Prisoners of War in Britain 1756 to 1815 / A record of their lives, their romance and their sufferings

by Francis Abell

In Brecknockshire

Prisoners were at Brecon; tombs of those who died may be seen in the old Priory Churchyard, and ‘The Captain’s Walk’ near the County Hall still preserves the memory of their favourite promenade.

In 1814 the Bailiff of Brecon requested to have the parole prisoners in that town removed. The reason is not given, but the Transport Office refused the request.

CHAPTER XXVI
ESCAPE AGENTS AND ESCAPES

To the general reader some of the most interesting episodes of the lives of the paroled prisoners of war in Britain are those which are associated with their escapes and attempts to escape. Now, although, as has been already remarked, the feeling of the country people was almost unanimously against the prisoners during the early years of the parole system, that is, during the Seven Years’ War, from 1756 to 1763, during the more tremendous struggles which followed that feeling was apparently quite as much in their favour, and the authorities found the co-operation of the inhabitants far more troublous to combat than the ingenuity and daring of the prisoners. If the principle governing this feeling among the upper classes of English society was one of chivalrous sympathy with brave men in misfortune, the object of the lower classes—those most nearly concerned with the escapes—was merely gain.

There were scores of country squires and gentlemen who treated the paroled officers as guests and friends, and who no doubt secretly rejoiced when they heard of their escapes, but they could not forget that every escape meant a breach of solemnly-pledged honour, and I have met with very few instances of English ladies and gentlemen aiding and abetting in the escapes of paroled prisoners.

So profitable an affair was the aiding of a prisoner to escape that it soon became as regular a profession as that of smuggling, with which it was so intimately allied. The first instance I have seen recorded was in 1759, when William Scullard, a collar-maker at Liphook, Hampshire, was brought before the justices at the Guildford Quarter Sessions, charged with providing horses and acting as guide to assist two French prisoners of distinction to escape—whence is not mentioned. After a long examination he was ordered to be secured for a future hearing, and was at length committed to the New Jail in Southwark, and ordered to be fettered. The man was a reputed smuggler, could speak French, and had in his pocket a list of all the cross-roads from Liphook round by Dorking to London.

In 1812 Charles Jones, Solicitor to the Admiralty, describes the various methods by which the escapes of paroled prisoners are effected. They are of two kinds, he says:

‘1. By means of the smugglers and those connected with them on the coast, who proceed with horses and covered carriages to the dépôts and by arrangement rendezvous about the hour of the evening when the prisoners ought to be within doors, about the mile limit, and thus carry them off, travelling through the night and in daytime hiding in woods and coverts. The horses they use are excellent, and the carriages constructed for the purpose. The prisoners are conveyed to the coast, where they are delivered over to the smugglers, and concealed until the boat is ready. They embark at night, and before morning are in France. These escapes are generally in pursuance of orders received from France.

‘2. By means of persons of profligate lives who, residing in or near the Parole towns, act as conductors to such of the prisoners as choose to form their own plan of escape. These prisoners generally travel in post-chaises, and the conductor’s business is to pay the expenses and give orders on the road to the innkeepers, drivers, &c., to prevent discovery or suspicion as to the quality of the travellers. When once a prisoner reaches a public-house or inn near the coast, he is considered safe. But there are cases when the prisoners, having one among themselves who can speak good English, travel without conductors. In these cases the innkeepers and post-boys alone are to blame, and it is certain that if this description of persons could be compelled to do their duty many escapes would be prevented.... The landlord of the Fountain at Canterbury has been known to furnish chaises towards the coast for six French prisoners at a time without a conductor.’

The writer suggested that it should be made felony to assist a prisoner to escape, but the difficulty in the way of this was that juries were well known to lean towards the accused. In the same year, 1812, however, this came about. A Bill passed the Commons, the proposition being made by Castlereagh that to aid in the escape of a prisoner should cease to be misdemeanour, and become a felony, punishable by transportation for seven or fourteen years, or life. Parole, he said, was a mere farce; bribery was rampant and could do anything, and an organized system existed for furthering the escape of prisoners of rank. Within the last three years 464 officers on parole had escaped, but abroad not one British officer had broken his parole. The chief cause, he continued, was the want of an Agent between the two countries for the exchange of prisoners, and it was an extraordinary feature of the War that the common rules about the exchange of prisoners were not observed.

The most famous escape agent was Thomas Feast Moore, alias Maitland, alias Herbert, but known to French prisoners as Captain Richard Harman of Folkestone. He was always flush of money, and, although he was known to be able to speak French very fluently, he never used that language in the presence of Englishmen. He kept a complete account of all the dépôts and parole places, with the ranks of the principal prisoners thereat, and had an agent at each, a poor man who was glad for a consideration to place well-to-do prisoners in communication with Harman, and so on the road to escape. Harman’s charge was usually £100 for four prisoners. As a rule he got letters of recommendation from the officers whose escapes he safely negotiated, and he had the confidence of some of the principal prisoners in England and Scotland. He was generally in the neighbourhood of Whitstable and Canterbury, but, for obvious reasons, owned to no fixed residence. He seems to have been on the whole straight in his dealings, but once or twice he sailed very closely in the track of rascally agents who took money from prisoners, and either did nothing for them, or actually betrayed them, or even murdered them.

On March 22, 1810, General Pillet, ‘Adjudant Commandant, Chef de l’État-Major of the First Division of the Army of Portugal,’ and Paolucci, commander of the Friedland, taken by H.M.S. Standard and Active in 1808, left their quarters at Alresford, and were met half a mile out by Harman with a post-chaise, into which they got and drove to Winchester, alighting in a back street while Harman went to get another chaise. Thence they drove circuitously to Hastings via Croydon, Sevenoaks, Tunbridge, Robertsbridge, and Battle, Harman saying that this route was necessary for safety, and that he would get them over, as he had General Osten, in thirty-four hours.

They arrived at Hastings at 7 p.m. on March 23, and alighted outside the town, while Harman went to get lodgings. He returned and took them to the house of Mrs. Akers, a one-eyed woman; they waited there four days for fair weather, and then removed to the house of one Paine, for better concealment as the hue and cry was after them. They hid here two days, whilst the house was searched, but their room was locked as an empty lumber room. Pillet was disgusted at the delays, and that evening wanted to go to the Mayor’s house to give himself up, but the landlord brought them sailor clothes, and said that two women were waiting to take them where they pleased. They refused the clothes, went out, met Rachael Hutchinson and Elizabeth Akers, and supposed they would be taken to the Mayor’s house, but were at once surrounded and arrested. All this time Harman, who evidently saw that the delay caused by the foul weather was fatal to the chance that the prisoners could get off, had disappeared, but was arrested very shortly at the inn at Hollington Corner, three miles from Hastings. He swore that he did not know them to be escaped prisoners, but thought they were Guernsey lace-merchants.

During the examination which followed, the Hastings town crier said that he had announced the escape of the prisoners at forty-three different points of the eight streets which composed Hastings.

Pillet and Paolucci were sent to Norman Cross, and Harman to Horsham jail.

At the next examination it came out that Harman had bought a boat for the escape from a man who understood that it was to be used for smuggling purposes by two Guernsey lace men. The Mayor of Hastings gave it as his opinion that no Hastings petty jury would commit the prisoners for trial, although a grand jury might, such was the local interest in the escape-cum-smuggling business. However, they were committed. At Horsham, Harman showed to Jones, the Solicitor to the Admiralty, an iron crown which he said had been given him by the French Government for services rendered, but which proved to have been stolen from Paolucci’s trunk, of which he had the key.

Harman, on condition of being set free, offered to make important disclosures to the Government respecting the escape business and its connexion with the smugglers, but his offer was declined, and, much to his disgust, he was sent to serve in the navy. ‘He could not have been disposed of in a way less expected or more objectionable to himself,’ wrote the Admiralty Solicitor, Jones, to McLeay, the secretary.

