Edinburgh

For the following details about a prison which, although of importance, cannot from its size be fairly classed among the chief Prisoners of War dépôts of Britain, I am largely indebted to the late Mr. Macbeth Forbes, who most generously gave me permission to use freely his article in the Bankers’ Magazine of March 1899. I emphasize his liberality inasmuch as a great deal of the information in this article is of a nature only procurable by one with particular and peculiar facilities for so doing. I allude to the system of bank-note forgery pursued by the prisoners.

Edinburgh Castle was first used as a place of confinement for prisoners of war during the Seven Years’ War, and, like Liverpool, this use was made of it chiefly on account of its convenient proximity to the waters haunted by privateers. The very first prisoners brought in belonged to the Chevalier Bart privateer, captured off Tynemouth by H.M.S. Solebay, in April 1757, the number of them being 28, and in July of the same year a further 108 were added.

‘In the autumn of 1759 a piteous appeal was addressed to the publishers of the Edinburgh Evening Courant on behalf of the French prisoners of war in Edinburgh Castle by one who “lately beheld some hundreds of French prisoners, many of them about naked (some without any other clothing but shirts and breeches and even these in rags), conducted along the High Street to the Castle.” The writer says that many who saw the spectacle were moved to tears, and he asked that relief might be given by contributing clothing to these destitute men. This letter met with a favourable response from the citizens, and a book of subscriptions was opened forthwith. The prisoners were visited and found to number 362. They were reported to be “in a miserable condition, many almost naked,” and winter approaching. There were, however, revilers of this charitable movement, who said that the public were being imposed upon; that the badly clothed were idle fellows who disposed of their belongings; that they had been detected in the Castle cutting their shoes, stockings, and hammocks into pieces, in the prospect of getting these articles renewed. “One fellow, yesterday, got twenty bottles of ale for a suit of clothes given him by the good people of the town in charity, and this he boasted of to one of the servants in the sutlery.”

‘The promoters of the movement expressed their “surprise at the endeavours used to divert the public from pursuing so humane a design.”.... They also pointed out that the prisoners only received an allowance of 6d. a day, from which the contractor’s profit was taken, so that little remained for providing clothes. An estimate was obtained of the needs of the prisoners, and a list drawn up of articles wanted. Of the 362 persons confined 8 were officers, whose subsistence money was 1s. a day, and they asked no charity of the others; no fewer than 238 had no shirt, and 108 possessed only one. Their other needs were equally great. The “City Hospitals for Young Maidens” offered to make shirts for twopence each, and sundry tailors to make a certain number of jackets and breeches for nothing. The prisoners had an airing ground, but as it was necessary to obtain permission before visiting them, the chance they had of disposing of any of their work was very slight indeed.’

William Fergusson, clerk to Dr. James Walker, the Agent for the prisoners of war in the Castle, described as a man of fine instincts, seems to have been one of the few officials who, brought into daily contact with the prisoners, learned to sympathize with them, and to do what lay in their power to mitigate the prisoners’ hard lot.

Early in May 1763, the French prisoners in the Castle, numbering 500, were embarked from Leith to France, the Peace of Paris having been concluded.

During the Revolutionary War with France, Edinburgh Castle again received French prisoners, mostly, as before, privateersmen, the number between 1796 and 1801 being 1,104. In the later Napoleonic wars the Castle was the head-quarters of Scotland for distributing the prisoners, the commissioned officers to the various parole towns of which notice will be taken in the chapters treating of the paroled prisoners in Scotland, and the others to the great dépôts at Perth and Valleyfield. We shall see when we come to deal with the paroled foreign officers in Scotland in what pleasant places, as a rule, their lines were cast, and how effectively they contrived to make the best of things, but it was very much otherwise with the rank and file in confinement.

‘An onlooker’, says Mr. Forbes, ‘has described the appearance of the prisoners at Edinburgh Castle. He says:—These poor men were allowed to work at their tasteful handicrafts in small sheds or temporary workshops at the Castle, behind the palisades which separated them from their free customers outside. There was just room between the bars of the palisade for them to hand through their exquisite work, and to receive in return the modest prices which they charged. As they sallied forth from their dungeons, so they returned to them at night. The dungeons, partly rock and partly masonry, of Edinburgh Castle, are historic spots which appeal alike to the sentiment and the imagination. They are situate in the south and east of the Castle, and the date of them goes far back.’ It is unnecessary to describe what may still be seen, practically unchanged since the great war-times, by every visitor to Edinburgh.

In 1779 Howard visited Edinburgh during his tour round the prisons of Britain. His report is by no means bad. He found sixty-four prisoners in two rooms formerly used as barracks; in one room they lay in couples in straw-lined boxes against the wall, with two coverlets to each box. In the other room they had hammocks duly fitted with mattresses. The regulations were hung up according to law—an important fact, inasmuch as in other prisons, such as Pembroke, where the prison agents purposely omitted to hang them up, the prisoners remained in utter ignorance of their rights and their allowances. Howard reported the provisions to be all good, and noted that at the hospital house some way off, where were fourteen sick prisoners, the bedding and sheets were clean and sufficient, and the medical attention good.

This satisfactory state of matters seems to have lasted, for in 1795 the following letter was written by the French prisoners in the Castle to General Dundas:

‘Les prisonniers de guerre français détenus au château d’Edinburgh ne peuvent que se louer de l’attention et du bon traitement qu’ils ont reçu de Com.-Gén. Dundas et officiers des brigades Écossoises, en foi de quoi nous livrons le présent.

‘Fr. Leroy.’

Possibly the ancient camaraderie of the Scots and French nations may have had something to do with this pleasant condition of things, for in 1797 Dutch prisoners confined in the Castle complained about ill treatment and the lack of clothing, and the authorities consented to their being removed to ‘a more airy and comfortable situation at Fountainbridge’.

In 1799 the Rev. Mr. FitzSimmons, of the Episcopal Chapel, an Englishman, was arraigned before the High Court of Justiciary for aiding in the escape of four French prisoners from the Castle, by concealing them in his house, and taking them to a Newhaven fishing boat belonging to one Neil Drysdale, which carried them to the Isle of Inchkeith, whence they escaped to France. Two of them had sawn through the dungeon bars with a sword-blade which they had contrived to smuggle in. The other two were parole prisoners. He was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment in the Tolbooth.

A French prisoner in 1799, having learned at what hour the dung which had been collected in the prison would be thrown over the wall, got himself put into the hand-barrow used for its conveyance, was covered over with litter, and was thrown down several feet; but, being discovered by the sentinels in his fall, they presented their pieces while he was endeavouring to conceal himself. The poor bruised and affrighted fellow supplicated for mercy, and waited on his knees until his jailers came up to take him back to prison.

In 1811 forty-nine prisoners contrived to get out of the Castle at one time. They cut a hole through the bottom of the parapet wall at the south-west corner, below the ‘Devil’s Elbow,’ and let themselves down by a rope which they had been smuggling in by small sections for weeks previously. One man lost his hold, and fell, and was mortally injured. Five were retaken the next day, and fourteen got away along the Glasgow road. Some were retaken later near Linlithgow in the Polmount plantations, exhausted with hunger. They had planned to get to Grangemouth, where they hoped to get on board a smuggler. They confessed that the plot was of long planning. Later still, six more were recaptured. They had made for Cramond, where they had stolen a boat, sailed up the Firth, and landed near Hopetoun House, intending to go to Port Glasgow by land. These poor fellows said that they had lived for three days on raw turnips. Not one of the forty-nine got away.

I now come to the science of forgery as practised by the foreign prisoners of war in Scotland, and I shall be entirely dependent upon Mr. Macbeth Forbes for my information.

The Edinburgh prisoners were busy at this work between 1811 and the year of their departure, 1814.

The first reputed case was that of a Bank of Scotland one-guinea note, discovered in 1811. It was not a very skilful performance, for the forged note was three-fourths of an inch longer than the genuine, and the lettering on it was not engraved, but done with pen and printing ink. But this defect was remedied, for, three weeks after the discovery, the plate of a guinea note was found by the miller in the mill lade at Stockbridge (the north side of Edinburgh), in cleaning out the lade.

In 1812 a man was tried for the possession of six one-pound forged notes which had been found concealed between the sole of his foot and his stocking. His story as to how he came into possession of them seems to have satisfied the judge, and he was set free; but he afterwards confessed that he had received them from a soldier of the Cambridge Militia under the name of ‘pictures’ in the house of a grocer at Penicuik, near the Valleyfield Dépôt, and that the soldier had, at his, the accused man’s, desire, purchased them for 2s. each from the prisoners.

In July 1812 seven French prisoners of war escaped from Edinburgh Tolbooth, whither they had been transferred from the Castle to take their trial for the forgery of bank-notes. ‘They were confined’, says a contemporary newspaper, ‘in the north-west room on the third story, and they had penetrated the wall, though very thick, till they got into the chimney of Mr. Gilmour’s shop (on the ground floor), into which they descended by means of ropes. As they could not force their way out of the shop, they ascended a small stair to the room above, from which they took out half the window and descended one by one into the street, and got clear off. In the course of the morning one of them was retaken in the Grass Market, being traced by the sooty marks of his feet. We understand that, except one, they all speak broken English. They left a note on the table of the shop saying that they had taken nothing away.’

Afterwards three of the prisoners were taken at Glasgow, and another in Dublin.

From the first discoveries of forgeries by prisoners of war, the Scottish banks chiefly affected by them had in a more or less satisfactory way combined to take steps to prevent and to punish forgeries, but it was not until they offered a reward of £100 for information leading to the discovery of persons forging or issuing their notes that a perceptible check to the practice was made. This advertisement was printed and put outside the dépôt walls for the militia on guard, a French translation was posted up inside for the prisoners, and copies of it were sent to the Agents at all parole towns. With reference to this last, let it be said to the credit of the foreign officers on parole, both in England and Scotland, that, although a Frenchman has written to the contrary, there are no more than two recorded instances of officers on parole being prosecuted or suspected of the forgery of bank-notes. (See pp. [320] and [439].) Of passport forgeries there are a few cases, and the forgery mentioned on p. [439] may have been of passports and not of bank-notes.

In addition, says Mr. Macbeth Forbes, the military authorities were continually on the qui vive for forgers. The governors of the different dépôts ordered the turnkeys to examine narrowly notes coming in and out of prison. The militiamen had also to be watched, as they acted so frequently as intermediaries, as for instance:

‘In November 1813 Mr. Aitken, the keeper of the Canongate Tolbooth, detected and took from the person of a private soldier in a militia regiment stationed over the French prisoners in Penicuik, and who had come into the Canongate Prison to see a friend, forged guineas and twenty-shilling notes on two different banks in this city, and two of them in the country, amounting to nearly £70. The soldier was immediately given over to the civil power, and from thence to the regiment to which he belonged, until the matter was further investigated.’

In July 1813 the clerk of the Valleyfield Dépôt sent to the banks twenty-six forged guinea notes which were about to be sold, but were detected by the turnkey.

The Frenchmen seem to have chiefly selected for imitation the notes of the Bank of Scotland, and the Commercial Banking Company of Scotland, as these had little or no pictorial delineation, and consisted almost entirely of engraved penmanship. The forgers had to get suitable paper, and, as there were no steel pens in those days, a few crow quills served their purpose. They had confederates who watched the ins and outs of the turnkey; and, in addition to imitating the lettering on the face of the note, they had to forge the watermark, the seals of the bank, and the Government stamp. The bones of their ration food formed, literally, the groundwork of the forger’s productions, and as these had to be properly scraped and smoothed into condition before being in a state to be worked upon with ordinary pocket-knives, if the result was often so crude as to deceive only the veriest yokel, the Scottish banks might be thankful that engraving apparatus was unprocurable.

The following advertisement of the Bank of Scotland emphasizes this crudity of execution:

‘Several forged notes, in imitation of the notes of the governor and company of the Bank of Scotland, having appeared, chiefly in the neighbourhood of the dépôts of French prisoners of war, a caution is hereby, on the part of the said governors and company, given against receiving such forged notes in payment. And whoever shall, within three months from the date hereof, give such information as shall be found sufficient, on lawful trial, to convict any one concerned in forging or feloniously uttering any of the said notes, shall receive a reward of a hundred pounds sterling. These forged notes are executed by the hand with a pen or pencil, without any engraving. In most of them the body of the note has the appearance of foreign handwriting. The names of the bank officers are mostly illegible or ill-spelled. The ornamental characters of the figures generally ill-executed. The seals are very ill-imitated. To this mark particular attention is requested.’

