search of Lafayette and Bollman. They were taken in the course of the
evening, at the distance of about ten miles from Olmutz, and conveyed back
to the prison, where a most rigorous confinement awaited them. Lafayette
was put in irons, and suffered the most excruciating torture. 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; irons were put round his feet,
and round his waist was a chain, fastened to the wall, which barely
permitted him to turn from one side to the other. 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."

Bollman and Huger were kept in close confinement in the prison at Olmutz,
for some time, for having attempted to rescue Lafayette from his cruel