But Harman’s career was by no means ended. After serving on the Enterprise, he was sent to the Namur, guardship at the Nore, but for a year or more a cloud of mystery enveloped him, and not until 1813 did it come out that he must have escaped from the Namur very shortly after his transfer, and that during the very next year, 1811, he was back at his old calling.

A man giving the name of Nicholas Trelawney, but obviously a Frenchman, was captured on August 24, 1811, on the Whitstable smack Elizabeth, lying in Broadstairs Roads, by the Lion cutter. At his examination he confessed that he was a prisoner who had broken parole from Tiverton, and got as far as Whitstable on July 4. Here he lodged at an inn where he met Mr. ‘Feast’ of the hoy Whitstable. In conversation the Frenchman, not knowing, of course, who Mr. ‘Feast’ really was, described himself as a Jerseyman who had a licence to take his boat to France, but she had been seized by the Customs, as she had some English goods in her. He told ‘Feast’ that he much wanted to get to France, and ‘Feast’ promised to help him, but without leading the Frenchman to suppose that he knew him to be an escaped prisoner of war.

He paid ‘Feast’ £10 10s., and went on board the Elizabeth to get to Deal, as being a more convenient port for France. ‘Feast’ warned him that he would be searched, and persuaded him to hand over his watch and £18 for safe keeping. He saw nothing more of Mr. ‘Feast’ and was captured.

When the above affair made it clear that Harman, alias Feast Moore, was at work again, a keen servant of the Transport Office, Mantell, the Agent at Dover, was instructed to get on to his track. Mantell found that Harman had been at Broadstairs, to France, and in Dover, at which place his well-known boat, the Two Sisters, was discovered, untenanted and with her name obliterated. Mantell further learned that on the very night previous to his visit Harman had actually been landed by Lieutenant Peace of the armed cutter Decoy, saying that he bore important dispatches from France for Croker at the Admiralty. The lieutenant had brought him ashore, and had gone with him to an inn whence he would get a mail-coach to London. Mantell afterwards heard that Harman went no farther than Canterbury.

Mantell described Harman’s usual mode of procedure: how, the French prisoners having been duly approached, the terms agreed upon, and the horses, chaises, boats with sails, oars, charts and provisions arranged for, he would meet them at a little distance outside their place of confinement after dark, travel all night, and with good luck get them off within two days at the outside. Mantell found out that in August 1811 Harman got four prisoners away from Crediton; he lived at Mr. Parnell’s, the White Lion, St. Sidwell’s, under the name of Herbert, bought a boat of Mr. Owen of Topsham, and actually saw his clients safe over Exmouth bar.

His manner, said Mantell, was free and open; he generally represented his clients to be Guernseymen, or émigrés, or Portuguese, and he always got them to sign a paper of recommendation.

In July 1813 news came that Harman was at work in Kelso, Scotland. A stranger in that town had been seen furtively carrying a trunk to the Cross Keys inn, from which he presently went in a post-chaise to Lauder. He was not recognized, but frequent recent escapes from the town had awakened the vigilance of the Agent, and the suspicious behaviour of this stranger at the inn determined that official to pursue and arrest him. The trunk was found to belong to Dagues, a French officer, and contained the clothes of three other officers on parole, and from the fact that the stranger had made inquiries about a coach for Edinburgh, it was clear that an arrangement was nipped in the bud by which the officers were to follow, pick up the trunk at Edinburgh, and get off from Leith.

Harman was disguised, but the next morning the Kelso Agent saw at once that he answered the description of him which had been circulated throughout the kingdom, and sent him to Jedburgh Jail, while he communicated with London.

The result of Harman’s affair was that the Solicitor-General gave it as his opinion that it was better he should be detained as a deserter from the navy than as an aider of prisoners to escape, on the ground that there were no sufficiently overt acts on the parts of the French prisoners to show an intention to escape! What became of Harman I cannot trace, but at any rate he ceased to lead the fraternity of escape agents.

Waddell, a Dymchurch smuggler, was second only to Harman as an extensive and successful escape agent. In 1812 he came to Moreton-Hampstead, ‘on business’, and meeting one Robins, asked him if he was inclined to take part in a lucrative job, introducing himself, when in liquor afterwards at the inn, as the author of the escape of General Lefebvre-Desnouettes and wife from Cheltenham, for which he got £210, saying that while in France he engaged to get General Reynaud and his aide-de-camp away from Moreton-Hampstead for £300 or 300 guineas, which was the reason of his presence there. He added that he was now out on bail for £400 about the affair of Lefebvre-Desnouettes, and was bound to appear at Maidstone for trial. If convicted he would only be heavily fined, so he was anxious to put this affair through.

Robins agreed, but informed the Agent, and Waddell was arrested. As regards General Reynaud, above alluded to, that officer wrote to the Transport Office to say that the report of his intention to abscond was untrue. The Office replied that it was glad to hear so, but added, ‘In consequence of the very disgraceful conduct of other French officers of high rank, such reports cannot fail to be believed by many.’

As a rule the prisoners made their way to London, whence they went by hoy to Whitstable and across the Channel, but the route from Dymchurch to Wimereux was also much favoured. Spicer of Folkestone, Tom Gittens (known as Pork Pie Tom), James King, who worked the western ports; Kite, Hornet, Cullen, Old Stanley, Hall, Waddle, and Stevenson of Folkestone; Yates, Norris, Smith, Hell Fire Jack, old Jarvis and Bates of Deal; Piper and Allen of Dover; Jimmy Whather and Tom Scraggs of Whitstable, were all reported to be ‘deep in the business’, and Deal was described as the ‘focus of mischief’. The usual charge of these men was £80 per head, but, as has been already said, the fugitives ere they fairly set foot on their native soil were usually relieved of every penny they possessed.

An ugly feature about the practice of parole-breaking is that the most distinguished French officers did not seem to regard it seriously. In 1812 General Simon escaped from Odiham and corresponded with France; he was recaptured, and sent to Tothill Fields Prison in London, and thence to Dumbarton Castle, where two rooms were furnished for him exactly on the scale of a British field officer’s barrack apartment; he was placed on the usual parole allowance, eighteenpence per day for himself, and one shilling and threepence per day for a servant, and he resented very much having to give up a poniard in his possession. From Dumbarton he appears to have carried on a regular business as an agent for the escape of paroled prisoners, for, at his request, the Transport Office had given permission for two of his subalterns, also prisoners on parole, Raymond and Boutony by name, to take positions in London banks as French correspondents, and it was discovered that these men were actually acting as Simon’s London agents for the escape of prisoners on parole. It was no doubt in consequence of this discovery that in 1813 orders were sent to Dumbarton that not only was Simon to be deprived of newspapers, but that he was not to be allowed pens and ink, ‘as he makes such a scandalous and unbecoming use of them.’

In May 1814 Simon, although he was still in close confinement, was exchanged for Major-General Coke, it being evidently considered by the Government that he could do less harm fighting against Britain than he did as a prisoner.

The frequent breaches of parole by officers of distinction led to severe comments thereon by the Transport Board, especially with regard to escapes. In a reply to General Privé, who had complained of being watched with unnecessary rigour, it was said: ‘With reference to the “eternal vigilance” with which the officers on parole are watched, I am directed to observe that there was a little necessity for this, as a great many Persons who style themselves Men of Honour, and some of them members of the Legion of Honour, have abandoned all Honour and Integrity by running from Parole, and by bribing unprincipled men to assist in their Escape.’

Again:

‘Certain measures have been regarded as expedient in consequence of the very frequent desertions of late of French officers, not even excepting those of the highest rank, so that their Parole of Honour has become of little Dependence for their Security as Prisoners of War. Particularly do we select General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, an officer of the Legion of Honour, a General of Division, Colonel commanding the Chasseurs à cheval de la Garde. He was allowed unusually great privileges on parole—to reside at Cheltenham, to go thence to Malvern and back to Cheltenham as often as he liked; his wife was allowed to reside with him, and he was allowed to have two Imperial Guardsmen as servants. Yet he absconded, May 1, 1812, with his servants and naval lieutenant Armand le Duc, who had been allowed as a special favour to live with him at Cheltenham.’

