Dumfries
The first detachment of officer-prisoners arrived at Dumfries in November 1811, from Peebles, whence they had marched the thirty-two miles to Moffat, and had driven from there. The agent at Dumfries was Mr. Francis Shortt, Town Clerk of the Burgh, and brother of Dr. Thomas Shortt, who, as Physician to the British Forces at St. Helena, was to assist, ten years later, at the post-mortem examination of Bonaparte.
At first the prices asked by the inhabitants for lodgings somewhat astonished the prisoners, being from fifteen to twenty-five shillings a week, but in the end they were moderately accommodated and better than in Peebles. Their impressions of Dumfries were certainly favourable, for not only had they in Mr. Shortt a just and kindly Agent, but the townsfolk and the country gentry offered them every sort of hospitality. In a letter to Mr. Chambers of Peebles, one of them says: ‘The inhabitants, I think, are frightened with Frenchmen, and run after us to see if we are like other people; the town is pretty enough, and the inhabitants, though curious, seem very gentle.’
Another, after a visit to the theatre, writes in English:
‘I have been to the theatre of the town, and I was very satisfied with the actors; they are very good for a little town like Dumfries, where receipts are not very copious, though I would have very much pleasure with going to the play-house now and then. However, I am deprived of it by the bell which rings at five o’clock, and if I am not in my lodging by the hour appointed by the law, I must at least avoid to be in the public meeting, at which some inhabitants don’t like to see me.’
It was long before the natives could get used to certain peculiarities in the Frenchmen’s diet, particularly frogs. A noted Dumfries character, George Hair, who died a few years ago, used to declare that ‘the first siller he ever earned was for gatherin’ paddocks for the Frenchmen’, and an aged inmate of Lanark Poorhouse, who passed his early boyhood at Dumfries, used to tell a funny frog story. He remembered that fifteen or sixteen prisoners used to live together in a big house, not far from his father’s, and that there was a meadow near at hand where they got great store of frogs. Once there was a Crispin procession at Dumfries, and a Mr. Renwick towered above all the others as King.
‘The Crispin ploy, ye ken, cam frae France, an’ the officers in the big hoose askit the King o’ the cobblers tae dine wi’ them. They had a gran’ spread wi’ a fine pie, that Maister Renwick thocht was made o’ rabbits toshed up in some new fangled way, an’ he didna miss tae lay in a guid stock. When a’ was owre, they askit him how he likit his denner, an’ he said “First rate”. Syne they lauched and speered him if he kent what the pie was made o’, but he said he wasna sure. When they tell’t him it was paddocks, it was a’ ane as if they had gien him a dose of pizzen. He just banged up an’ breenged oot the hoose. Oor bit winnock lookit oot on the Frenchmen’s backyaird, an’ we saw Maister Renwick sair, sair forfochen, but after a dainty bit warsle, he an’ the paddocks pairtit company.’
It is recorded that the French prisoners considered a good fat cat an excellent substitute for a hare.
At a fire, two French surgeons who distinguished themselves in fighting it, were, on a petition from the inhabitants to the Transport Board, allowed to return immediately to France. But another surgeon who applied to be sent to Kelso as he had a relative there, was refused permission—a refusal, which, it is quite possible, was really a compliment, for the records of parole life in Britain abound with evidence of the high estimation in which French prisoner-surgeons were held in our country towns.
Between thirty and forty officers tried to escape from Dumfries during the three years of its being a Parole Town; most of these were recaptured, and sent to Valleyfield Prison. Four officers took advantage of the fishing-licence usually extended to the officers on parole here, by which strict adherence to the mile limit was not insisted upon, and gradually got their belongings away to Lochmaben, eight miles distant, where were also parole prisoners. One of them actually wrote to the Colonel of the Regiment stationed in Dumfries, apologizing for his action, explaining it, promising that he would get an English officer-prisoner in France exchanged, and that he would not take up arms against her, and that he would repay all the civilities he had received in Scotland. But all were recaptured and sent to Valleyfield.
As instances of the strictness with which even a popular agent carried out his regulations, may be cited that of the officer here, who was sent to Valleyfield because he had written to a lady in Devonshire, enclosing a letter to a friend of his. a prisoner on parole there, without first showing it to the Agent. In justice to Mr. Shortt, however, it is right to say that had the letter been a harmless one, and not, as was generally the case, full of abuse of the Government and the country, so extreme a view would not have been taken of the breach. Another instance was the refusal by the Agent of a request in 1812 from the officers to give a concert. In this case he was under orders from the Transport Office.
In March 1812, a number of the prisoners had at their own request copies of the Scriptures supplied them in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
That the French officers on parole in Britain politically arranged their allegiance to the Powers that were, is exemplified by the following incidents at Dumfries. On the re-establishment of the Bourbon Dynasty, the following address was drawn up and sent to the French Commissioners for the release of prisoners:
‘Dumfries, le 6 Mai 1814.