The seals, bearing the arms of the Bank of Scotland, are of sheep’s bone, and were impressed upon the note with a hammer, also probably of bone, since all metal tools were prohibited. The partially executed forgery of a Bank of Scotland guinea note shows the process of imitating the lettering on the note in dotted outline, for which the forgers had doubtless some good reason, which is not at once patent to us.

Until 1810 the punishment for forgery was the hulks. During that year the law in England took a less merciful view of the crime, and offenders were sentenced to death; and until 1829, when the last man was hanged for forgery, this remained the law.

As to Scotland Mr. Forbes says: ‘The administration was probably not so severe as in England ... no French prisoner suffered anything more than a slight incarceration, and a subsequent relegation to the prison ships, where some thousands of his countrymen already were.’

Armed with a Home Office permit I visited the prisons in the rock of Edinburgh Castle. Owing to the facts that most of them have been converted into military storerooms and that their substance does not lend itself readily to destruction, they remain probably very much as when they were filled with the war-prisoners, and, with their heavily built doors and their strongly barred apertures, which cannot be called windows, their darkness and cold, the silence of their position high above even the roar of a great city, convey still to the minds of the visitors of to-day a more real impression of the meaning of the word ‘imprisonment’ than does any other war-prison, either extant or pictured. At Norman Cross, at Portchester, at Stapleton, at Dartmoor, at Perth, there were at any rate open spaces for airing grounds, but at Edinburgh there could have been none, unless the narrow footway, outside the line of caverns, from the wall of which the precipice falls sheer down, was so utilized.

Near the entrance to the French prisons the following names are visible on the wall:

Charles Jobien, Calais, 1780.

Morel de Calais, 1780.

1780. Proyol prisonnier nee natif de bourbonnais (?).

With the Peace of 1814 came the jail-delivery, and it caused one of the weirdest scenes known in that old High Street so inured to weird scenes. The French prisoners were marched down by torchlight to the transport at Leith, and thousands of citizens lined the streets. Down the highway went the liberated ones, singing the war-songs of the Revolution—the Marseillaise and the Ça ira. Wildly enthusiastic were the pale, haggard-looking prisoners of war, but the enthusiasm was not exhausted with them, for they had a great send-off from the populace.

In Sir T. E. Colebrooke’s Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone, Mr. John Russell of Edinburgh writes that when he first knew Mountstuart, his father, Lord Elphinstone, was Governor of Edinburgh Castle, in which were confined a great number of French prisoners of war. With these prisoners the boy Mountstuart loved to converse, and, learning from them their revolutionary songs, he used to walk about singing the Marseillaise, Ça ira, and Les Aristocrates à la Lanterne, much to the disgust of the British officers, who, however, dared not check such a proceeding on the part of the son of the Governor. Mountstuart also wore his hair long in accordance with the revolutionary fashion.

CHAPTER XX
LOUIS VANHILLE: A FAMOUS ESCAPER

I devoted Chapter VII to the record of Tom Souville, a famous ship-prison-breaker, and in this I hope to give quite as interesting and romantic an account of the career of Louis Vanhille, who was remarkable in his method in that he seemed never to be in a hurry to get out of England, but actually to enjoy the power he possessed of keeping himself uninterfered with for a whole year in a country where the hue and cry after him was ceaseless.

At the outset I must make my acknowledgement to M. Pariset of the University of Nancy, for permission to use his monograph upon this really remarkable man.

Louis Vanhille, purser of the Pandour privateer, was sent to Launceston on parole May 12, 1806. He is described as a small man of thirty-two, of agreeable face and figure, although small-pox marked, fair as befitted his Flemish origin, and speaking English almost perfectly. He was socially gifted, he painted and caricatured, could dress hair, and could make mats, and weave bracelets in seventeen patterns. He was well-off to boot, as the Pandour had been a successful ship, and he had plenty of prize money.

In Launceston he lodged with John Tyeth, a pious Baptist brewer. Tyeth had three married daughters and two unmarried, Fanny and a younger, who kept the Post Office at Launceston. Although Tyeth was a Baptist, one of his daughters was married to Bunsell, the Rector of Launceston, so that decorum and preciseness prevailed in the local atmosphere, to which Vanhille politically adapted himself so readily as to become a convert to Tyeth’s creed. In addition he paid marked attention to Miss Fanny, who was plain-looking but kept the Post Office; an action which occasioned watchfulness on the part of Tyeth père, who, in common with most Englishmen of his day, regarded all Frenchmen as atheists and revolutionaries. Vanhille’s manner and accomplishments won him friends all round. Miss Johanna Colwell, an old maid, a sentimental worker of straw hats, who lived opposite the brewery, pitied him. Further on, at Mr. Pearson’s, lodged Vanhille’s great friend, Dr. Derouge, an army surgeon, who cured Vanhille of small-pox. Then there was Dr. Mabyn of Camelford, Dr. Frankland, R.N., John Rowe the tailor, Dale the ironmonger, who, although tradesmen, were of that well-to-do, highly respectable calibre which in old-time country towns like Launceston placed them on a footing of friendliness with the ‘quality’. Vanhille seems to have settled himself down to become quite Anglicized, and to forget that he was a prisoner on parole, and that any such individual existed as Mr. Spettigue, the Agent. He went over to Camelford to dine with Dr. Mabyn; he rode to Tavistock on the Tyeth’s pony to visit the Pearces, ironmongers of repute, and particularly to see the Misses Annie and Elizabeth Penwarden, gay young milliners who spoke French. He was also much in the society of Fanny Tyeth, made expeditions with her to see ‘Aunt Tyeth’ at Tavistock, and was regarded as her fiancé.

Dr. Derouge began to weary of captivity, and tried without success to get exchanged. The reason given for his non-success was that he had got a girl with child. Launceston was scandalized; only a Frenchman could do such a thing. The authorities had to find some one to pay for the child’s subsistence as the mother could not afford to, and so Proctor, Guardian of the Poor, and Spettigue, the Agent, fastened it on Dr. Derouge, and he was ordered to pay £25. But he could not; so Vanhille, who had come into some money upon the death of his mother, paid it. What followed is not quite clear. In a letter dated December 5, 1811, Spettigue, in a letter to the Admiralty, says that Derouge and Vanhille tried to escape, but were prevented by information given by one Burlangier, ‘garde-magasin des services réunis de l’armée de Portugal.’ He reported their absences at Camelford, and finally they were ordered to Dartmoor on December 12, 1811. The Transport Office instructed Spettigue to keep a watch on Tyeth and others. Launceston was angry at this; it missed Derouge and Vanhille, and went so far as to get the Member of Parliament, Giddy, to address the Transport Office on the matter, and request their reinstatement on parole, but the reply was unsatisfactory.

At Dartmoor, Vanhille and Derouge were sent to the subalterns’ quarters. Very soon the attractive personality of Vanhille led him to an influential position among the prisoners, and he was elected their representative in all matters of difference between them and the authorities, although Cotgrave, the Governor, refused to acknowledge him as such, saying that he preferred a prisoner of longer standing, and one whom he knew better.

Vanhille now determined to get out of Dartmoor. To reach France direct was difficult, but it was feasible by America, as he had a sister well married in New Orleans who could help him.

At the daily market held at the prison gate Vanhille became acquainted with Mary Ellis. Piece by piece she brought him from Tavistock a disguise—an old broad-brimmed hat, big boots, and brown stockings, and by August 21, 1812, he was ready. On that day he received from his comrades a sort of testimonial or letter of recommendation for use after his escape at any place where there might be Frenchmen:

‘Le comité représentant les officiers militaires et marchands détenus dans la prison Royale de Dartmoor certifient que Louis Vanhille est un digne et loyal Français, et un compagnon d’infortune digne de tous les égards de ses compatriotes . . . pour lui servir et valoir ce que de raison en cas de mutation de prison.’

The next day he put on his disguise, mixed with the market folk, crossed the court of his quarter, and the market place, passed two sentries who took him for a potato merchant, got to the square in the middle of which were the Agent’s house and offices, passed another gate, the sentry at which took no notice of him, turned sharp to the right by the stables and the water reservoir, and got on to the main road. He walked rapidly on towards Tavistock, and that night slept under the Tyeth roof at Launceston—a bold policy and only to be adopted by one who knew his ground thoroughly well, and who felt sure that he was safer, known in Launceston, than he would be as a stranger in Plymouth or other ports.

Next day he went to Camelford, and called on Dr. Mabyn, who said: ‘Monsieur Vanhille, comme ami je suis heureux de vous voir, mais à présent je ne puis vous donner asile sous mon toit,’ Thence he went to Padstow, but no boatman would take him to Bristol or Cork, so he returned to Launceston and remained there two days. Here he bought a map, changed his disguise, and became Mr. Williams, a pedlar of odds and ends. Thence he went on to Bideford, Appledore, and by boat to Newport, thence to Abergavenny, a parole town, where he met Palierne, an old Launceston comrade; thence back to Launceston, where he rested a couple of days. Then, always on foot, he went to Exeter, Okehampton, and Tawton, took wagon to London, where he only stayed a night, then on to Chatham—a dangerous neighbourhood on account of the hulks, and back to Abergavenny via Guildford, Petersfield, Alresford, Winchester, Salisbury, Warminster, Bath, and Bristol, arriving at Abergavenny on September 21, 1812.[[12]]

From Abergavenny Vanhille went by Usk to Bristol, but could find no suitable ship to take him to America, so he took coach back to Launceston, and spent two weeks there with the Tyeths, which would seem to show that Spettigue was either purposely blind or very stupid. Vanhille then crossed Cornwall rapidly to Falmouth—always, be it remembered, as a pedlar. Falmouth was a dangerous place, being the chief port for the Cartel service with Morlaix, and a strict look-out was kept there for passengers intending to cross the Channel. Vanhille went to the Blue Anchor Inn, and here he met the famous escape agent, Thomas Feast Moore, alias Captain Harman, &c., who at once recognized what he was, and proffered his services, stating that he had carried many French officers over safely. This was true, but what he omitted to state was that he was at present in the Government service, having been pardoned for his misdeeds as an escape agent on condition that he made use of his experience by giving the Government information about intending escapers.[[13]]

Vanhille wanted no aid to escape, but he cleared out from Falmouth at once, was that evening at Wadebridge, the next day at Saltash, then, avoiding Launceston, went by Okehampton, Moreton-Hampstead, and Exeter to Cullompton, and thence by coach to Bristol, where he arrived on October 15, 1812.

After his escape from Dartmoor, this extraordinary man had been fifty-five days travelling on foot, in carriage, and by boat, and had covered 1,238 miles, by far the greater number of which he tramped, and this with the hue and cry after him and offers of reward for his arrest posted up everywhere.

He now dropped the pedlar pretence and became an ordinary Briton. At Bristol he learned that the Jane, Captain Robert Andrews, would leave for Jamaica next month. He corresponded with his Launceston friends, who throughout had been true to him, and, in replying, the Tyeths had to be most careful, assuming signatures and disguising handwriting, and Miss Fanny at the Post Office would with her own hands obliterate the post-mark. Old Tyeth sent him kind and pious messages. On November 10 the Jane left Bristol, but was detained at Cork a month, waiting for a convoy, and did not reach Montego Bay, Jamaica, until January 2, 1813. From Jamaica there were frequent opportunities of getting to America, and Vanhille had every reason to congratulate himself at last on being a free man.

Unfortunately the Customs people in Jamaica were particularly on the alert for spies and runaways, especially as we were at war with the United States. Vanhille was suspected of being what he was, and the examination of his papers not being satisfactory, he was arrested and sent home, and on May 20, 1813, found himself a prisoner at Forton. He was sent up to London and examined by Jones, of Knight and Jones, solicitors to the Admiralty, with a view of extracting from him information concerning his accomplices in Launceston, a town notorious for its French proclivities.

Jones writes under date of June 14, 1813, to Bicknell, solicitor to the Transport Office, that he has examined Vanhille, who peremptorily refuses to make any disclosures which may implicate the persons concerned in harbouring him after he had escaped from Dartmoor, and who ultimately got him out of the kingdom. He hopes, however, to reach them by other means.