Lord Wellington requested that certain French officers should be given their parole, but in reply the Transport Office declined to consent, and as a reason sent him a list of 310 French officers who had broken their parole during the current year, 1812.

The Moniteur of August 9, 1812, attempted to justify these breaches of parole, saying that Frenchmen only surrendered on the condition of retaining their arms, and that we had broken that condition.

At the Exeter Assizes, in the summer of 1812, Richard Tapper of Moreton-Hampstead, carrier, Thomas and William Vinnacombe of Cheriton Bishop, smugglers, were convicted and sentenced to transportation for life for aiding in the attempted escape of two merchant captains, a second captain of a privateer, and a midshipman from Moreton-Hampstead, from whom they had received £25 down and a promise of £150. They went under Tapper’s guidance on horseback from Moreton to Topsham, where they found the Vinnacombes waiting with a large boat. They started, but grounded on the bar at Exmouth, and were captured.

In the same year, acting upon information, the Government officers slipped quietly down to Deal, Folkestone, and Sandgate, and seized a number of galleys built specially for the cross-Channel traffic of escaped prisoners. They were beautifully constructed, forty feet long, eight-oared, and painted so as to be almost invisible. It was said that in calm weather they could be rowed across in two hours!

The pillory was an additional punishment for escape-aiders. Russel, in his History of Maidstone, says that ‘the last persons who are remembered to have stood in the pillory were two men, who in the first decade of the present (nineteenth) century, had assisted French prisoners of War to escape while on Parole’.

But I find that in 1812, seven men were condemned at Maidstone, in addition to two years’ imprisonment, to stand in the pillory on every market-day for a month, for the same offence. In this year, Hughes, landlord of the Red Lion and postmaster at Rye, Hatter, a fisherman, and Robinson, of Oswestry, were sentenced to two years in Horsham Jail, and in the first month to be pilloried on Rye Coast, as near France as possible, for aiding in the escape of General Phillipon and Lieutenant Garnier.

Men, not regular escape agents, as well as the latter, often victimized the poor Frenchmen under pretence of friendship.

One Whithair, of Tiverton, was accused, at the Exeter Summer Assizes of 1812, by French prisoners of having cheated them. He had obtained £200 from six officers on parole at Okehampton—he said to purchase a boat to get them off, and horses to carry them to the coast—through the medium of Madame Riccord, the English wife of one of the French officers. Whithair had also persuaded them to send their trunks to Tiverton in readiness. They waited four months, and then suspected that Whithair was tricking them, and informed the Agent. Whithair was arrested, and condemned to pay £200, and to be imprisoned until he did so. Later, Whithair humbly petitioned to be released from Newgate on the plea that during his imprisonment he would have no chance of paying the fine, and the Superintendent recommended it.

It may be imagined that the profession of escape-aiding had much the same fascination for adventurous spirits as had what our forefathers called ‘the highway’. So we read of a young gentleman of Rye, who, having run through a fortune, determined to make a trial of this career as a means of restoring his exchequer, but he was evidently too much of an amateur in a craft which required the exercise of a great many qualities not often found in one man’s composition. His very first venture was to get off two officers of high rank from Reading, for which he was to receive three hundred guineas, half paid down. He got them in a post-chaise as far as the inn at Johns Cross, Mountfield, about fourteen miles from Hastings, but here the Excise officers dropped upon them, and there was an end of things.

At Ashbourne in Derbyshire, a young woman was brought up on March 13, 1812, charged with aiding prisoners on parole to escape, and evidently there had been hints about improper relationship between her and the Frenchmen, for she published the following:

‘To the Christian Impartial Reader.

‘I the undernamed Susanna Cotton declares she has had nothing to do with the escape of the French prisoners, although she has been remanded at Stafford, and that there has been no improper relationship as rumoured.

‘Judge not that ye be not judged. Parents of female children should not readily believe a slander of their sex, nor should a male parent listen to the vulgar aggravation that too often attends the jocular whispering report of a crime so important. For it is not known what Time, a year or a day, may bring forth.

‘Misses Lomas and Cotton take this opportunity (tho’ an unpleasant one) of returning their grateful acknowledgement of Public and Individual Favours conferred on them in their Business of Millinery, and hope for a continuance of them, and that they will not be withheld by reason of any Prejudices which may have arisen from the Slander above alluded to.’

The prosecution was withdrawn, although Miss Cotton’s denials were found to be untrue.

CHAPTER XXVII
ESCAPES OF PRISONERS ON PAROLE

The newspapers of our forefathers during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries contained very many advertisements like the two following. The first is from the Western Flying Post, of 1756, dated from Launceston, and offering Two Guineas reward for two officers, who had broken their parole, and were thus described:

‘One, Mons. Barbier, a short man, somewhat pock-marked, and has a very dejected look, and wore a snuff-coloured coat; the other, Mons. Beth, a middle-aged man, very strongly set, wore his own hair and a blue coat. The former speaks no English, but the latter very well. They were both last seen near Exeter, riding to that city.’

The second is from the London Observer of April 21, 1811:

Breach of Parole of Honour.—Transport Office, April 12, 1811.

‘Whereas the two French Officers, Prisoners of War, named and described at the foot hereof, have absconded from Chesterfield in violation of their Parole of Honour; the Commissioners for conducting His Majesty’s Transport Service, etc., do hereby offer a Reward of Five Guineas for the recapture of each of the said Prisoners, to any Person or Persons who shall apprehend them, and deliver them at this office, or otherwise cause them to be safely lodged in any of the Public Gaols. Joseph Exelman, General of Brigade, age 36, 5 feet 11½ inches high, stout, oval visage, fresh complexion, light brown hair, blue eyes, strong features.

‘Auguste de la Grange, Colonel, age 30, 6 feet high, stout, round visage, fair complexion, brown hair, dark eyes, no mark in particular.’

Excelmans was one of Bonaparte’s favourites. He and De la Grange induced Jonas Lawton, an assistant to Doctor John Elam, the surgeon at Chesterfield, to make the necessary arrangements for escape, and to accompany them. They left Chesterfield concealed in a covered cart, and safely reached Paris. Here Lawton was liberally rewarded, and provided with a good post as surgeon in a hospital, and retained the position long after the conclusion of peace.

Merely escaping from the parole town did not become frequent until it was found necessary to abolish virtually the other method of returning to France which we allowed. By this, an officer on parole upon signing a declaration to the effect that unless he was exchanged for a British officer of similar rank by a certain date he would return to England on that date, was allowed to go to France, engaging, of course, not to serve against us. But when it became not a frequent but a universal rule among French officers to break their honour and actually to serve against us during their permitted absence, the Government was obliged to refuse all applications, with the result that to escape from the parole town became such a general practice as to call into existence that profession of escape-aiding which was dealt with in the last chapter.

The case of Captain Jurien, now to be mentioned, is neither better nor worse than scores of others.

On December 10, 1803, the Transport Office wrote to him in Paris:

‘As the time allowed for your absence from this Kingdom expired on November 22nd, and as Captain Brenton, R.N., now a prisoner of war in France, has not been released in exchange for you agreeably to our proposal, you are hereby required to return to this country according to the terms of your Parole Agreement.’

But on March 16, 1804, Jurien had not returned. One result was that when a Colonel Neraud applied to be sent to France upon his giving his word to have a British officer exchanged for him, the Transport Office reminded him that Jurien had been released on parole, August 22, 1803, on the promise that he would return in three months, if not exchanged for Captain Brenton, and that seven months had passed and he was still away. They added that the French Government had not released one British officer in return for 500 French, who had been sent on parole to France, some of whom, furthermore, in violation of their parole, were in arms against Britain. ‘Hence your detention is entirely owing to the action of your own Government.’

As time went on, and Jurien and the others did not return, the Transport Office, weary of replying to the frequent applications of French officers to go to France on parole, at last ceased to do so, with the result that attempted escapes from parole places became frequent.

