and Pain slipped away from their hut and swam to a small rock. A severe thunderstorm kept guards under shelter, and presently a rowing boat appeared. At sunrise, six Frenchmen lay hidden in the barque’s grimy hold.

Law had planned to get under way at dawn, but the wind dropped to a dead calm. “P.C.E.” stood for “Peace, Comfort, Ease”, none of which were shared by his nervous passengers, who waited anxiously for the boom of a signal gun, the warn ing to close the port and search all ship ping. A steam gun-boat “La Vire”, lay in the stream. Captain Law kept his telescope swinging between this warship and Fort Constantine.

Towards noon, a light southerly breeze sprang up. Law weighed anchor at once, but the pilot refused to take the barque down the usual channel past Debrun Is land: if the wind failed, the “P.C.E.” would drift on to the coral reefs. They compromised on the little-used passage between He Nou and the prison camp on Ducos Peninsula. Slowly the ship moved away from the anchorage. The escapees were lucky; the breeze held, and a much relieved captain shook hands ’ with the pilot at Amedee lighthouse.

Seaman Pugh was startled to see six coal-stained strangers emerge from the

hold. One of them was an architect, Achille Balliere, who had spent ten months in New Caledonia. Obliged to re port once a month to the police, he was free to wander anywhere within fifteen miles of the town. Balliere killed time by drawing plans for a theatre and a pri vate residence, both of which he sent to the Intercolonial Exhibition at Sydney.

Like the Marquis and Mr. Pugh, he wrote of his experiences in the South Seas, and all three books found their way into the Mitchell Library, Sydney.

Eight days later, the 291-ton vessel entered the Hunter River, N.S.W. The citizens of Newcastle were mildly excited when the news spread that Captain Law had brought some French Communards with him. Landing was a simple matter.

There were no fearsome dictation tests in the ’seventies, no passport regulations, and no awkward questions asked. A customs officer merely inquired whether these passengers owed the master any money. Actually, de Rochefort had promised Law a further 8,500 francs (£340), and half the party remained be hind while th° Marquis raised a loan in Sydney. Seaman Pugh and his mates re ceived a bonus of £4/10/- from the “P.C.E.'s” generous skipper.

SOME newspapers suggested that the French authorities had condoned this mass escape. The refugees were most annoyed by this attitude. Balliere claimed that Governor de la Richerie was recalled, several high officials dismissed, and new regulations strictly enforced.

Still, it does seem strange that such im portant prisoners were not missed at the morning roll-call. With 800 exiles at Ducos camp, the gendarmes were lax in failing to search every departing vessel.

Inquisitive Sydney folk stood patiently outside Courvoisier’s Hotel, eager to gape at these “celebrated characters”, as the “Sydney Morning Herald” cautiously termed them.

The French Consul, M. Simon, was angry because many people looked on de Rochefort and his companions as politi cal martyrs, and even invited them to dinners and picnics. The Marquis sat quietly in the Stranger’s Gallery at Parlia ment House. He knew very little English at the time, and his arch-enemies, Thiers and MacMahon, were far away in Paris.

M. Simon was thankful when these embarrassing visitors left for Europe. De Rochefort hobnobbed with Royalty at Honolulu. He saw Niagara, and probably he felt much better after scribbling in a visitor’s book; “This fall is profound, but my own is far greater—The Shadow of Napoleon III”.

An amnesty, in 1880, brought France’s most spectacular political figure back to Paris. The Marquis hated the Third Re public almost as much as he detested the Second Empire.

For participating in General Boulanger’s abortive coup, he was expelled from France for a time.

The years did not mellow Henri de Rochefort. He revelled in the Panama Scandals and the Dreyfus Affair, and he outlived most of his bitter enemies. He died in June, 1913, at the ripe age of 82.