Harsh treatment was now tried upon him, he was half starved, and as he was now penniless could not remedy matters by purchase. In three weeks he was sent on board the Crown Prince hulk at Chatham, and later to the Glory. Correspondence between him and Dr. Derouge at Launceston was discovered, and Derouge was sent to a Plymouth hulk. Dale, the Launceston ironmonger, who had been one of the little friendly circle in that town, had fallen into evil ways, and was now starving in Plymouth. Jones, the Admiralty lawyer, received a communication from him saying that for a consideration he would denounce all Vanhille’s friends. He was brought up to London, and he told all their names, with the result that they were summoned. But nothing could be got out of them. Mrs. Wilkins at the inn, who for some reason disliked Vanhille, would have given information, but she had none to give.

Dale was sent back to Plymouth, saying that if he could see Dr. Derouge, who would not suspect him, he would get the wanted information. So the two men met in a special cabin, and rum was brought. Derouge, unsuspecting, tells all the story of the escape from Dartmoor, and brings in the name of Mary Ellis, who had provided Vanhille with his disguise. Then he begins to suspect Dale’s object, and will not utter another word.

Dale is sent to Launceston to get more information, but fails; resolves to find out Mary Ellis at Tavistock, but five weeks elapse, and no more is heard of him, except that he arrived there half dead with wet and fatigue.

The Peace of 1814 brought release to Vanhille, and on April 19 he reached Calais.

M. Pariset concludes his story with the following remark: ‘Vanhille avait senti battre le cœur anglais qui est, comme chacun sait, bienveillant et fidèle, après qu’il s’est donné.’

I should here say that M. Pariset’s story does not go further than the capture of Vanhille in Jamaica. The sequel I have taken from the correspondence at the Record Office. I have been told that the name of Vanhille is by no means forgotten in Launceston.

CHAPTER XXI
THE PRISON SYSTEM
Prisoners on Parole

When we come to the consideration of the parole system, we reach what is for many reasons the most interesting chapter in a dark history. Life on the hulks and in the prisons was largely a sealed book to the outside public, and, brutal in many respects as was the age covered by our story, there can be little question that if the British public had been made more aware of what went on behind the wooden walls of the prison ships and the stone walls of the prisons, its opinion would have demanded reforms and remedies which would have spared our country from a deep, ineffaceable, and, it must be added, a just reproach.

But the prisoners on parole played a large part in the everyday social life of many parts of England, Wales, and Scotland, for at least sixty years—a period long enough to leave a clear impression behind of their lives, their romances, their virtues, their vices, of all, in fact, which makes interesting history—and, although in one essential particular they seem to have fallen very far short of the traditional standard of honour, the memory of them is still that of a polished, refined, and gallant race of gentlemen.

The parole system, by which officers of certain ratings were permitted, under strict conditions to which they subscribed on their honour, to reside in certain places, was in practice at any rate at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, and in 1757 the following were the parole towns:

In the West: Redruth, Launceston, Callington, Falmouth, Tavistock, Torrington, Exeter, Crediton, Ashburton, Bideford, Okehampton, Helston, Alresford, Basingstoke, Chippenham, Bristol, Sodbury (Gloucestershire), and Bishop’s Waltham. In the South: Guernsey, Ashford, Tenterden, Tonbridge, Wye (Kent), Goudhurst, Sevenoaks, Petersfield, and Romsey. In the North: Dundee and Newcastle-on-Tyne. Kinsale in Ireland, Beccles in Suffolk, and Whitchurch in Shropshire. At first I had doubts if prisoners on parole were at open ports like Falmouth, Bristol, and Newcastle-on-Tyne, but an examination of the documents at the Record Office in London and the Archives Nationales in Paris established the fact, although they ceased to be there after a short time. Not only does it seem that parole rules were more strictly enforced at this time than they were later, but that violation of them was regarded as a crime by the Governments of the offenders. Also, there was an arrangement, or at any rate an understanding, between England and France that officers who had broken their parole by escaping, should, if discovered in their own country, either be sent back to the country of their imprisonment, or be imprisoned in their own country. Thus, we read under date 1757:

‘René Brisson de Dunkerque, second capitaine et pilote du navire Le Prince de Soubise, du dit port, qui étoit détenu prisonnier à Waltham en Angleterre, d’où il s’est évadé, et qui, étant de retour à Dunkerque le 16ème Oct. 1757, y a été mis en prison par ordre du Roy.’

During 1778, 1779, and six months of 1780, two hundred and ninety-five French prisoners alone had successfully escaped from parole places, the greatest number being, from Alresford forty-five, Chippenham thirty-three, Tenterden thirty-two, Bandon twenty-two, Okehampton nineteen, and Ashburton eighteen.

In 1796 the following ratings were allowed to be on parole: 1. Taken on men-of-war: Captain, lieutenant, ensign, surgeon, purser, chaplain, master, pilot, midshipman, surgeon’s mate, boatswain, gunner, carpenter, master-caulker, master-sail-maker, coasting pilot, and gentleman volunteer.

2. Taken on board a privateer or merchantman: Captain, passenger of rank, second captain, chief of prizes, two lieutenants for every hundred men, pilot, surgeon, and chaplain.

No parole was to be granted to officers of any privateer under eighty tons burthen, or having less than fourteen carriage guns, which were not to be less than four-pounders.

In 1804 parole was granted as follows:

1. All commissioned officers of the Army down to sous-lieutenant.

2. All commissioned officers of the Navy down to gardes-marine (midshipmen).

3. Three officers of privateers of a hundred men, but not under fourteen guns.

4. Captains and next officers of merchant ships above fifty tons.

The parole form in 1797 was as follows:

‘By the Commissioners for conducting H.M’s. Transport Service, and for the care and custody of Prisoners of War.

‘These are to certify to all H.M’s. officers, civil and military, and to whom else it may concern, that the bearer ... as described on the back hereof is a detained (French, American, Spanish or Dutch) prisoner of war at ... and that he has liberty to walk on the great turnpike road within the distance of one mile from the extremities of the town, but that he must not go into any field or cross road, nor be absent from his lodging after 5 o’clock in the afternoon during the six winter months, viz. from October 1st to March 31st, nor after 8 o’clock during the summer months. Wherefore you and everyone of you [sic] are hereby desired and required to suffer him, the said ... to pass and repass accordingly without any hindrance or molestation whatever, he keeping within the said limits and behaving according to law.’

The form of parole to be signed by the prisoner was this:

‘Whereas the Commissioners for conducting H.M’s. Transport service and for the care and custody of French officers and sailors detained in England have been pleased to grant ... leave to reside in ... upon condition that he gives his parole of honour not to withdraw one mile from the boundaries prescribed there without leave for that purpose from the said Commissioners, that he will behave himself decently and with due regard to the laws of the kingdom, and also that he will not directly or indirectly hold any correspondence with France during his continuance in England, but by such letter or letters as shall be shown to the Agent of the said Commissioners under whose care he is or may be in order to their being read and approved by the Superiors, he does hereby declare that having given his parole he will keep it inviolably.’

In all parole towns and villages the following notice was posted up in prominent positions:

‘Notice is hereby given,

‘That all such prisoners are permitted to walk or ride on the great turnpike road within the distance of one mile from the extreme parts of the town (not beyond the bounds of the Parish) and that if they shall exceed such limits or go into any field or cross-road they may be taken up and sent to prison, and a reward of Ten Shillings will be paid by the Agent for apprehending them. And further, that such prisoners are to be in their lodgings by 5 o’clock in the winter, and 8 in the summer months, and if they stay out later they are liable to be taken up and sent to the Agent for such misconduct. And to prevent the prisoners from behaving in an improper manner to the inhabitants of the town, or creating any riots or disturbances either with them or among themselves, notice is also given that the Commissioners will cause, upon information being given to their Agents, any prisoners who shall so misbehave to be committed to prison. And such of the inhabitants who shall insult or abuse any of the Prisoners of War on parole, or shall be found in any respect aiding or assisting in the escape of such prisoners shall be punished according to law.’

The rewards offered for the conviction of prisoners for the violation of any of the conditions of their parole, and particularly for recapturing escaped prisoners and for the conviction of aiders in escape, were liberal enough to tempt the ragamuffins of the parole places to do their utmost to get the prisoners to break the law, and we shall see how this led to a system of persecution which possibly provoked many a foreign officer, perfectly honourable in other respects, to break his parole. I do not attempt to defend the far too general laxity of principle which made some of the most distinguished of our prisoners break their solemnly pledged words by escaping or trying to escape, but I do believe that the continual dangling before unlettered clowns and idle town loafers rewards varying from ten guineas for recapturing an escaped prisoner to ten shillings for arresting an officer out of his lodging a few minutes after bell ringing, or straying a few yards off the great turnpike, was putting a premium upon a despicable system of spying and trapping which could not have given a pleasurable zest to a life of exile.

Naturally, the rules about the correspondence of prisoners on parole were strict, and no other rules seem to have been more irksome to prisoners, or more frequently violated by them. All letters for prisoners on parole had to pass through the Transport Office. Remittances had to be made through the local agent, if for an even sum in the Bank of England notes, if for odd shillings and pence by postal orders. It is, however, very certain that a vast amount of correspondence passed to and from the prisoners independently of the Transport Office, and that the conveyance and receipt of such correspondence became as distinctly a surreptitious trade called into existence by circumstances as that of aiding prisoners to escape.

Previous to 1813 the money allowance to officers on parole above and including the rank of captain was ten shillings and sixpence per week per man, and below that rank eight shillings and ninepence. In that year, complaints were made to the British Government by M. Rivière, that as it could be shown that living in England was very much more expensive than in France, this allowance should be increased. Our Government admitted the justice of the claim, and the allowances were accordingly increased to fourteen shillings, and eleven shillings and eightpence. It may be noted, by the way, that this was the same Rivière who in 1804 had denied our right to inquire into the condition of British prisoners in France, curtly saying: ‘It is the will of the Emperor!’

The cost of burying the poor fellows who died in captivity, although borne by the State, was kept down to the most economical limits, for we find two orders, dated respectively 1805 and 1812, that the cost was not to exceed £2 2s., that plain elm coffins were to be used, and that the expense of gloves and hat-bands must be borne by the prisoners. Mr. Farnell, the Agent at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, was called sharply to order for a charge in his accounts of fourteen shillings for a hat-band!

In 1814 funerals at Portsmouth were cut down to half a guinea, but I presume this was for ordinary prisoners. The allowances for surgeons in parole places in 1806 were:

For cures when the attendance was for more than five days, six shillings and eightpence, when for less, half that sum. Bleeding was to be charged sixpence, and for drawing a tooth, one shilling. Serious sick cases were to be sent to a prison hospital, and no allowance for medicines or extra subsistence was to be made.

We must not allow sentimental sympathy with officers and gentlemen on parole to blind our eyes to the fact constantly proved that it was necessary to keep the strictest surveillance over them. Although, if we except their propensity to regard lightly their parole obligations, their conduct generally may be called good, among so many men there were necessarily some very black sheep. At one time their behaviour in the parole towns was often so abominable as to render it necessary to place them in smaller towns and villages.

In 1793 the Marquis of Buckingham wrote thus to Lord Grenville from Winchester (Dropmore MSS.):

‘I have for the last week been much annoyed by a constant inundation of French prisoners who have been on their route from Portsmouth to Bristol, and my officers who, during the long marches have had much of their conversation, all report that the language of the common men was, with very few exceptions, equally insolent, especially upon the subject of monarchy. The orders which we received with them were so perfectly proper that we were enabled to maintain strict discipline among them, but I am very anxious that you should come to some decisions about your parole prisoners who are now nearly doubled at Alresford and (Bishop’s) Waltham, and are hourly more exceptionable in their language and in their communication with the country people. I am persuaded that some very unpleasant consequences will arise if this practice is not checked, and I do not know how it is to be done. Your own good heart will make you feel for the French priests now at Winchester to whom these people (230 at Alresford, 160 at Waltham) have openly avowed massacre whenever the troops are removed.... Pray think over some arrangement for sending your parole prisoners out of England, for they certainly serve their country here better than they could do at sea or in France (so they say openly).’