At the same time it must not be understood that laxity of honour as regards parole obligation of this kind was universal. When in 1809 the Transport Office, in reply to a request by General Lefebvre to be allowed to go to France on parole, said that they could not accede inasmuch as no French officer thus privileged had been allowed to return, they italicized the word ‘allowed’, and cited the case of General Frescinet, ‘who made most earnest but ineffectual Intreaty to be allowed to fulfil the Parole d’Honneur’ he had entered into, by returning to this country.

Thame seems to have been a particularly turbulent parole town, and one from which escapes were more than usually numerous. One case was peculiar. Four prisoners who had been recaptured after getting away justified their attempt by accusing Smith, the Agent, of ill-behaviour towards them. Whereupon the other prisoners at Thame, among them Villaret-Joyeuse, testified against them, and in favour of Smith.

The experiences of Baron Le Jeune are among the most interesting, and his case is peculiar inasmuch as although he was nominally a prisoner on parole, he was not so in fact, so that his escape involved no breach. In 1811 he was taken prisoner by Spanish brigands, who delivered him to the English garrison at Merida. Here he was treated as a guest by Major-General Sir William Lumley and the officers, and when he sailed for England on H.M.S. Thetis he had a state-cabin, and was regarded as a distinguished passenger. On arriving at Portsmouth his anxiety was as to whether the hulks were to be his fate. ‘And our uneasiness increased’, he writes in the Memoirs, whence the following story is taken, ‘when we passed some twenty old vessels full of French prisoners, most of them wearing only yellow vests, whilst others were perfectly naked. At this distressing sight I asked the captain if he was taking us to the hulks. To which he replied with a frown: “Yes, just as a matter of course.” At the same moment our boat drew up alongside the San Antonio, an old 80–gun ship. We ascended the side, and there, to our horror, we saw some five to six hundred French prisoners, who were but one-third of those on board, climbing on to each other’s shoulders, in the narrow space in which they were penned, to have a look at the newcomers, of whose arrival they seemed to have been told. Their silence, their attitude, and the looks of compassion they bestowed on me as I greeted them en passant seemed to me omens of a terrible future for me.’

The captain of the hulk apologized to the baron for having no better accommodation. Le Jeune, incredulous, made him repeat it, and flew into a rage. He snatched a sword from an Irishman and swore he would kill any one who would keep him on a hulk. The French prisoners shouted: ‘Bravo! If every one behaved as you do, the English would not dare treat us so!’

The captain of the hulk was alarmed at the possible result of this with 1,500 desperate prisoners, and hurried the baron into his boat.

Thus Baron Le Jeune escaped the hulks!

He was then taken to the Forton Dépôt, where he remained three days, and was then ordered to Ashby-de-la-Zouch. So rapidly was he hurried into a coach that he had not time to sign his parole papers and resolved to profit by the omission. He passed many days on a very pleasant journey via Andover and Blenheim, for he paused to see all that was interesting on the way, and even went to theatres. He found about a hundred French prisoners at Ashby (some of whom, he says, had been there fifteen years!), and reported himself to the Agent, Farnell, a grocer, ‘certainly the tallest, thinnest, most cadaverous seller of dry goods in the world.’

At Ashby he found old friends, and passed his time with them, and in learning English. He was invited to Lord Hastings’ house about a mile from Ashby. Hastings was brother to Lord Moira, a friend of the Prince of Wales, and here he met the orphan daughter of Sir John Moore. He was most kindly treated, and Lord Hastings said he would try to get leave for him to live in London.

Then came a change.

‘A man came to me one morning, and said to me privately that the Duke of Rovigo, minister of Police in France, authorized by the Emperor, had sent him to propose to me that I should let him arrange for me to get out of England, and return to France. I distrusted him, for I had heard of the tricks of escape Agents, and said I would first consult my friend, Colonel Stoffel. I did so. Stoffel said it was a bonâ fide offer, but the emissary had brought no money with him, and it would cost probably 200 guineas.’

Where was the baron to get such a sum? He went to Baudins, a merchant, and asked him for a loan, and at a ball that night Baudins signalled that the loan was all right. Farnell was at the ball, and the baron describes his comical assumption of dignity as the guardian of the French prisoners. Baudins lent Baron Le Jeune the money in gold without asking interest on it.

‘I was invited to a grand dinner by General Hastings the very evening we were to start, and I duly appeared at it. The evening passed very brightly, and at dessert, after the ladies had retired, the men remained behind to drink wine together, beginning with a toast to the ladies. As a matter of taste, as well as of design, I kept my head clear, and when my companions were sufficiently exhilarated by the fumes of the claret they had drunk, they returned with somewhat unsteady steps to the drawing-room, where tea had been prepared by the ladies.’

The baron won the goodwill of all and was invited to return the next day.

At 11 p.m., it being very dark, he slipped out through the park to meet Colonel Stoffel and a guide. He waited an hour, but at last they arrived in a post-chaise, and they drove off. Passing through Northants, North Middlesex [sic], London, and Reigate, they came to Hythe, where they stopped the next night. They pretended to be invalids come for a course of sea baths, and the baron was actually assisted out of the carriage by Custom-house officers. The chaise dismissed, tea was ordered while the guide went to make inquiries about Folkestone. He returned with a horror-struck face, and wrote on a slate: ‘Pay at once and let us be off.’ Le Jeune gave the girl of the house a guinea, and told her to keep the change, which made her look suspicious, as if the money had not been honestly come by. No time was to be lost, for Hythe was full of troops. The guide advised the baron to drop the erect bearing of a soldier, and assume a stoop. They got away, and hid in a wheat-field during the day while the guide again went into Folkestone. He was away seventeen hours. At length they got to Folkestone, and Le Jeune was introduced to a smuggler named Brick, a diabolical-looking man, who said he would take them safely over to France.

Brick asked the Baron for 200 guineas, and got them. The wind was contrary, he said, but he would lodge them well. A decent room was hired with a trap-door under the bed for escape, and here they remained thirteen days. Le Jeune became impatient, and at last resolved to risk weather and everything else and go. ‘Well! follow me! like the others!’ growled Brick ferociously to the sailor with him. But the woman of the house implored Le Jeune and Stoffel not to go with Brick: they remained determined, but she persisted and held them back, and so, now persuaded that she had good reasons for her action, and she seeming a decent body, they remained. Later on they learned how close to danger they had been, for the woman told them that Brick had taken the money of a score of fugitives like themselves, promising to land them in France, hiding them under nets to avoid the coast-guard, and as soon as they were well out, murdering them and flinging their bodies overboard with stones tied to them, knowing that transportation awaited him if he was caught aiding prisoners to escape.

They asked the woman to help them, for now they had no money. The baron told the sailor that he would give him fifty livres at Boulogne, if he landed them there. He was an honest fellow, brought them a sailor’s clothes, and went along the beach with them, replying, ‘Fishermen’ to the many challenges they got. Finding a small boat, they shoved it off, and got in, so as to board a fishing-smuggling smack riding outside. It was a foul night, and three times they were hurled back ashore, wet to the skin; so they returned. The next day the weather moderated and they got off, under the very lee of a police boat, which they deceived by pretending to get nets out. In six hours they were within sight of Boulogne, but were obliged to keep off or they would be fired upon, until they had signalled and were told to come in.

At this time England sent by smugglers a quantity of incendiary pamphlets which the French coast-guard had orders to seize, so that Le Jeune and Stoffel were searched and, guarded by armed men, marched to the Commissary of Police, ‘just as if’, Le Jeune said, ‘we were infected with the plague.’

Luckily, the Commissary was an old friend of the baron, so they had no further trouble, but paid the sailor his fifty livres, and went to Paris. At an interview with the Emperor, the latter said to Le Jeune, ‘And did you see Lefebvre-Desnouettes?’

‘No, sire, but I wrote to him. He is extremely anxious to get back to you, and is beginning to lose hope of being exchanged. He would do as I have done if he were not afraid of your Majesty’s displeasure.’

‘Oh! Let him come! Let him come! I shall be very glad to see him,’ said the Emperor.

‘Does your Majesty give me leave to tell him so in your name?’