‘Les officiers détenus sur parole donnent leur adhésion aux actes du Gouvernement Français qui rappelle l’illustre sang des Bourbons, au trône de ses ancêtres. Puissent les Français compter une longue suite de rois du sang de Saint Louis et de Henri IV, qui a toujours fait leur gloire et assuré leur bonheur! Vive Louis XVIII! Vivent les Bourbons!’
On the 24th of the same month a French officer, seeing in the window of a bookseller’s shop a ludicrous caricature of Bonaparte, went into the shop in a violent passion, bought two copies, and tore them in pieces before a crowd of people, uttering dreadful imprecations against those who dared to insult ‘his Emperor’. The fact is that the army to a man was Bonapartist at heart, as after events showed, but at Dumfries, as elsewhere, personal interests rendered it politic to assume loyalty and devotion to the re-established Royalty. Most of the prisoners, however, who elected to remain in Britain after the Declaration of Peace were unswerving Royalists. Lieutenant Guillemet at Dumfries was one of these. He became a professor of French at Dumfries Academy and also gave lessons in fencing, and was a great favourite with his pupils and the public. His son was for many years a chemist at Maxwelltown.
The average number of prisoners was about 100: they were mostly soldiers, and not sailors, on account of the proximity of Dumfries to the sea. I cannot refrain from adding to the frequent testimonies I have quoted as illustrating the good understanding which existed between captors and captives in Scotland, the following extract from a Farewell Letter which appeared in the Dumfries Courier, April 26, 1814, contributed by Lieutenant De Montaignac of the ‘Parisian Guard’.
‘I should indeed be very ungrateful were I to leave this country without publicly expressing my gratitude to the inhabitants of Dumfries. From the moment of my arrival in Scotland, the vexations indispensable in the situation of a prisoner have disappeared before me. I have been two years and five months in this town, prisoner on my parole of honour; and it is with the most lively emotion that I quit a place where I have found so many alleviations to my melancholy situation. I must express my thanks to the generous proceedings with which I have been loaded by the most part of the inhabitants of Dumfries during my captivity, proceedings which cannot but give an advantageous opinion of the Scottish nation. I will add that the respectable magistrates of this town have constantly given proofs of their generous dispositions to mitigate the situation of the prisoners; and that our worthy Agent, Mr. Shortt, has always softened our lot by the delicate manner in which he fulfilled the duty of his functions. It is then with a remembrance full of gratitude, esteem, and consideration for the honest inhabitants of Dumfries, that I quit the charming banks of the Nith to return to the capital of France, my beloved country, from which I have been absent seven years.’
For the following romantic incidents I am indebted to Mr. William McDowell’s Memorials of St. Michael’s, Dumfries.
Polly Stewart, the object of one of Burns’s minor poems, married a Dumfries prisoner of war. She lived at Maxwelltown, and her father was a close friend of Burns. A handsome young Swiss prisoner, Fleitz by name, loved her and married her, and when Louis XVIII came to the French throne, he, being in the Swiss Guard, took her to France. When Louis Philippe became king, the Swiss body-guard was disbanded, and Mr. and Mrs. Fleitz went to Switzerland. It is said that poor Polly had an unhappy married life, but at any rate nothing was heard of her for thirty years, when she returned to Scotland, and not long after her husband died and she went to a cousin in France. Here her mind gave way, and she was placed in an asylum, where she died in 1847, aged 71.
On the tombstone, in St. Michael’s churchyard, of Bailie William Fingass, who died in 1686, is an inscription to a descendant, Anna Grieve, daughter of James Grieve, merchant, who died in 1813, aged 19, with the following lines subjoined:
‘Ta main, bienfaisante et chérie,
D’un exil vient essuyer les pleurs,
Tu me vis loin de parens, de patrie,
Et le même tombeau, lorsque tu m’as ravie,
Renferme nos deux cœurs.’
The story is this. One of the French prisoners on parole at Dumfries fell in love with pretty Anna Grieve, and she regarded his suit with kindness. Had she lived they would probably have been married, for he was in a good position and in every way worthy of her hand. When she died in the flower in her youth, he was overwhelmed with grief, and penned the above-quoted epitaph. After a lapse of about forty-six years, a gentleman of dignified bearing and seemingly about seventy years old, entered St. Michael’s churchyard, and in broken English politely accosted Mr. Watson, who was busy with his chisel on one of the monuments. He asked to be shown the spot where Mademoiselle Grieve was buried, and on being taken to it exhibited deep emotion. He read over the epitaph, which seemed to be quite familiar to him, and it was apparent that it was engraved upon the tablets of his memory, he being none other than the lover of the lady who lay below, and for whom, although half a century had elapsed, he still retained his old attachment.
(I should say here that for many of the details about Sanquhar and Dumfries I am indebted in the first place to Mrs. Macbeth Forbes, for permission to make use of her late husband’s notes on the prisoner-life at these places, and in the second to the hon. secretary of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, for the use of a résumé by him of those notes.)