The authorities had to be constantly on their guard against deceptions of all kinds practised by the paroled prisoners, in addition to the frequent breaches of parole by escape. Thus applications were made almost daily by prisoners to be allowed either to exchange their places of residence for London, or to come to London temporarily ‘upon urgent private affairs’. At first these permissions were given when the applicants were men whose positions or reputations were deemed sufficient guarantees for honourable behaviour, but experience soon taught the Transport Office that nobody was to be trusted, and so these applications, even when endorsed by Englishmen of position, were invariably refused.

For instance, in 1809, the Office received a letter from one Brossage, an officer on parole at Launceston, asking that he might be removed to Reading, as he was suffering from lung disease. The reply was that as a rule people suffering from lung disease in England were only too glad to be able to go to Cornwall for alleviation or cure. The truth was that M. Brossage wanted to exchange the dullness of a Cornish town for the life and gaiety of Reading, which was a special parole town reserved for officers of distinction.

Another trick which the authorities characterized as ‘an unjustifiable means of gaining liberty’, was to bribe an invalid on the roster for France to be allowed to personate him. Poor officers were as glad to sell their chance in this way, as were poor prisoners on hulks or in prisons.

In 1811 some officers at Lichfield obtained their release because of ‘their humane conduct at the late fire at Mr. Lee’s house’. But so many applications for release on account of similar services at fires came in that the Transport Office was suspicious, and refused them, ‘especially as the French Government does not reward British officers for similar services.’

In the same year one Andoit got sent to Andover on parole in the name of another man, whom no doubt he impersonated, although he had no right to be paroled, and at once made use of the opportunity and escaped.

Most touching were some of the letters from paroled officers praying to have their places of parole changed, but when the Transport Office found out that these changes were almost invariably made so that old comrades and friends could meet together to plan and arrange escapes, rejection became the invariable fate of them. For some time many French officers on parole had been permitted to add to their incomes by giving lessons in dancing, drawing, fencing, and singing in English families, and for these purposes had special permits to go beyond the usual one mile limit. But when in 1811, M. Faure applied to go some distance out of Redruth to teach French, and M. Ulliac asked to be allowed to exceed limits at Ashby-de-la-Zouch to teach drawing, the authorities refused, and this despite the backing up of these requests by local gentry, giving as their reason: ‘If complied with generally the prisoners would become dispersed over all parts of the country without any regular control over their conduct.’ Prisoners were not even allowed to give lessons away from their lodgings out of parole hours.

Very rarely, except in the cases of officers of more than ordinarily distinguished position, were relaxations of parole rules permitted. General Pillet at Bishop’s Waltham in 1808, had leave to go two miles beyond the usual one mile limit two or three times a week, ‘to take the air.’ General Pageot at Ashbourne was given eight days’ leave to visit Wooton Lodge in 1804, with the result related elsewhere (p. [414]).

In 1808 General Brenier, on parole at Wantage, was allowed 3s. a day ‘on account of the wound in his thigh’, so unusual a concession as to cause the Transport Office to describe it as ‘the greatest rate of allowance granted to any prisoner of war in this country under any circumstances’. Later, however, some prisoners at Bath were made the same allowance.

At first sight it seems harsh on the part of the Transport Office to refuse permission for a prisoner at Welshpool to lodge with the postmistress of that place, but without doubt it had excellent reason to think that for purposes of escape as well as for carrying on an unsuspected correspondence, the post-office would be the very place for a prisoner to live at. Again, the forgery of documents was very extensively carried on by the prisoners, and in 1803 the parole agents were advised:

‘With respect to admitting prisoners of war at Parole we beg to observe that we think it proper to adhere to a regulation which from frequent abuses we found it absolutely necessary to adopt last war; namely, that no blank form of parole certificates be sent to the agents at the depots, but to transmit them to the Agents, properly filled up whenever their ranks shall have been ascertained at this office, from lists sent by the agents and from extracts from the Rôle d’Équipage of each vessel captured.’

Of course, the reason for this was that blank parole forms had been obtained by bribery, had been filled up, and that all sorts of undesirable and dangerous rascals got scattered among the parole places.

So long back as 1763 a complaint came from Dover that the Duc de Nivernois was in the habit of issuing passes to prisoners of war on parole in England to pass over to Calais and Boulogne as ordinary civilians, and further inquiry brought out the fact that he was not the only owner of a noble name who trafficked in documents which, if they do not come under the category of forgeries, were at any rate false.

In 1804 a letter from France addressed to a prisoner on parole at Tiverton was intercepted. It was found to contain a blank printed certificate, sealed and signed by the Danish vice-consul at Plymouth. Orders were at once issued that no more certificates from him were to be honoured, and he was accused of the act. He protested innocence, and requested that the matter should be examined, the results being that the documents were found to be forgeries.

Of course, the parole agents, that is to say, the men chosen to guard and minister to the wants of the prisoners in the parole towns, occupied important and responsible positions. At first the only qualifications required were that they should not be shopkeepers, but men fitted by their position and their personality to deal with prisoners who were officers, and therefore ipso facto, gentlemen. But during the later years of the great wars they were chosen exclusively from naval lieutenants of not less than ten years’ standing, a change brought about by complaints from many towns and from many prisoners that the agents were palpably underbred and tactless, and particularly perhaps by the representation of Captain Moriarty, the agent at Valleyfield near Edinburgh, and later at Perth, that ‘the men chosen were attorneys and shopkeepers for whom the French officers have no respect, so that the latter do just what they like’, urging that only Service men should occupy these posts.

The duties of the parole agent were to see that the prisoners under his charge fulfilled all the obligations of their parole, to muster them twice a week, to minister to their wants, to pay them their allowances, to act as their financial agents, to hear and adjust their complaints, to be, in fact, quite as much their guide, philosopher, and friend as their custodian. He had to keep a strict account of all receipts and payments, which he forwarded once a month to the Transport Office: he had to keep a constant watch on the correspondence of the prisoners, not merely seeing that they held and received none clandestinely, but that every letter was to pass the examination of the Transport Office; and his own correspondence was voluminous, for in the smallest parole places there were at least eighty prisoners, whilst in the larger, the numbers were close upon four hundred.

For all this the remuneration was 5 per cent. upon all disbursements for the subsistence of the prisoners with allowances for stationery and affidavits, and it may be very naturally asked how men could be found willing to do all this, in addition to their own callings, for such pay. The only answer is that men were not only willing but anxious to become parole agents because of the ‘pickings’ derivable from the office, especially in connexion with the collection and payment of remittances to prisoners. That these ‘pickings’ were considerable there can be no doubt, particularly as they were available from so many sources, and as the temptations were so many and so strong to accept presents for services rendered, or, what was more frequent, for duty left undone.

On the whole, and making allowance for the character of the age and the numberless temptations to which they were exposed, the agents of the parole towns seem to have done their hard and delicate work very fairly. No doubt in the process of gathering in their ‘pickings’ there was some sharp practice by them, and a few instances are recorded of criminal transactions, but a comparison between the treatment of French prisoners on parole in England and the English détenus in France certainly is not to our discredit.

The Transport Office seems to have been unremitting in its watchfulness on its agents, if we are to judge by the mass of correspondence which passed between the one and the others, and which deals so largely with minutiae and details that its consideration must have been by no means the least heavy of the duties expected from these gentlemen.

Mr. Tribe, Parole Agent at Hambledon, seems to have irritated his superiors much by the character of his letters, for in 1804 he is told:

‘As the person who writes your letters does not seem to know how to write English you must therefore in future write your own letters or employ another to write them who can write intelligibly.’

And again:

‘If you cannot really write more intelligibly you must employ a person to manage your correspondence in future, but you are not to suppose that he will be paid by us for his trouble.’

Spettigue, Parole Agent at Launceston, got into serious trouble in 1807 for having charged commissions to prisoners upon moneys paid to them, and was ordered to refund them. He was the only parole agent who was proved to have so offended.

Smith, Parole Agent at Thame, was rebuked in February, 1809, for having described aloud a prisoner about to be conveyed from Thame to Portsmouth under escort as a man of good character and a gentleman, the result being that the escort were put off their guard, and the prisoner escaped, Smith knowing all the time that the prisoner was the very reverse of his description, and that it was in consequence of his having obtained his parole by a ‘gross deception’, that he was being conveyed to the hulks at Portsmouth. However, Kermel, the prisoner, was recaptured.

Enchmarsh, Parole Agent at Tiverton, was reprimanded in July 1809 for having been concerned in the sale, by a prisoner, of a contraband article, and was reminded that it was against rules for an agent to have any mercantile transactions with prisoners.

Lewis, Parole Agent at Reading, was removed in June 1812, because when the dépôt doctor made his periodical round in order to select invalids to be sent to France, he tried to bribe Dr. Weir to pass General Joyeux, a perfectly sound man, as an invalid and so procure his liberation.

Powis, Parole Agent at Leek in Staffordshire, son of a neighbouring parson, was removed in the same year, having been accused of withholding moneys due to prisoners, and continually failing to send in his accounts.

On the other hand, Smith, the Agent at Thame, was blamed for having shown excessive zeal in his office by hiring people to hide and lie in wait to catch prisoners committing breaches of parole. Perhaps the Transport Office did not so much disapprove of his methods as un-English and mean, but they knew very well that the consequent fines and stoppages meant his emolument.

That parole agents found it as impossible to give satisfaction to everybody as do most people in authority is very clear from the following episodes in the official life of Mr. Crapper, the Parole Agent at Wantage in 1809, who was a chemist by trade, and who seems to have been in ill odour all round. The episodes also illustrate the keen sympathy with which in some districts the French officers on parole were regarded.

On behalf of the prisoners at Wantage, one Price, J.P., wrote of Crapper, that ‘being a low man himself, he assumes a power which I am sure is not to your wish, and which he is too ignorant to exercise’. It appears that two French officers, the generals Maurin and Lefebvre, had gone ten miles from Wantage—that is, nine miles beyond the parole limit—to dine with Sir John Throckmorton. Crapper did his duty and arrested the generals; they were leniently punished, as, instead of being sent to a prison or a hulk, they were simply marched off to Wincanton. The magistrates refused to support Crapper, but, despite another letter in favour of the generals by another J.P., Goodlake, who had driven them in his carriage to Throckmorton’s house, and who declared that Crapper had a hatred for him on account of some disagreement on the bench, the Transport Office defended their agent, and confirmed his action.

From J. E. Lutwyche, Surveyor of Taxes, in whose house the French generals lodged, the Transport Office received the following:

‘Gentlemen,

‘I beg leave to offer a few remarks respecting the French generals lately removed from Wantage. Generals Lefebvre and Maurin both lodged at my house. The latter always conducted himself with the greatest Politeness and Propriety, nor ever exceeded the limits or time prescribed by his parole until the arrival of General Lefebvre. Indeed he was not noticed or invited anywhere till then, nor did he at all seem to wish it, his time being occupied in endeavouring to perfect himself in the English language. When General Lefebvre arrived, he, being an object of curiosity and a man of considerable rank, was invited out, and of course General Maurin (who paid him great attention) with him, which certainly otherwise would never have been the case. General Lefebvre has certainly expressed himself as greatly dissatisfied with the way in which he had been taken, making use of the childish phrase of his being entrapped, and by his sullen manner and general conduct appeared as if he was not much inclined to observe the terms of his parole.’

Another anti-Crapperist writes:

‘Gentlemen,

‘I take this liberty in informing you that in case that the Prisoners of War residing here on Parole be not kept to stricter orders, that they will have the command of this Parish. They are out all hours of the night, they do almost as they have a mind to do: if a man is loaded ever so hard, he must turn out of the road for them, and if any person says anything he is reprimanded for it.

‘They have too much liberty a great deal.

‘I am, Gentlemen,

‘With a good wish to my King and Country,

‘A True Englishman.’

Another correspondent asserted that although Mr. Crapper complained of the generals’ breach of parole, he had the next week allowed thirty of the French prisoners to give a ball and supper to the little tradesmen of the town, which had been kept up till 3 a.m.

Crapper denied this, and said he had refused the application of the prisoners for a dance until 10 p.m., given at an inn to the ‘ladies of the town—the checked apron Ladies of Wantage’.