‘Yes, yes. Don’t lose any time.’

So Madame Lefebvre-Desnouettes got a passport, and went over to England, and her presence did much to distract the attention of the general’s guardians, and made his escape comparatively easy. The general, as a German or Russian Count, Madame in boy’s clothes as his son, and an A.D.C. got up as a valet-de-chambre, went in a post-chaise from Cheltenham to London, where they rested for a couple of hours at Sablonière’s in Leicester Square, then at midnight left for Dover and thence to Paris.

General Osten, second in command at Flushing, on parole at Lichfield, was another gentleman who was helped to get off by a lady member of his family. His daughter had come with him from Flushing, and in December 1809 went away with all her father’s heavy baggage. In February 1810, Waddell, the escape agent, met the general and two other officers in Birmingham, and forty-six hours later landed with them in Holland.

In this year, 1810, the escapes were so numerous by boats stolen from the shores that the Admiralty issued a warning that owners of boats on beaches should not leave masts, oars, and tackle in them, and in 1812 compensation was refused to a Newton Abbot and to a Paignton fisherman, because prisoners had stolen their boats, which had been left with their gear on the beach, despite warning, and when the prisoners were recaptured it was found that they had destroyed the boats.

In October 1811, six French officers—Bouquet, army surgeon, Leclerc, lieutenant of hussars, Denguiard, army surgeon, Jean Henry, ‘passenger’ on privateer, Gaffé, merchant skipper, and Glenat, army lieutenant, under the guidance of one Johns, left Okehampton, crossed the moor to Bovey Tracey, where they met a woman of whom they asked the way to Torbay. She replied, and while they consulted together, gave the alarm so that the villagers turned out and caught three of the runaways. The other three ran and were pursued. Johns turned on the foremost pursuer and stabbed him so that he died, and two others were wounded by the Frenchmen, but the latter were caught at Torquay. Johns got off, but on November 2 was seen at Chesterfield, where he got work on a Saturday; instead of going to it on Monday morning, however, he decamped, and was seen on the Manchester road, eight miles from Chesterfield. In 1812 a man named Taylor, of Beer Alston, said to be Johns, was arrested, but proved an alibi and was discharged.

In 1812 General Maurin, who may be remembered in connexion with the Crapper trouble at Wantage, escaped with his brother from Abergavenny, whither he had been sent, the smuggler Waddell being paid £300 for his help. At the same time General Brou escaped from Welshpool. Both these officers had been treated with particular leniency and had been allowed unusual privileges, so that the Transport Office comments with great severity upon their behaviour.

On November 8, 1812, a girl named Mary Clarke went in very foggy weather from Wolverhampton to Bridgnorth to meet a friend. She waited for some time, but he did not come; so she turned back towards her inn, where her chaise was waiting. Here was Lieutenant Montbazin, a French naval officer, who had broken his parole from Lichfield, who politely accosted her and asked her if she was going to Wolverhampton. She replied that she was. Was she going to walk? No; she had her chaise. Would she let him have a seat if he paid half expenses? She agreed, and went back for the chaise while he walked on, and she picked him up half a mile on, between some rocks by the roadside. So they went on to Wolverhampton—and to Birmingham. In the meantime he had been missed at Lichfield, and followed, and in the back parlour of the Swan at Birmingham was arrested with the girl.

This was Mary Clarke’s evidence in court.

In defence, Montbazin said that he had been exchanged for four British seamen, who had been landed from France, but that the Transport Office had refused to let him go, so he had considered himself absolved from his parole.

It is hardly necessary to say that the girl’s story was concocted, that her meeting with Montbazin was part of a prearranged plan, and the Court emphasized their opinion that this was the case by sending the lieutenant to a prison afloat, and Mary Clarke to one ashore.

In October 1812, eight French officers left Andover quietly in the evening, and, a mile out, met two mounted escape-aiders. Behind each of them a prisoner mounted, and all proceeded at a walk for six miles, when they met another man with three horses. On these horses the remaining six prisoners mounted, and by daybreak were at Ringwood, thirty-six miles on their road to liberty. All the day they remained hidden in the forest, living upon bread, cheese, and rum, which their guides procured from Ringwood. At nightfall they restarted, passed through Christchurch to Stanpit, and thence to the shore, where they found a boat waiting for them; but the wind being contrary and blowing a gale, they could not embark, and were obliged to remain hidden in the woods for three days, suffering so much from exposure and want that they made a bargain with a Mrs. Martin to lodge in her house for £12 until the weather should moderate sufficiently for them to embark. They stayed here for a week, and then their suspense and anxiety, they knowing that the hue and cry was after them, became unbearable, and they gave the smuggler-skipper of the Freeholder a promissory note for six hundred guineas to hazard taking them off. He made the attempt, but the vessel was driven ashore, and the Frenchmen were with difficulty landed at another spot on the coast; here they wandered about in the darkness and storm, until one of them becoming separated from the others gave himself up, and the discovery of his companions soon followed.

The result of the trial was that the officers were, of course, sent to the hulks, the master of the Freeholder was transported for life, four of his men for seven years, and the aiders acquitted. This appears curious justice, which can only be explained by presuming that the magistrates, or rather the Admiralty, often found it politic to get escape-aiders into their service in this way.

Of course, all ‘escapes’ were bad offences from an honourable point of view, but some were worse than others. For instance, in 1812, the Duc de Chartres wrote a strong letter of intercession to the Transport Office on behalf of one Du Baudiez. This man had been sent to Stapleton Prison for having broken his parole at Odiham, and the duke asked that his parole should be restored him. The Transport Office decidedly rejected the application, and in their reply to the duke quoted a letter written by Du Baudiez to his sister in France in which he says that he has given his creditors in Odiham bills upon her, but asks her not to honour them, because ‘Les Anglais nous ont agonis de sottises, liés comme des bêtes sauvages, et traités toute la route comme des chiens. Ce sont des Anglais; rien ne m’étonne de ce qu’ils ont fait ... ce sont tous des gueux, des scélérats depuis le premier jusqu’au dernier. Aussi je vous prie en grâce de protester ces billets ... je suis dans la ferme résolution de ne les point payer.’

On one occasion an unexpected catch of ‘broke-paroles’ was made. The Revenue Officers believed that two men who were playing cards in an inn near Canterbury were escaped prisoners, and at 8 p.m. called on a magistrate to get help. The magistrate told them that it was of no use to get the constable, as at that hour he was usually intoxicated, but authorized them to get the military.

This they did, but the landlord refused to open the door and, during the parleying, two men slipped out by the back door, whom the officers stopped, and presently two others, who were also stopped. All four were French ‘broke-paroles’ from Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and the card-players within were not prisoners at all. The captured men said that on Beckenham Common they had nearly been caught, for the driver of the cart stopped there at 10 p.m. to rest the horse. The horse-patrol, passing by, ordered him to move on. As he was putting the horse to, the Frenchmen, all being at the back of the cart, tilted it up and cried out. However, the horse-patrol had passed on and did not hear.

In the two next cases English girls play a part. In 1814 Colonel Poerio escaped from Ashbourne with an English girl in male attire, but they were captured at Loughborough. At the trial an Ashbourne woman said that one day a girl came and asked for a lodging, saying that she was a worker at ‘lace-running’; she seemed respectable, and was taken in, and remained some days without causing any suspicion, although she seemed on good terms with the French prisoners on parole in the town. One evening the woman’s little girl met the lodger coming downstairs, and said: ‘Mam! she has got a black coat on!’ When asked where she was going, she replied, ‘To Colonel Juliett’s. Will be back in five minutes.’ (Colonel Juliett was another prisoner.) She did not return, and that was the last witness saw of her.

Upon examination, the girl said that she kept company with Poerio, but as her father did not approve of her marrying him she had resolved to elope. She took with her £5, which she had saved by ‘running’ lace. They were arrested at the Bull’s Head, Loughborough, where the girl had ordered a chaise. Counsel decided that there was no case for prosecution!

