TRIAL OF COLONEL VILLETTE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 156, 3 December 1874, Page 3

TRIAL OF COLONEL VILLETTE.

\ From the Spectator.'] The trial of Colonel Yillette and others concerned in M. Bazaine’s escape has concluded. The Governor of the prison is acquitted ; Colonel Yillette, M. Bull (Madame Bazaine’s cousin, who did not appear), and Plantin, Doineau, Gigoux, three of the prison officials, are convicted. Yillette, Bull, and Plantin are sentenced to sis months’ imprisonment. It is most distinctly stated by the Governor that Bazaine gave his word of honour not to attempt to escape, and that Vilette also engaged his parole to the same effect. It seems improbable that Colonel Yillette would have been allowed to remain in such close and constant attendance on

Bazaine, yet in frequent communication with the outer world, without at least some such guarantee, and the fact that Yillettedeclared on the trial that he knew nothing whatever of the escape until after it had been effected implies, at least, that he could not deny his being bound not to abet it. The Governor’s version of Bazaine’s words is. “You ask for my parole? I give it you a hundred times;” and this evidently influenced the Court’s estimate of the Governor’s conduct. He declared that his instructions were to treat his prisoner with great consideration, also with every vigilance, and to ask from him a pledge not to escape. A gaoler who is told by the Government of one Marshal of France to take the paro’e of his prisoner, who was also a Mai’shal until yesterday, is not in a position to exercise the same scrupulous vigilance that is proper when it is the case of a pick-pocket. On the other hand, it was not, wo think, alleged by the French Government at the time of Bazaine’s escape that they regarded him as a prisoner upon parole.