Yet another writer declared that Crapper was a drunkard, and drank with the prisoners. To this, Crapper replied that if they called on him as gentlemen, he was surely entitled to offer them hospitality. The same writer spoke of the French prisoners being often drunk in the streets, of Crapper fighting with them at the inns, and accused him of withholding money from them. Crapper, however, appears as Parole Agent for Wantage, with 340 prisoners in his charge, some time after all this.

I have given Crapper’s case at some length merely as an instance of what parole agents had to put up with, not as being unusual. Ponsford at Moreton-Hampstead, Smith at Thame, and Eborall at Lichfield, seem to have been provoked in much the same way by turbulent and defiant prisoners.

For very palpable reasons the authorities did not encourage close rapprochements between parole agents and the prisoners under their charge. At Tavistock in 1779, something wrong in the intercourse between Ford, the Agent, and his flock, had led to an order that not only should Ford be removed, but that certain prisoners should be sent to Launceston. Whereupon the said prisoners petitioned to be allowed to remain at Tavistock under Ford:

‘A qui nous sommes très sincèrement attachés, tant par les doux façons qu’il a scu toujours avoir pour nous, même en exécutant ses ordres, que par son honnêteté particulière et la bonne intelligence qu’il a soin de faire raigner autant qu’il est possible entre les différentes claces de personnes qui habitent cette ville et les prisonniers qu’y sont;—point sy essentiel et sy particulièrement bien ménagé jusqu’à ce jour.’

On the other hand, one Tarade, a prisoner, writes describing Ford as a ‘petit tyran d’Afrique’, and complains of him, evidently because he had refused Tarade a passport for France. Tarade alludes to the petition above quoted, and says that the subscribers to it belong to a class of prisoners who are better away. Another much-signed petition comes from dislikers of Ford who beg to be sent to Launceston, so we may presume from the action of the authorities in ordering Ford’s removal, that he was not a disinterested dispenser and withholder of favours.

In Scotland the agents seem generally to have been on very excellent terms with the prisoners in their charge, and some friendships were formed between captors and captives which did not cease with the release of the latter. Mr. Macbeth Forbes relates the following anecdote by way of illustration:

‘The late Mr. Romanes of Harryburn (whose father had been Agent at Lauder) says about M. Espinasse, for long a distinguished French teacher in Edinburgh, who was for some time a parole prisoner at Lauder: “When I was enrolled as a pupil with M. Espinasse some fifty years ago, he said: ‘Ah! your fader had me!’ supplying the rest of the sentence by planting the flat part of his right thumb into the palm of his left hand—‘Now I have you!’ repeating the operation. And when my father called to see M. Espinasse, he was quite put out by M. Espinasse seizing and hugging and embracing him, shouting excitedly: ‘Ah, mon Agent! mon Agent!’“’

Smith at Kelso, Nixon at Hawick, Romanes at Lauder, and Bell at Jedburgh, were all held in the highest esteem by the prisoners under them, and received many testimonials of it.

The following were the Parole Towns between 1803 and 1813:

CHAPTER XXII
PAROLE LIFE

The following descriptions of life in parole towns by French writers may not be entirely satisfactory to the reader who naturally wishes to get as correct an impression of it as possible, inasmuch as they are from the pens of men smarting under restrictions and perhaps a sense of injustice, irritated by ennui, by the irksomeness of confinement in places which as a rule do not seem to have been selected because of their fitness to administer to the joys of life, and by the occasional evidences of being among unfriendly people. But I hope to balance this in later chapters by the story of the paroled officers as seen by the captors.

The original French I have translated literally, except when it has seemed to me that translation would involve a sacrifice of terseness or force.

Listen to Lieutenant Gicquel des Touches, at Tiverton, after Trafalgar:

‘A pleasant little town, but which struck me as particularly monotonous after the exciting life to which I was accustomed. My pay, reduced by one-half, amounted to fifty francs a month, which had to satisfy all my needs at a time when the continental blockade had caused a very sensible rise in the price of all commodities.... I took advantage of my leisure hours to overhaul and complete my education. Some of my comrades of more literary bringing-up gave me lessons in literature and history, in return for which I taught them fencing, for which I always had much aptitude, and which I had always practised a good deal. The population was generally kindly disposed towards us; some of the inhabitants urging their interest in us so far as to propose to help me to escape, and among them a young and pretty Miss who only made one condition—that I should take her with me in my flight, and should marry her when we reached the Continent. It was not much trouble for me to resist these temptations, but it was harder to tear myself away from the importunities of some of my companions, who, not having the same ideas as I had about the sacredness of one’s word, would have forced me to escape with them.

‘Several succeeded: I say nothing about them, but I have often been astonished later at the ill-will they have borne me for not having done as they did.’

Gicquel was at Tiverton six years and was then exchanged.

A Freemasons’ Lodge, Enfants de Mars, was opened and worked at Tiverton about 1810, of which the first and only master was Alexander de la Motte, afterwards Languages Master at Blundell’s School. The Masons met in a room in Frog Street, now Castle Street, until, two of the officers on parole in the town escaping, the authorities prohibited the meetings. The Tyler of the Lodge, Rivron by name, remained in Tiverton after peace was made, and for many years worked as a slipper-maker. He had been an officer’s servant.

The next writer, the Baron de Bonnefoux, we have already met in the hulks. His reminiscences of parole life are among the most interesting I have come across, and are perhaps the more so because he has a good deal of what is nice and kind to say of us.

On his arrival in England in 1806, Bonnefoux was sent on parole to Thame in Oxfordshire. Here he occupied himself in learning English, Latin, and drawing, and in practising fencing. In the Mauritius, Bonnefoux and his shipmates had become friendly with a wealthy Englishman settled there under its French Government at l’Île de France. This gentleman came to Thame, rented the best house there for a summer, and continually entertained the French officer prisoners. The Lupton family, of one son and two daughters, the two Stratford ladies, and others, were also kind to them, whilst a metropolitan spirit was infused into the little society by the visits of a Miss Sophia Bode from London, so that with all these pretty, amiable girls the Baron managed to pass his unlimited leisure very pleasantly. On the other hand, there was an element of the population of Thame which bore a traditional antipathy to Frenchmen which it lost no opportunity of exhibiting. It was a manufacturing section, composed of outsiders, between whom and the natives an ill-feeling had long existed, and it was not long before our Baron came to an issue with them. One of these men pushed against Bonnefoux as he was walking in the town, and the Frenchman retaliated. Whereupon the Englishman called on his friends, who responded. Bonnefoux, on his side, called up his comrades, and a regular mêlée, in which sticks, stones, and fists were freely used, ensued, the immediate issue of which is not reported. Bonnefoux brought his assailant up before Smith, the Agent, who shuffled about the matter, and recommended the Baron to take it to Oxford, he in reality being in fear of the roughs. Bonnefoux expressed his disgust, Smith lost his temper, and raised his cane, in reply to which the Baron seized a poker. Bonnefoux complained to the Transport Office, the result of which was that he was removed to Odiham in Hampshire, after quite a touching farewell to his English friends and his own countrymen, receiving a souvenir of a lock of hair from ‘la jeune Miss Harriet Stratford aux beaux yeux bleus, au teint éblouissant, à la physionomie animée, à la taille divine’.

The populace of Odiham he found much pleasanter than that of Thame, and as the report of the part he had taken in the disturbance at Thame had preceded him, he was enthusiastically greeted. The French officers at Odiham did their best to pass the time pleasantly. They had a Philharmonic Society, a Freemasons’ Lodge, and especially a theatre to which the local gentry resorted in great numbers, Shebbeare, the Agent, being a good fellow who did all in his power to soften the lot of those in his charge, and was not too strict a construer of the laws and regulations by which they were bound.

Bonnefoux made friends everywhere; he seems to have been a light-hearted genial soul, and did not spare the ample private means he had in helping less fortunate fellow prisoners. For instance, a naval officer named Le Forsiney became the father of an illegitimate child. By English law he had to pay six hundred francs for the support of the child, or be imprisoned. Bonnefoux paid it for him.

In June 1807, an English friend, Danley, offered to take him to Windsor, quietly of course, as this meant a serious violation of parole rules. They had a delightful trip: Bonnefoux saw the king, and generally enjoyed himself, and got back to Odiham safely. He said nothing about this escapade until September, when he was talking of it to friends, and was overheard by a certain widow, who, having been brought up in France, understood the language, as she sat at her window above. Now this widow had a pretty nurse, Mary, to whom Bonnefoux was ‘attracted’, and happening to find an unsigned letter addressed to Mary, in which was: ‘To-morrow, I shall have the grief of not seeing you, but I shall see your king,’ she resolved upon revenge. A short time after, there appeared in a newspaper a paragraph to the effect that a foreigner with sinister projects had dared to approach the king at Windsor. The widow denounced Bonnefoux as the man alluded to: the Agent was obliged to examine the matter, the whole business of the trip to Windsor came out, and although Danley took all the blame on himself, and tried to shield Bonnefoux, the order came that the latter was at once to be removed to the hulks at Chatham.

In the meanwhile a somewhat romantic little episode had happened at Odiham. Among the paroled prisoners there was a lieutenant (Aspirant de première classe) named Rousseau, who had been taken in the fight between Admiral Duckworth and Admiral Leissegnes off San Domingo in February, 1806. His mother, a widow, was dying of grief for him, and Rousseau resolved to get to her, but would not break his parole by escaping from Odiham. So he wrote to the Transport Office that if he was not arrested and put on board a prison ship within eight days, he would consider his parole as cancelled, and would act accordingly, his resolution being to escape from any prison ship on which he was confined, which he felt sure he could do, and so save his parole. Accordingly, he was arrested and sent to Portsmouth.

Bonnefoux, pending his removal to Chatham, was kept under guard at the George in Odiham, but he managed to get out, hid for the night in a new ditch, and early the next morning went to a prisoner’s lodging-house in the outskirts of Odiham, and remained there three days. Hither came Sarah Cooper, daughter of a local pastry-cook, no doubt one of the dashing young sailor’s many chères amies. She had been informed of his whereabouts by his friends, and told him she would conduct him to Guildford.

The weather was very wet, and Sarah was in her Sunday best, but said that she did not mind the rain so long as she could see Bonnefoux. Says the latter:

‘Je dis alors à Sara que je pensais qu’il pleuvrait pendant la nuit. Elle répliqua que peu lui importait; enfin j’objectai cette longue course à pied, sa toilette et ses capotes blanches, car c’était un dimanche, et elle leva encore cette difficulté en prétendant qu’elle avait du courage et que dès qu’elle avait appris qu’elle pouvait me sauver elle n’avait voulu ni perdre une minute pour venir me chercher. . . . Je n’avais plus un mot à dire, car pendant qu’elle m’entraînait d’une de ses petites mains elle me fermait gracieusement la bouche.’

They reached Guildford at daybreak, and two carriages were hired, one to take Bonnefoux to London, the other to take Sarah back to Odiham. They parted with a tender farewell, Bonnefoux started, reached London safely, and put up at the Hôtel du Café de St. Paul.

In London he met a Dutchman named Vink, bound for Hamburg by the first vessel leaving, and bought his berth on the ship, but had to wait a month before anything sailed for Hamburg. He sailed, a fellow passenger being young Lord Onslow. At Gravesend, officers came on board on the search for Vink. Evidently Vink had betrayed him, for he could not satisfactorily account for his presence on the ship in accordance with the strict laws then in force about the embarkation of passengers for foreign ports; Bonnefoux was arrested, for two days was shut down in the awful hold of a police vessel, and was finally taken on board the Bahama at Chatham, and there met Rousseau, who had escaped from the Portsmouth hulk but had been recaptured in mid-Channel.

Bonnefoux remained on the Chatham hulk until June 1809, when he was allowed to go on parole to Lichfield. With him went Dubreuil, the rough privateer skipper whose acquaintance he made on the Bahama, and who was released from the prison ship because he had treated Colonel and Mrs. Campbell with kindness when he made them prisoners.

Dubreuil was so delighted with the change from the Bahama to Lichfield, that he celebrated it in a typical sailor fashion, giving a banquet which lasted three days at the best hotel in Lichfield, and roared forth the praises of his friend Bonnefoux:

De Bonnefoux nous sommes enchantés,

Nous allons boire à sa santé!