I am not sure if this Colonel Poerio is identical with the man of that name who, in 1812, when on a Chatham hulk, applied to be put on parole, the answer being a refusal, inasmuch as he was a man of infamous character, and that when in command of the island of Cerigo he had poisoned the water there in order to relieve himself of some 600 Albanian men, women, and children, many of whom died—a deed he acknowledged himself by word and in writing.

Colonel Ocher in 1811 got off from Lichfield with a girl, was pursued by officers in a chaise and four, and was caught at Meriden, on the Coventry road, about two miles beyond Stone Bridge. Upon examination, Ann Green, spinster, lodging at 3, Newman Street, Oxford Street, London, said that she came to Birmingham by the ‘Balloon’ coach, according to instructions she had received from a Baron Ferriet, whom she knew. He had given her £6, paid her fare, and sent her to the Swan with two Necks in Ladd Lane, where she was given a letter, which, as she could not read, the waiter read to her. The letter told her to go to Lichfield to the St. George hotel, as the baron had business to attend to which kept him in London. At the Lichfield hotel there was a letter which told her to go to Mr. Joblin’s, where Colonel Ocher lodged. Here she left word she would meet him in the fields, which she did at 9 p.m., when they went off, and were captured as above.

In defence, ‘Baron Ferriet’ told a strange story. He said he had been in the British Secret Service in France. He lived there in constant danger as there was a reward of 40,000 francs offered for him by the French Government. At Sables d’Olonne, Colonel Ocher’s family had hidden him when the authorities were after him, and had saved him, and Madame Ocher had looked after his wife and family. So, in a long letter he explains in very fair English that he determined to repay the Ochers in France for their kindness to him by procuring the escape of General Ocher, a prisoner on parole in England, and regarded him as ‘his property’.

Although the prisoners on parole had no lack of English sympathizers, especially if they could pay, a large section of the lower class of country folk were ever on the alert to gain the Government reward for the detection and prevention of parole-breaking. The following is a sample of letters frequently received by the ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office and its agents:

‘My Lords and Gentlemen,

‘This informs your lordships that on ye 30th July 1780, I was on Okehampton road leading to Tavistock, saw four French prisoners, on horseback without a guide. They signified to me that they had leave to go to Tavistock from there company at Okehampton. After I was past Tavistock four miles they came galloping on towards Buckland Down Camp. I kept in sight of them and perceived them to ride several miles or above out of the Turnpike Road taking of what view they could of Gentlemen’s seats, and ye Harbour and Sound and Camp, and I thought within myself it was very strange that these profest Enemies should be granted such Libertys as this, by any Company whatever. Accordingly came to a Resolution as soon as they came within the lines of the Camp ride forward and stopt them and applyd to the Commanding Officer which was Major Braecher of the Bedfordshire Militia, who broke their letter, and not thinking it a proper Passport the Major ordered them under the care of the Quarter Guard.

[Winds up with a claim for reward.]

‘Joseph Giles,

‘Near ye P.O., Plymouth Dock.’

It turned out in this case that the Agent at Okehampton had given the Frenchmen permission to go to Tavistock for their trunks, so they were released and returned. The ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office said that to allow these prisoners to ride unguarded to Tavistock was most improper, and must, under no circumstances, be allowed to occur again.

From a paper read by Mr. Maberley Phillips, F.S.A., before the Newcastle Society of Antiquaries, I take the following instances of escapes of parole prisoners in the North.

In 1813 there were on parole at Jedburgh under the Agent, George Bell, about a hundred French prisoners. At the usual Saturday muster-call on June I, all were present, but at that of June 4, Benoît Poulet and Jacques Girot were missing. From the evidence at the trial of the accomplices in this escape, all of whom except the chief agent, James Hunter of Whitton, near Rothbury, were arrested, and three of whom turned King’s evidence, the story was unfolded of the flight of the men—who were passed off as Germans on a fishing excursion—across the wild, romantic, historic fell-country between the Border and Alwinton on the Coquet; and so by Whitton, Belsay, and Ponteland, to the Bird in Bush inn, Pilgrim Street, Newcastle; whence the Frenchmen were supposed to have gone to Shields, and embarked in a foreign vessel for France.

I quote this and the following case as instances of the general sympathy of English country people with the foreign prisoners amongst them. The Courant of August 28, 1813, says: ‘The trial of James Hunter occupied the whole of Monday, and the court was excessively crowded; when the verdict of Not Guilty was delivered, clapping of hands and other noisy symptoms of applause were exhibited, much to the surprise of the judge, Sir A. Chambers, who observed that he seemed to be in an assembly of Frenchmen, rather than in an English court of justice. The other prisoners charged with the same offence, were merely arraigned, and the verdict of acquittal was recorded without further trial.’

Hunter had been arrested in Scotland, just before the trial. Quoting from Wallace’s History of Blyth, Mr. Phillips says:

‘One Sunday morning in the year 1811, the inhabitants were thrown into a state of great excitement by the startling news that five Frenchmen had been taken during the night and were lodged in the guard-house. They were officers who had broken their parole at Edinburgh Castle [? Jedburgh], and in making their way home had reached the neighbourhood of Blyth; when discovered, they were resting by the side of the Plessy wagon-way beside the “Shoulder of Mutton” field.

‘A party of countrymen who had been out drinking, hearing some persons conversing in an unknown tongue, suspected what they were, and determined to effect their capture. The fugitives made some resistance, but in the end were captured, and brought to Blyth, and given into the charge of the soldiers then quartered in the town. This act of the countrymen met with the strongest reprobation of the public’ (the italics are mine). ‘The miscarriage of the poor fellows’ plan of escape through the meddling of their captors, excited the sympathy of the inhabitants; rich and poor vying with each other in showing kindness to the strangers. Whatever was likely to alleviate their helpless condition was urged upon their acceptance; victuals they did not refuse, but though money was freely offered them, they steadily refused to accept it. The guard-house was surrounded all day long by crowds anxious to get a glimpse of the captives. The men who took the prisoners were rewarded with £5 each, but doubtless it would be the most unsatisfactory wages they ever earned, for long after, whenever they showed their faces in the town, they had to endure the upbraiding of men, women, and children; indeed, it was years before public feeling about this matter passed away.’

The continuance and frequency of escapes by prisoners on parole necessitated increased rigidity of regulations. The routes by which prisoners were marched from place to place were exactly laid down, and we find numberless letters of instruction from the Transport Office like this:

‘Colonel X having received permission to reside on parole at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, his route from Chatham is to be: Chatham, Sevenoaks, Croydon, Kingston, Uxbridge, Wendover, Buckingham, Towcester, Daventry, and Coleshill.’

The instructions to conductors of prisoners were as follows:

Prisoners were to march about twelve miles a day. Conductors were to pay the prisoners sixpence per day per man before starting. Conductors were to ride ahead of prisoners, so as to give notice at towns of their coming, and were to see that the prisoners were not imposed upon. Conductors (who were always mounted), were to travel thirty miles a day on the return journey, and to halt upon Sundays.

Of course, it was in the power of the conductors to make the journeys of the prisoners comfortable or the reverse. If the former, it was the usual custom to give a certificate of this kind:

‘April 1798. This is to certify that Mr. Thomas Willis, conductor of 134 Dutch and Spanish prisoners of war from the Security prison ship at Chatham, into the custody of Mr. Barker, agent for prisoners of war at Winchester, has provided us with good lodgings every night, well littered with straw, and that we have been regularly paid our subsistence every morning on our march, each prisoner sixpence per day according to the established allowance.

‘(Signed).’

The ill-treatment of prisoners on the march was not usual, and when reported was duly punished. Thus in 1804 a Coldstream guardsman on escort of prisoners from Reading to Norman Cross, being convicted of robbing a prisoner, was sentenced to 600 lashes, and the sentence was publicly read out at all the dépôts.

In 1811 posters came out offering the usual reward for the arrest of an officer who had escaped from a Scottish parole town, and distinguished him as lacking three fingers of his left hand. A year later Bow Street officers Vickary and Lavender, ‘from information received’, followed a seller of artificial flowers into a public-house in ‘Weston Park, Lincolns Inn Fields.’ The merchant bore the distinctive mark of the wanted foreigner, and, seeing that the game was up, candidly admitted his identity, said that he had lived in London during the past twelve months by making and selling artificial flowers, and added that he had lost his fingers for his country, and would not mind losing his head for her.

In the same year a militia corporal who had done duty at a prisoner dépôt, and so was familiar with foreign faces, saw two persons in a chaise driving towards Worcester, whom he at once suspected to be escaped prisoners. He stopped the chaise, and made the men show their passports, which were not satisfactory, and, although they tried to bribe him to let them go, he refused, mounted the bar of the chaise, and drove on. One of the men presently opened the chaise-door with the aim of escaping, but the corporal presented a pistol at him, and he withdrew. At Worcester they confessed that they had escaped from Bishop’s Castle, and said they were Trafalgar officers.

In 1812 prisoners broke their parole in batches. From Tiverton at one time, twelve; from Andover, eight (as recorded on pp. [384]–5); from Wincanton, ten; and of these, four were generals and eighteen colonels.

In the Quarterly Review, December 1821, the assertion made by M. Dupin, in his report upon the treatment of French prisoners in Britain, published in 1816, and before alluded to in the chapter upon prison-ships, that French officers observed their parole more faithfully than did English, was shown to be false. Between May 1803, and August 1811, 860 French officers had attempted to escape from parole towns. Of these, 270 were recaptured, and 590 escaped. In 1808 alone, 154 escaped. From 1811 to 1814, 299 army officers escaped, and of this number 9 were generals, 18 were colonels, 14 were lieutenant-colonels, 8 were majors, 91 were captains, and 159 were lieutenants. It should be noted that in this number are not included the many officers who practically ‘escaped’, in that they did not return to England when not exchanged at the end of their term of parole.

From the Parliamentary Papers of 1812, I take the following table:

Transport Office, June 25, 1812.

Number of all French Commissioned Officers, Prisoners of War, on Parole in Great Britain.
	Total No. Com. Officers on parole.	No. that broke parole.	Been retaken.	Escaped.
Year ending 5th June 1810	1,685	104	47	57	N.B. The numbers stated in this account include those persons only who have actually absconded from the places appointed for their residence. A considerable number of officers have been ordered into confinement for various other breaches of their parole engagements. (Signed) Rup. George. J. Bowen. J. Douglas.
Year ending 5th June 1811	2,087	118	47	71
Year ending 5th June 1812	2,142	242	63	179
	5,914	464	157	307
Besides the above, the following other prisoners of rank entitling them to be on parole, have broken it during the three years above mentioned.		218	85	133
		682	242	440

During the above-quoted period, between 1803 and 1811, out of 20,000 British détenus, not prisoners of war, in France, it cannot be shown that more than twenty-three broke their parole, and even these are doubtful.

Sometimes the epidemic of parole-breaking was severe enough to render drastic measures necessary. In 1797 orders were issued that all French prisoners, without distinction of rank, were to be placed in close confinement.

In 1803, in consequence of invasion alarms, it was deemed advisable to remove all prisoners from the proximity of the coast to inland towns, the Admiralty order being:

‘At the present conjunction all parole prisoners from the South and West towns are to be sent to North Staffordshire, and Derbyshire—that is, to Chesterfield, Ashbourne, and Leek.’

General Morgan at Bishop’s Waltham resented this removal so far away, in a letter to the Transport Office, to which they replied:

‘This Board has uniformly wished to treat Prisoners of War with every degree of humanity consistent with the public safety: but in the present circumstances it has been judged expedient to remove all Prisoners of War on Parole from places near the Coast to Inland towns. You will therefore observe that the order is not confined to you, but relates generally to all Prisoners on Parole: and with regard to your comparison of the treatment of prisoners in this country with that of British prisoners in France, the Commissioners think it only necessary to remark that the distance to which it is now proposed to remove you does not exceed 170 miles, whereas British prisoners in France are marched into the interior to a distance of 500 miles from some of the ports into which they are carried.’

Morgan was allowed eventually his choice of Richmond or Barnet as a place of parole, a privilege accorded him because of his kindness to a Mr. Hurry, during the detention of the latter as a prisoner in France.

In 1811, so many prisoners escaped from Wincanton that all the parole prisoners in the place were marched to London to be sent thence by sea to Scotland for confinement. ‘Sudden and secret measures’ were taken to remove them, all of the rank of captain and above, to Forton for embarkation, except General Houdetôt, who was sent to Lichfield. From Okehampton sixty were sent to Ilfracombe, and thence to Swansea for Abergavenny, and from Bishop’s Waltham to Oswestry in batches of twelve at intervals of three days.

Many parole towns petitioned for the retention of the prisoners, but all were refused; the inhabitants of some places in Devon attempted to detain prisoners for debts; and Enchmarsh, the Agent at Tiverton, was suspended for not sending off his prisoners according to orders. Their departure was the occasion in many places for public expressions of regret, and this can be readily appreciated when it is considered what the residence of two or three hundred young men, some of whom were of good family and many of whom had private means, in a small English country town meant, not merely from a business but from a social point of view.

In The Times of 1812 may be read that a French officer, who had been exchanged and landed at Morlaix, and had expressed disgust at the frequent breaches of parole by his countrymen, was arrested and shot by order of Bonaparte. I merely quote this as an example that even British newspapers of standing were occasionally stooping to the vituperative level of their trans-Channel confrères.

CHAPTER XXVIII
COMPLAINTS OF PRISONERS

It could hardly be expected that a uniform standard of good and submissive behaviour would be attained by a large body of fighting men, the greater part of whom were in vigorous youth or in the prime of life, although, on the whole, the conduct of those who honourably observed their parole seems to have been admirable—a fact which no doubt had a great deal to do with the very general display of sympathy for them latterly. In some places more than others they seem to have brought upon themselves by their own behaviour local odium, and these are the places in which were quartered captured privateer officers, wild, reckless sea-dogs whom, naturally, restraint galled far more deeply than it did the drilled and disciplined officers of the regular army and navy.

In 1797, for instance, the inhabitants of Tavistock complained that the prisoners went about the town in female garb, after bell-ringing, and that they were associated in these masquerades with women of their own nation. So they were threatened with the Mill Prison at Plymouth.

In 1807 complaints from Chesterfield about the improper conduct of the prisoners brought a Transport Office order to the Agent that the strictest observation of regulations was necessary, and that the mere removal of a prisoner to another parole town was no punishment, and was to be discontinued. In 1808 there was a serious riot between the prisoners and the townsfolk in the same place, in which bludgeons were freely used and heads freely broken, and from Lichfield came complaints of the outrageous and insubordinate behaviour of the prisoners.

In 1807 Mr. P. Wykeham of Thame Park complained of the prisoners trespassing therein; from Bath came protests against the conduct of General Rouget and his A.D.C.; and in 1809 the behaviour of one Wislawski at Odiham (possibly the ‘Wysilaski’ already mentioned as at Sanquhar) was reported as being so atrocious that he was at once packed off to a prison-ship.

In 1810, at Oswestry, Lieutenant Julien complained that the Agent, Tozer, had insulted him by threatening him with his cane, and accusing him of drunkenness in the public-houses. Tozer, on the other hand, declared that Julien and others were rioting in the streets, that he tried to restore order, and raised his cane in emphasis, whereupon Julien raised his with offensive intent.

Occasionally we find complaints sent up by local professionals and tradesmen that the prisoners on parole unfairly compete with them. Here it may be remarked that the following of trades and professions by prisoners of war was by no means confined to the inmates of prisons and prison-ships, and that there were hundreds of poor officers on parole who not only worked at their professions (as Garneray the painter did at Bishop’s Waltham) and at specific trades, but who were glad to eke out their scanty subsistence-money by the manufacture of models, toys, ornaments, &c.

In 1812 a baker at Thame complained that the prisoners on parole in that town baked bread, to which the Transport Office replied that there was no objection to their doing it for their own consumption, but not for public sale. It is to be hoped the baker was satisfied with this very academic reply!