Parole life at Lichfield he describes as charming. There was a nice, refined local society, pleasant walks, cafés, concerts, réunions, and billiards. Bonnefoux preferred to mix with the artisan class of Lichfield society, admiring it the most in England, and regarding the middle class as too prejudiced and narrow, the upper class as too luxurious and proud. He says:

‘Il est difficile de voir rien de plus agréable à l’œil que les réunions des jeunes gens des deux sexes lois [sic] des foires et des marchés.’

Eborall, the Agent at Lichfield, the Baron calls a splendid chap: so far from binding them closely to their distance limit, he allowed the French officers to go to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, to the races at Lichfield, and even to Birmingham. Catalini came to sing at Lichfield, and Bonnefoux went to hear her with Mary Aldrith, his landlord’s daughter, and pretty Nancy Fairbrother.

And yet Bonnefoux resolved to escape. There came on ‘business’ to Lichfield, Robinson and Stevenson, two well-known smuggler escape-agents, and they made the Baron an offer which he accepted. He wrote, however, to the Transport Office, saying that his health demanded his return to France, and engaging not to serve against England.

With another naval officer, Colles, he got away successfully by the aid of the smugglers and their agents, and reached Rye in Sussex. Between them they paid the smugglers one hundred and fifty guineas. At Rye they found another escaped prisoner in hiding, the Captain of the Diomède, and he added another fifty guineas. The latter was almost off his head, and nearly got them caught through his extraordinary behaviour. However, on November 28, 1809, they reached Boulogne after a bad passage.

Robinson with his two hundred guineas bought contraband goods in France and ran them over to England. Stevenson was not so lucky, for a little later he was caught at Deal with an escaped prisoner, was fined five hundred guineas, and in default of payment was sent to Botany Bay.

General d’Henin was one of the French generals who were taken at San Domingo in 1803. He was sent on parole to Chesterfield in Derbyshire, and, unlike several other officers who shared his fate, was most popular with the inhabitants through his pleasing address and manner. He married whilst in Chesterfield a Scots lady of fortune, and for some years resided with her at Spital Lodge, the house of the Agent, Mr. Bower. He and Madame d’Henin returned to Paris in 1814, and he fought at Waterloo, where his leg was torn off by a cannon shot.

His residence in England seems to have made him somewhat of an Anglophile, for in Horne’s History of Napoleon he is accused of favouring the British at Waterloo, and it was actually reported to Napoleon by a dragoon that he ‘harangued the men to go over to the enemy’. This, it was stated, was just before the cannon shot struck him.

From Chesterfield, d’Henin wrote to his friend General Boyer at Montgomery, under date October 30, 1804. After a long semi-religious soliloquy, in which he laments his position but supposes it to be as Pangloss says, that ‘all is for the best in this best of worlds’, he speaks of his bad health, of his too short stay at ‘Harrowgate’ (from which health resort, by the way, he had been sent, for carrying on correspondence under a false name), of his religious conversion, and of his abstemious habits, and finishes:

‘Rien de nouveau. Toujours la même vie, triste, maussade, ennuyeuse, déplaisante et sans fin, quand finira-t-elle? Il fait ici un temps superbe, de la pluie, depuis le matin jusqu’au soir, et toujours de la pluie, et du brouillard pour changer. Vie de soldat! Vie de chien!’

All the same, it is consoling to learn from the following letters written by French officers on parole to their friends, that compulsory exile in England was not always the intolerable punishment which so many authors of reminiscences would have us believe. Here is one, for instance, written from a prisoner on parole at Sevenoaks to a friend at Tenterden, in 1757:

‘I beg you to receive my congratulations upon having been sent into a country so rich in pretty girls: you say they are unapproachable, but it must be consoling to you to know that you possess the trick of winning the most unresponsive hearts, and that one of your ordinary looks attracts the fair; and this assures me of your success in your secret affairs: it is much more difficult to conquer the middle-class sex.... Your pale beauty has been very ill for some weeks, the reason being that she has overheated herself dancing at a ball with all the Frenchmen with whom she has been friendly for a certain time, which has got her into trouble with her mother.... Roussel has been sent to the “Castle” (Sissinghurst) nine days ago, it is said for having loved too well the Sevenoaks girls, and had two in hand which cost him five guineas, which he had to pay before going. Will you let me know if the country is suitable for you, how many French there are, and if food and lodgings are dear?

‘To Mr. Guerdon. A French surgeon on parole at Tenterden.’

The next is from a former prisoner, then living at Dunkirk, to Mrs. Miller at the Post Office, Leicester, dated 1757. Note the spelling and punctuation:

‘Madame,—

Vous ne scaurié croire quell plaisire j’ai de m’entretenir avec vous mon cœur ne peut s’acoutumer à vivre sans vous voire. Je nait pas encore rencontré notre chère compagnon de voyage. Ne m’oublié point, ma chère Elizabeth vous pouvé estre persuadé du plaisire que j’auré en recevant de vos nouvelles. Le gros Loys se porte bien il doit vous écrire aussi qu’à Madame Covagne. Si vous voye Mrs. Nancy donne luy un baisé pour moy’.

A prisoner writes from Alresford to a friend in France:

‘I go often to the good Mrs. Smith’s. Miss Anna is at present here. She sent me a valentine yesterday. I go there sometimes to take tea where Henrietta and Betsi Wynne are. We played at cards, and spent the pleasantest evening I have ever passed in England.’

A Captain Quinquet, also at Alresford, thus writes to his sister at Avranches:

‘We pass the days gaily with the Johnsons, daughters and brother, and I am sure you are glad to hear that we are so happy. Come next Friday! Ah! If that were possible, what a surprise! On that day we give a grand ball to celebrate the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of papa and mamma. There will be quite twenty people, and I flatter myself we shall enjoy ourselves thoroughly, and if by chance on that day a packet of letters should arrive from you—Mon Dieu! What joy!’

He adds, quite in the style of a settled local gossip, scraps of news, such as that Mrs. Jarvis has a daughter born; that poor Mr. Jack Smith is dead; that Colonel Lewis’s wife, a most amiable woman, will be at the ball; that Miss Kimber is going to be married; that dear little Emma learns to speak French astonishingly well; that Henrietta Davis is quite cured from her illness, and so forth.

There is, in fact, plenty of evidence that the French officers found the daughters of Albion very much to their liking. Many of them married and remained in England after peace was declared, leaving descendants who may be found at this day, although in many cases the French names have become anglicized.

In Andover to-day the names of Jerome and Dugay tell of the paroled Frenchmen who were here between 1810 and 1815, whilst, also at Andover, ‘Shepherd’ Burton is the grandson of Aubertin, a French prisoner.

At Chesterfield (Mr. Hawkesly Edmunds informs me), the names of Jacques and Presky still remain.

Robins and Jacques and Etches are names which still existed in Ashbourne not many years ago, their bearers being known to be descended from French prisoners there.

At Odiham, Alfred Jauréguiberry, second captain of the Austerlitz privateer, married a Miss Chambers. His son, Admiral Jauréguiberry, described as a man admirable in private as in public life, was in command of the French Squadron which came over to Portsmouth on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Naval Review in 1887, and he found time to call upon an English relative.

Louis Hettet, a prisoner on parole at Bishop’s Castle, Montgomeryshire, in 1814, married Mary Morgan. The baptism of a son, Louis, is recorded in the Bishop’s Castle register, March 6, 1815. The father left for France after the Peace of 1814; Mrs. Hettet declined to go, and died at Bishop’s Castle not many years ago. The boy was sent for and went to France.

Mrs. Lucy Louisa Morris, who died at Oswestry in 1908, aged 83, was the second daughter of Lieutenant Paris, of the French Navy, a prisoner on parole at Oswestry.

In 1886 Thomas Benchin, descendant of a French prisoner at Oswestry, died at Clun, in Shropshire, where his son is, or was lately, living. Benchin was famed for his skill in making toys and chip-wood ornaments.

Robinot, a prisoner on parole at Montgomery, married, in June 1807, a Miss Andrews, of Buckingham.

At Wantage, in 1817, General de Gaja, formerly a prisoner on parole, married a grand-daughter of the first Duke of Leicester, and his daughter married, in 1868, the Rev. Mr. Atkinson, vicar of East Hendred.

At Thame, François Robert Boudin married Miss Bone, by banns, in 1813; in the same year Jacques Ferrier married Mary Green by banns; Prévost de la Croix married Elizabeth Hill by licence; and in 1816 Louis-Amédée Comte married Mary Simmons, also by licence. All the bridegrooms were or had been prisoners on parole.

In the register of Leek I find that J. B. B. Delisle, Commandant of the port of Caen, married Harriet Sheldon; François Néan married Mary Lees, daughter of the landlord of the Duke of York; Sergeant Paymaster Pierre Magnier married Frances Smith, who died in 1874, aged 84; Joseph Vattel, cook to General Brunet, married Sarah Pilsbury. Captains Toufflet and Chouquet left sons who were living in Leek in 1880 and 1870 respectively, and Jean Mien, servant to General Brunet, was in Leek in 1870.

Notices of other marriages—at Wincanton, for instance—will be found elsewhere.

Against those who married English girls and honourably kept to them, must, however, be placed a long list of Frenchmen who, knowing well that in France such marriages were held invalid, married English women, and basely deserted them on their own return to France, generally leaving them with children and utterly destitute. The correspondence of the Transport Office is full of warnings to girls who have meditated marriage with prisoners, but who have asked advice first. As to the subsistence of wives and children of prisoners, the law was that if the latter were not British subjects, their subsistence was paid by the British Government, otherwise they must seek Parish relief. In one of the replies the Transport Office quotes the case of Madame Berton, an Englishwoman who had married Colonel Berton, a prisoner on parole at Chesterfield, and was permitted to follow her husband after his release and departure for France, but who, with a son of nineteen months old, on arrival there, was driven back in great want and distress by the French Government.

In contrast with the practice of the British Government in paying for the subsistence of the French wives and children of prisoners of war, is that of the French Government as described in the reply of the Transport Office in 1813 to a Mrs. Cumming with a seven-year-old child, who applied to be allowed a passage to Morlaix in order to join her husband, a prisoner on parole at Longwy:

‘The Transport Office is willing to grant you a passage by Cartel to Morlaix, but would call your attention to the situation you will be placed in, on your arrival in France, provided your husband has not by his means or your own the power of maintaining you in France, as the French Government make no allowance whatever to wives and children belonging to British prisoners of war, and this Government has no power to relieve their wants. Also to point out that Longwy is not an open Parole Town like the Parole Towns in England, but is walled round, and the prisoners are not allowed to proceed beyond the walls, so that any resources derivable from your own industry appears to be very uncertain.’

The Transport Office were constantly called upon to adjudicate upon such matters as this:

‘In 1805, Colonel de Bercy, on parole at Thame, was “in difficulty” about a girl being with child by him. The Office declined to interfere, but said that if the Colonel could not give sufficient security that mother and child should not be a burden upon the rates, he must be imprisoned until he did.’

By a rule of the French Government, Englishwomen who had already lived in France with their husbands there as prisoners of war could not return to France if once they left it. This was brought about by some English officers’ wives taking letters with them on their return from England, and, although as a matter of policy it could not be termed tyrannical, it was the cause naturally of much distress and even of calamity.

The next account of parole life in England is by Louis Garneray, the marine painter, whose description of life on the hulks may be remembered as being the most vivid and exact of any I have given.

After describing his rapture at release from the hulk at Portsmouth and his joyous anticipation of comparative liberty ashore, Garneray says:

‘When I arrived in 1811 under escort at the little village (Bishop’s Waltham in Hampshire) which had been assigned to me as a place of residence, I saw with some disillusion that more than 1,200 [sic] French of all ranks [sic] had for their accommodation nothing but some wretched, tumble-down houses which the English let to them at such an exorbitant price that a year’s rent meant the price of the house itself. As for me, I managed to get for ten shillings a week, not a room, but the right to place my bed in a hut where already five officers were.’

The poor fellow was up at five and dressed the next morning:

‘What are you going to do?’ asked one of my room mates. ‘I’m going to breathe the morning air and have a run in the fields,’ I replied.

‘Look out, or you’ll be arrested.’

‘Arrested! Why?’

‘Because we are not allowed to leave the house before six o’clock.’

Garneray soon learned about the hours of going out and coming in, about the one-mile limit along the high road, that a native finding a prisoner beyond the limit or off the main road had not only the right to knock him down but to receive a guinea for doing so. He complained that the only recreations were walking, painting, and reading, for the Government had discovered that concerts, theatricals, and any performances which brought the prisoners and the natives together encouraged familiarity between the two peoples and corrupted morals, and so forbade them. Garneray then described how he came to break his parole and to escape from Bishop’s Waltham.

He with two fellow-prisoner officers went out one hot morning with the intention of breakfasting at a farm about a mile along the high road. Intending to save a long bit they cut across by a field path. Garneray stumbled and hurt his foot and so got behind his companions. Suddenly, hearing a cry, he saw a countryman attack his friends with a bill-hook, wound one of them on the arm, and kill the other, who had begun to expostulate with him, with two terrible cuts on the head. Garneray, seizing a stick, rushed up, and the peasant ran off, leaving him with the two poor fellows, one dead and the other badly wounded. He then saw the man returning at the head of a crowd of countrymen, armed with pitchforks and guns, and made up his mind that his turn had come. However, he explained the situation, and had the satisfaction of seeing that the crowd sided with him against their brutal compatriot. They improvised a litter and carried the two victims back to the cantonment, whilst the murderer quietly returned to his work.

When the extraordinary brutality of the attack and its unprovoked nature became known, such indignation was felt among the French officers in the cantonment that they drew up a remonstrance to the British Government, with the translation of which into English Garneray was entrusted. Whilst engaged in this a rough-mannered stranger called on him and warned him that he had best have nothing to do with the remonstrance.

He took the translated document to his brother officers, and on his way back a little English girl of twelve years quietly and mysteriously signed to him to follow her. He did so to a wretched cottage, wherein lived the grandmother of the child. Garneray had been kind to the poor old woman and had painted the child’s portrait for nothing, and in return she warned him that the constables were going to arrest him. Garneray determined to escape.

He got away from Bishop’s Waltham and was fortunate enough to get an inside place in a night coach, the other places being occupied by an English clergyman, his wife, and daughter. Miss Flora soon recognized him as an escaped prisoner and came to his rescue when, at a halting place, the coach was searched for a runaway from Bishop’s Waltham. Eventually he reached Portsmouth, where he found a good English friend of his prison-ship days, and with him he stayed in hiding for nearly a year, until April 1813.

Longing to return to France, he joined with three recently-escaped French officers in an arrangement with smugglers—the usual intermediaries in these escapes—to take them there. To cut short a long story of adventure and misadventure, such as we shall have in plenty when we come to that part of this section which deals with the escapes of paroled prisoners, Garneray and his companions at last embarked with the smugglers at an agreed price of £10 each.

The smugglers turned out to be rascals; and a dispute with them about extra charges ended in a mid-Channel fight, during which one of the smugglers was killed. Within sight of the French coast the British ship Victory captured them, and once more Garneray found himself in the cachot of the Portsmouth prison-ship Vengeance.

Garneray was liberated by the Treaty of Paris in 1814, after nine years’ captivity. He was then appointed Court Marine Painter to Louis XVIII, and received the medal of the Legion of Honour.

The Marquis d’Hautpol was taken prisoner at Arapiles, badly wounded, in July 1812, and with some four hundred other prisoners was landed at Portsmouth on December 12, and thence sent on parole to ‘Brigsnorth, petite ville de la Principauté de Galles’, clearly meant for Bridgnorth in Shropshire. Here, he says, were from eight to nine hundred other prisoners, some of whom had been there eight or nine years, but certainly he must have been mistaken, for at no parole place were ever more than four hundred prisoners. The usual rules obtained here, and the allowance was the equivalent of one franc fifty centimes a day.

Wishing to employ his time profitably he engaged a fellow-prisoner to teach him English, to whom he promised a salary as soon as he should receive his remittances. A letter from his brother-in-law told him that his sisters, believing him dead, as they had received no news from him, had gone into mourning, and enclosed a draft for 4,000 francs, which came through the bankers Perregaux of Paris and ‘Coutz’ of London. He complains bitterly of the sharp practices of the local Agent, who paid him his 4,000 francs, but in paper money, which was at the time at a discount of twenty-five per cent, and who, upon his claiming the difference, ‘me répondit fort insolemment que le papier anglais valait autant que l’or français, et que si je me permettais d’attaquer encore le crédit de la banque, il me ferait conduire aux pontons’. So he had to accept the situation.

The Marquis, as we shall see, was not the man to invent such an accusation, so it may be believed that the complaints so often made about the unfair practice of the British Government, in the matter of moneys due to prisoners, were not without foundation. The threat of the Agent to send the Marquis to the hulks if he persisted in claiming his dues, may have been but a threat, but it sounds as if these gentlemen were invested with very great powers. The Marquis and a fellow prisoner, Dechevrières, adjutant of the 59th, messed together, modestly, but better than the other poorer men, who clubbed together and bought an ox head, with which they made soup and ate with potatoes.

A cousin of the Marquis, the Comtesse de Béon, knew a Miss Vernon, one of the Queen’s ladies of honour, and she introduced the Marquis to Lord ‘Malville’, whose seat was near Bridgnorth, and who invited him to the house. I give d’Hautpol’s impression in his own words:

‘Ce lord était poli, mais, comme tous les Anglais, ennemi mortel de la France. J’étais humilié de ses prévenances qui sentaient la protection. Je revins cependant une seconde fois chez lui; il y avait ce jour-là nombreuse compagnie; plusieurs officiers anglais s’y trouvaient. Sans égards pour ma position et avec une certaine affectation, ils se mirent à déblatérer en français contre l’Empereur et l’armée. Je me levai de table indigné, et demandai à Lord Malville la permission de me retirer; il s’efforce de me retenir en blâmant ses compatriotes, mais je persistai. Je n’acceptai plus d’invitations chez lui.’

All good news from the seat of war, says the Marquis, was carefully hidden from the prisoners, so that they heard nothing about Lützen, Bautzen, and Dresden. But the news of Leipsic was loudly proclaimed. The prisoners could not go out of doors without being insulted. One day the people dressed up a figure to represent Bonaparte, put it on a donkey, and paraded the town with it. Under the windows of the lodging of General Veiland, who had been taken at Badajos, of which place he was governor, they rigged up a gibbet, hung the figure on it, and afterwards burned it.

At one time a general uprising of the prisoners of war in England was seriously discussed. There were in Britain 5,000 officers on parole, and 60,000 men on the hulks and in prisons. The idea was to disarm the guards all at once, to join forces at a given point, to march on Plymouth, liberate the men on the hulks, and thence go to Portsmouth and do the same there. But the authorities became suspicious, the generals were separated from the other officers, and many were sent to distant cantonments. The Marquis says that there were 1,500 at Bridgnorth, and that half of these were sent to Oswestry. This was in November, 1813.

So to Oswestry d’Hautpol was sent. From Oswestry during his stay escaped three famous St. Malo privateer captains. After a terrible journey of risks and privations they reached the coast—he does not say where—and off it they saw at anchor a trading vessel of which nearly all the crew had come ashore. In the night the prisoners swam out, with knives in their mouths, and boarded the brig. They found a sailor sleeping on deck; him they stabbed, and also another who was in the cabin. They spared the cabin boy, who showed them the captain’s trunks, with the contents of which they dressed themselves. Then they cut the cable, hoisted sail and made off—all within gunshot of a man-of-war. They reached Morlaix in safety, although pursued for some distance by a man-of-war. The brig was a valuable prize, for she had just come from the West Indies, and was richly laden. This the Frenchmen at Oswestry learned from the English newspapers, and they celebrated the exploit boisterously.

Just after this the Marquis received a letter from Miss Vernon, in which she said that if he chose to join the good Frenchmen who were praying for restoration of the Bourbons, she would get him a passport which would enable him to join Louis XVIII at Hartwell. To this the Marquis replied that he had been made prisoner under the tricolour, that he was still in the Emperor’s service, and that for the moment he had no idea of changing his flag, adding that rather than do this he preferred to remain a prisoner. Miss Vernon did not write again on this topic until the news came of the great events of 1814—the victories of the British at San Sebastian, Pampeluna, the Bidassoa, the Adur, Orthez and Toulouse, when she wrote:

‘I hope that now you have no more scruples; I send you a passport for London; come and see me, for I shall be delighted to renew our acquaintance.’

He accepted the offer, went to London, and found Miss Vernon lodged in St. James’s Palace. Here she got apartments for him; he was fêted and lionized and taken to see the sights of London in a royal carriage. At Westminster Hall he was grieved to see the eagle of the 39th regiment, taken during the retreat from Portugal, and that of the 101st, taken at Arapiles. Then he returned to France.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE PRISONERS ON PAROLE IN SCOTLAND

With the great Scottish prisons at Perth, Valleyfield, and Edinburgh I have dealt elsewhere, and it is with very particular pleasure that I shall now treat of the experiences of prisoners in the parole towns of Scotland, for the reason that, almost without exception, our involuntary visitors seem to have been treated with a kindness and forbearance not generally characteristic of the reception they had south of the Tweed, although of course there were exceptions.

As we shall see, Sir Walter Scott took kindly notice of the foreigners quartered in his neighbourhood, but that he never lost sight of the fact that they were foreigners and warriors is evident from the following letter to Lady Abercorn, dated May 3, 1812:

‘I am very apprehensive of the consequences of a scarcity at this moment, especially from the multitude of French prisoners who are scattered through the small towns in this country; as I think, very improvidently. As the peace of this county is intrusted to me, I thought it necessary to state to the Justice Clerk that the arms of the local militia were kept without any guard in a warehouse in Kelso; that there was nothing to prevent the prisoners there, at Selkirk, and at Jedburgh, from joining any one night, and making themselves masters of this dépôt: that the sheriffs of Roxburgh and Selkirk, in order to put down such a commotion, could only command about three troops of yeomanry to be collected from a great distance, and these were to attack about 500 disciplined men, who, in the event supposed, would be fully provided with arms and ammunition, and might, if any alarm should occasion the small number of troops now at Berwick to be withdrawn, make themselves masters of that sea-port, the fortifications of which, although ruinous, would serve to defend them until cannon was brought against them.’

The Scottish towns where prisoners of war on parole were quartered, of which I have been able to get information, are Cupar, Kelso, Selkirk, Peebles, Sanquhar, Dumfries, Melrose, Jedburgh, Hawick, and Lauder.

By the kind permission of Mrs. Keddie (‘Sarah Tytler’) I am able to give very interesting extracts from her book, Three Generations: The Story of a Middle-Class Scottish Family, referring to the residence of the prisoners at Cupar, and the friendly intercourse between them and Mrs. Keddie’s grandfather, Mr. Henry Gibb, of Balass, Cupar.

‘Certainly the foreign officers were made curiously welcome in the country town, which their presence seemed to enliven rather than to offend. The strangers’ courageous endurance, their perennial cheerfulness, their ingenious devices to occupy their time and improve the situation, aroused much friendly interest and amusement. The position must have been rendered more bearable to the sufferers, and perhaps more respectable in the eyes of the spectators, from the fact, for which I am not able to account, that, undoubtedly, the prisoners had among themselves, individually and collectively, considerable funds.

‘The residents treated the jetsam and flotsam of war with more than forbearance, with genuine liberality and kindness, receiving them into their houses on cordial terms. Soon there was not a festivity in the town at which the French prisoners were not permitted—nay, heartily pressed to attend. How the complacent guests viewed those rejoicings in which the natives, as they frequently did, commemorated British victories over the enemy is not on record.

‘But there was no thought of war and its fierce passions among the youth of the company in the simple dinners, suppers, and carpet-dances in private houses. There were congratulations on the abundance of pleasant partners, and the assurance that no girl need now sit out a dance or lack an escort if her home was within a certain limited distance beyond which the prisoners were not at liberty to stray.

‘I have heard my mother and a cousin of hers dwell on the courtesy and agreeableness of the outlanders—what good dancers, what excellent company, as the country girls’ escorts.... As was almost inevitable, the natural result of such intimacy followed, whether or not it was acceptable to the open-hearted entertainers. Love and marriage ensued between the youngsters, the vanquished and the victors. A Colonel, who was one of the band, married a daughter of the Episcopal clergyman in the town, and I am aware of at least two more weddings which eventually took place between the strangers and the inhabitants. (These occurred at the end of the prisoners’ stay.)’

Balass, where the Gibbs lived, was within parole limits. One day Gibb asked the whole lot of the prisoners to breakfast, and forgot to tell Mrs. Gibb that he had done so.

‘Happily she was a woman endowed with tranquillity of temper, while the ample resources of an old bountiful farmhouse were speedily brought to bear on the situation, dispensed as they were by the fair and capable henchwomen who relieved the mistress of the house of the more arduous of her duties. There was no disappointment in store for the patient, ingenious gentlemen who were wont to edify and divert their nominal enemy by making small excursions into the fields to snare larks for their private breakfast-tables.

‘Another generous invitation of my grandfather’s ran a narrow risk of having a tragic end. Not all his sense of the obligation of a host nor his compassion for the misfortunes of a gallant foe could at times restrain race antagonism, and his intense mortification at any occurrence which would savour of national discomfiture. Once, in entertaining some of these foreign officers, among whom was a maître d’armes, Harry Gibb was foolish enough to propose a bout of fencing with the expert. It goes without saying that within the first few minutes the yeoman’s sword was dexterously knocked out of his hand.... Every other consideration went down before the deadly insult. In less time than it takes to tell the story the play became grim earnest. My grandfather turned his fists on the other combatant, taken unawares and not prepared for the attack, sprang like a wild-cat at his throat, and, if the bystanders had not interposed and separated the pair, murder might have been committed under his own roof by the kindest-hearted man in the countryside.’

This increasing intimacy between the prisoners and the inhabitants displeased the Government, and the crisis came when, in return for the kindness shown them, the prisoners determined to erect a theatre:

‘The French prisoners were suffered to play only once in their theatre, and then the rout came for them. Amidst loud and sincere lamentation from all concerned, the officers were summarily removed in a body, and deposited in a town at some distance ... from their former guardians. As a final gage d’amitié ... the owners of the theatre left it a a gift to the town.’

Later—in the ‘thirties—this theatre was annexed to the Grammar School to make extra class-rooms, for it was an age when Scotland was opposed to theatres.

Kelso[[14]]

For some of the following notes, I am indebted to the late Mr. Macbeth Forbes, who helped me notably elsewhere, and who kindly gave me permission to use them.

Some of the prisoners on parole at Kelso were sailors, but the majority were soldiers from Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies, and about twenty Sicilians. The inhabitants gave them a warm welcome, hospitably entertained them, and in return the prisoners, many of whom were men of means, gave balls at the inns—the only establishments in these pre-parish hall days where accommodation for large parties could be had—at which they appeared gaily attired with wondrous frills to their shirts, and white stockings.

‘The time of their stay’, says Mr. Forbes, ‘was the gayest that Kelso had ever seen since fatal Flodden.’

Here as elsewhere there were artists among them who painted miniatures and landscapes and gave lessons, plaiters of straw and manufacturers of curious beautiful articles in coloured straw, wood-carvers, botanists, and fishermen. These last, it is said, first introduced the sport of catching fish through holes in the ice in mid-winter. Billiards, also, are said to have been introduced into Scotland by the prisoners. They mostly did their own cooking, and it is noted that they spoiled some of the landladies’ tables by chopping up frogs for fricassees. They bought up the old Kelso ‘theatre’, the occasional scene of action for wandering Thespians, which was in a close off the Horse-Market, rebuilt and decorated it, some of the latter work still being visible in the ceiling of the ironmongery store of to-day. One difficulty was the very scanty dressing accommodation, so the actors often dressed at home, and their passage therefrom to the theatre in all sorts of garbs was a grand opportunity for the gibes of the youth of Kelso. Kelso was nothing if not ‘proper’, so that when upon one occasion the postmistress, a married woman, was seen accompanying a fantastically arrayed prisoner-actor to the theatre from his lodging, Mrs. Grundy had much to say for some time. On special occasions, such as when the French play was patronized by a local grandee like the Duchess of Roxburgh, the streets were carpeted with red cloth.

Brément, a privateer officer, advertised: ‘Mr. Brément, Professor of Belles-Lettres and French Prisoner of War, respectfully informs the ladies and gentlemen of Kelso that he teaches the French and Latin languages. Apply for terms at Mrs. Matheson’s, near the Market Place.’ He is said to have done well.

Many of the privateersmen spoke English, as might be expected from their constant intercourse with men and places in the Channel.

One prisoner here was suspected of being concerned with the manufacture of forged bank-notes, so rife at this time in Scotland, as he ordered of Archibald Rutherford, stationer, paper of a particular character of which he left a pattern.

Escapes were not very frequent. On July 25, 1811, Surgeon-Major Violland, of the Hebe corvette, escaped. So did Ensign Parnagan, of the Hautpol privateer, on August 5, and on 23rd of the same month Lieutenant Rossignol got away. On November 11 one Bouchart escaped, and in June 1812 Lieutenant Anglade was missing, and a year later several got off, assisted, it was said, by an American, who was arrested.

In November 1811 the removal of all ‘midshipmen’ to Valleyfield, which was ordered at all Scottish parole towns, took place from Kelso.

Lieutenant Journeil, of the 27th Regiment, committed suicide in September 1812 by swallowing sulphuric acid. He is said to have become insane from home-sickness. He was buried at the Knowes, just outside the churchyard, it being unconsecrated ground.

A Captain Levasseur married an aunt of Sir George Harrison, M.P., a former Provost of Edinburgh, and the Levasseurs still keep up correspondence with Scotland.

On May 24, 1814, the prisoners began to leave, and by the middle of June all had gone. The Kelso Mail said that ‘their deportment had been uniformly conciliatory and respectable’.

In Fullarton’s Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland we read that:

‘From November 1810 to June 1814, Kelso was the abode of a body, never more than 230 in number, of foreign prisoners of war, who, to a very noticeable degree, inoculated the place with their fashionable follies, and even, in some instances tainted it with their laxity of morals.’

Another account says:

‘Their stay here seems to have been quiet and happy, although one man committed suicide. They carried on the usual manufactures in wood and bone and basket work; gave performances in the local theatre, which was decorated by them; were variously employed by local people, one man devoting his time to the tracking and snaring of a rare bird which arrived during severe weather.’

Rutherford’s Southern Counties Register and Directory for 1866 says:

‘The older inhabitants of Kelso remember the French prisoners of war quartered here as possessed of many amiable qualities, of which “great mannerliness” and buoyancy of spirits, in many instances under the depressing effects of great poverty, were the most conspicuous of their peculiarities; the most singular to the natives of Kelso was their habit of gathering for use different kinds of wild weeds by the road side, and hedge-roots, and killing small birds to eat—the latter a practise considered not much removed from cannibalism. That they were frivolous we will admit, as many of them wore ear-rings, and one, a Pole, had a ring to his nose; while all were boyishly fond of amusement, and were merry, good-natured creatures.’

One memorable outbreak of these spirits is recorded in the Kelso Mail of January 30, 1812:

‘In consequence of certain riotous proceedings which took place in this town near the East end of the Horn Market on Christmas last, by which the peace of the neighbourhood was very much disturbed, an investigation of the circumstances took place before our respectable magistrate, Bailie Smith. From this it appeared that several of the French prisoners of war here on parole had been dining together on Christmas Day, and that a part of them were engaged in the riotous proceedings.’

These ‘riotous proceedings’ are said to have amounted to little more than a more or less irregular arm-in-arm procession down the street to the accompaniment of lively choruses. However, the Agent reported it to the Transport Office, who ordered each prisoner to pay £1 1s. fine, to be deducted from their allowance. The account winds up:

‘It is only an act of justice, however, to add that in so far as we have heard, the conduct of the French prisoners here on parole has been regular and inoffensive.’

On the anniversary of St. Andrew in 1810, the Kelso Lodge of Freemasons was favoured with a visit from several French officers, prisoners of war, at present resident in the town. The Right Worshipful in addressing them, expressed the wishes of himself and the Brethren to do everything in their power to promote the comfort and happiness of the exiles. After which he proposed the health of the Brethren who were strangers in a foreign land, which was drunk with enthusiastic applause.

There is frequent mention of their appearance at Masonic meetings, when the ‘harmony was greatly increased by the polite manners and the vocal power of our French Brethren’.

There are a great many of their signatures on the parchment to which all strangers had to subscribe their names by order of the Grand Lodge.[[15]]

The only war-prisoner relics in the museum are some swords.

I have to thank Sir George Douglas for the following interesting letters from French prisoners in Kelso.

The first is in odd Latin, the second in fair English, the third in French. The two latter I am glad to give as additional testimonies to the kindly treatment of the enforced exiles amongst us.

The first is as follows:

‘Kelso: die duodecima mensis Augusti anni 1811.

‘Honorifice Praefecte:

‘Monitum te facio, hoc mane, die duodecima mensis Augusti, hora decima et semi, per vicum transeuntem vestimenta mea omnino malefacta fuisse cum aqua tam foetida ac mulier quae jactavit illam.

‘Noxia mulier quae vestimenta mea, conceptis verbis, abluere noluit, culpam insulsitate cumulando, uxor est domino Wm. Stuart Lanio [Butcher?]

‘Ut persuasum mihi est hanc civitatem optimis legibus nimis constitutam esse ut ille eventus impunitus feratur, de illo certiorem te facio, magnifice Praefecte, ut similis casus iterum non renovetur erga captivos Gallos, quorum tu es curator, et, occurente occasione, defensor.

‘Quandoquidem aequitas tua non mihi soli sed cunctis plane nota est, spe magna nitor te jus dicturam expostulationi meae, cogendo praedictam mulierem et quamprimum laventur vestimenta mea. In ista expectatione gratam habeas salutationem illius qui mancipio et nexo, honoratissime praefecte, tuus est.

‘Matrien.

‘Honorato, Honoratissimo Domino Smith,

‘Captivorum Gallorum praefecto. Kelso.’

The gist of the above being that Mrs. Stuart threw dirty water over M. Matrien as he passed along the street in Kelso, and he demands her punishment and the cleansing of his clothes.

The second letter runs:

‘Paris, on the 6th day of May, 1817.

‘Dear Sir,

‘I have since I left Kelso wrote many letters to my Scots friends, but I have been unfortunate enough to receive no answer. The wandering life I have led during four years is, without doubt, the cause of that silence, for my friends have been so good to me that I cannot imagine they have entirely forgotten me. In all my letters my heart has endeavoured to prove how thankful I was, but my gratitude is of that kind that one may feel but cannot express. Pray, my good Sir, if you remember yet your prisonner, be so kind as to let him have a few lignes from you and all news about all his old good friends.

‘The difficulty which I have to express myself in your tongue, and the countryman of yours who is to take my letter, compel me to end sooner than I wish, but if expressions want to my mouth, be assure in revange that my heart shall always be full of all those feelings which you deserve so rightly.

‘Farewell, I wish you all kind of happiness.

‘Your friend for ever,

‘Le Chevalier Lebas de Ste. Croix.

‘My direction: à Monsieur le Chevalier Lebas de Ste. Croix, Capitaine à la légion de l’Isère, caserne de La Courtille à Paris. P.S.—All my thanks and good wishes first to your family, to the family Waldie, Davis, Doctor Douglas, Rutherford, and my good landlady Mistress Elliot.

‘To Mister John Smith Esq.,

‘bridge street,

‘Kelso, Scotland.’

(In Kelso, towards the end of 1912, I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr. Provost Smith, grandson of the gentleman to whom the foregoing two letters were addressed, and Mr. Smith was kind enough to present me with a tiny ring of bone, on which is minutely worked the legend: ‘I love to see you’, done by a French officer on parole in Kelso in 1811.)

The third letter is as follows:

‘Je, soussigné officier de la Légion d’Honneur, Lieutenant Colonel au 8e Régiment de Dragons, sensible aux bons traitements que les prisonniers français sur parole en cette ville reçoivent journellement de la part de Mr. Smith, law agent, invite en mon nom et en celui de mes compagnons d’infortune ceux de nos compatriotes entre les mains desquels le hasard de la guerre pourroit faire tomber Mesdemoiselles St. Saure (?) d’avoir pour elles tous les égards et attentions qu’elles méritent, et de nous aider par tous les bons offices qu’ils pourront rendre à ces dames à acquitter une partie de la reconnaissance que nous devons à leur famille.

‘Kelso. 7 Avril, 1811.

‘Dudouit.’