So also the bootmakers of Portsmouth complained that the prisoners on parole in the neighbourhood made boots for sale at lower than the current rates. The Transport Office replied that orders were strict against this, and that the master bootmakers were to blame for encouraging this ‘clandestine trade.’

In 1813 the doctors at Welshpool complained that the doctors among the French parole prisoners there inoculated private families for small-pox. The Transport Office forbade it.

In the same year complaints came from Whitchurch in Shropshire of the defiant treatment of the limit-rules by the prisoners there; to which the Transport Office replied that they had ordered posts to be set up at the extremities of the mile-limits, and printed regulations to be posted in public places; that they were fully sensible of the mischief done by so many prisoners being on parole, but that they were unable to stop it.

Still in 1813, the Transport Office commented very severely upon the case of a Danish officer at Reading who had been found guilty of forging a ‘certificate of succession’, which I take to be a list of prisoners in their order for being exchanged. I quote this case, as crimes of this calibre were hardly known among parole prisoners; for other instances, see pages [320] and [439].

Many complaints were made from the parole towns about the debts left behind them by absconded prisoners. The Transport Office invariably replied that such debts being private matters, the only remedy was at civil law.

When we come to deal with the complaints made by the prisoners—be they merely general complaints, or complaints against the people of the country—the number is so great that the task set is to select those of the most importance and interest.

Complaints against fellow prisoners are not common.

In 1758 a French doctor, prisoner on parole at Wye in Kent, complains that ten of his countrymen, fellow prisoners, wanted him to pay for drinks to the extent of twenty-seven shillings. He refused, so they attacked him, tore his clothes, stole thirty-six shillings, a handkerchief, and two medals. He brought his assailants before the magistrates, and they were made to refund twenty-five shillings. This so enraged them that they made his life a burden to him, and he prayed to be removed elsewhere.

In 1758 a prisoner on parole at Chippenham complained that he was subjected to ill treatment by his fellow prisoners. The letter is ear-marked:

‘Mr. Trevanion (the local Agent) is directed to publish to all the prisoners that if any are guilty of misbehaviour to each other, the offenders will immediately be sent to the Prison, and particularly that if any one molests or insults the writer of this letter, he shall instantly be confined upon its being proved.’

Later, however, the writer complains that the bullying is worse than ever, and that the other prisoners swear that they will cut him in pieces, so that he dare not leave his lodgings, and has been besieged there for days.

In the same year Dingart, captain of the Deux Amis privateer, writes from confinement on the Royal Oak prison-ship at Plymouth that he had been treated unjustly. He had, he says, a difference with Feraud, Captain of Le Moras privateer, at Tavistock, during which the latter struck him, ran away, and kept out of sight for a fortnight. Upon his reappearance, the complainant returned him the blow with a stick, whereupon Feraud brought him up for assault before the Agent, Willesford, who sent him to a prison-ship.

At Penryn in the same year, Chevalier, a naval lieutenant, complained of being insulted and attacked by another prisoner with a stick, who, ‘although only a privateer sailor, is evidently favoured by Loyll’ (Lloyd?) the Agent.

In 1810 one Savart was removed from Wincanton to Stapleton Prison at the request of French superior officers who complained of his very violent conduct.

These complaints were largely due to the tactless Government system of placing parole prisoners of widely different ranks together. There are many letters during the Seven Years’ War period from officers requesting to be removed to places where they would be only among people of their own rank, and not among those ‘qui imaginent que la condition de prisonnier de guerre peut nous rendre tous égaux.’

Nor was this complaint confined to prisoners on parole, but even more closely affected officers who, for breaches of parole, were sent to prisons or to prison-ships. There are strong complaints in 1758 by ‘broke-paroles’, as they were termed, of the brutal class of prisoners at Sissinghurst with whom they were condemned to herd; and in one case the officer prisoners actually petitioned that a prison official who had been dismissed and punished for cutting and wounding an ordinary prisoner should be reinstated, as the latter richly deserved the treatment he had received.

Latterly the authorities remedied this by setting apart prison-ships for officers, and by providing separate quarters in prisons. Still, in dealing with the complaints, they had to be constantly on their guard against artifice and fraud, and if the perusal of Government replies to complaints makes us sometimes think that the complainants were harshly and even brutally dealt with, we may be sure that as a rule the authorities had very sufficient grounds for their decisions. For example, in 1804, Delormant, an officer on parole at Tiverton, was sent to a Plymouth hulk for some breach of parole. He complained to Admiral Colpoys that he was obliged there to herd with the common men. Colpoys wrote to the Transport Board that he had thought right to have a separate ship fitted for prisoner officers, and had sent Delormant to it. Whereupon the Board replied that if Admiral Colpoys had taken the trouble to find out what sort of a man Delormant really was, he would have left him where he was, but that for the present he might remain on the special ship.

One of the commonest forms of complaint from prisoners was against the custom of punishing a whole community for the sins of a few, or even of a single man. In 1758 a round-robin signed by seventy-five prisoners at Sissinghurst protested that the whole of the inmates of the Castle were put upon half rations for the faults of a few ‘impertinents’.

At Okehampton in the same year, upon a paroled officer being sent to a local prison for some offence, and escaping therefrom, the whole of the other prisoners in the place were confined to their lodgings for some days. When set free they held an indignation meeting, during which one of the orators waved a stick, as the mayor said, threateningly at him. Whereupon he was arrested and imprisoned at ‘Coxade’, the ‘Cockside’ prison near Mill Bay, Plymouth.

We see an almost pathetic fanning and fluttering of that old French aristocratic plumage, which thirty years later was to be bedraggled in the bloody dust, in the complaints of two highborn prisoners of war in 1756 and 1758. In the former year Monsieur de Béthune strongly resented being sent on parole from Bristol into the country:

‘Ayant appris de Mr. Surgunnes (?) que vous lui mandé par votre lettre du 13 courant si Messire De Béthune, Chevalier de St. Simon, Marquis d’Arbest, Baron de Sainte Lucie, Seigneur haut, et bas justicier des paroisses de Chateauvieux, Corvilac, Lâneau, Pontmartin, Neung et autres lieux, étoit admis à la parole avec les autres officiers pour lesquels il s’intéresse, j’aurai l’avantage de vous répondre, qu’un Grand de la trempe de Messire De Béthune, qui vous adresse la présente, n’est point fait pour peupler un endroit aussi désert que la campagne, attendu qu’allié du costé paternel et maternel à un des plus puissans rois que jamais terre ait porté, Londres, comme Bristol ou autre séjour qu’il voudra choisir, est capable de contenir celui qui est tout à vous.

‘De Bristol; le 15 Xbre. 1756.’

Later he writes that he hears indirectly that this letter has given offence to the gentlemen at the ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office on Tower Hill, but maintains that it is excusable from one who is allied to several kings and sovereign princes, and he expects to have his passport for London.

The Prince de Rohan, on parole at Romsey, not adapting himself easily to life in the little Hampshire town, although he had the most rare privilege of a six-mile limit around it, wrote on July 4, 1758, requesting permission for self and three or four officers to go to Southampton once a week to make purchases, as Romsey Market is so indifferent, and to pass the night there. The six-mile limit, he says, does not enable him to avail himself of the hospitality of the people of quality, and he wants leave to go further with his suite. He adds a panegyric on the high birth and the honour of French naval officers, which made parole-breaking an impossibility, and he resents their being placed in the same category with privateer and merchant-ship captains.

However, the Commissioners reply that no exceptions can be made in his favour, and that as Southampton is a sea-port, leave to visit it cannot be thought of.

In 1756 twenty-two officers on parole at Cranbrook in Kent prayed to be sent to Maidstone, on the plea that there were no lodgings to be had in Cranbrook except at exorbitant rates; that the bakers only baked once or twice a week, and that sometimes the supply of bread ran short if it was not ordered beforehand and an extra price paid for it; that vegetables were hardly to be obtained; and that, finally, they were ill-treated by the inhabitants. No notice was taken of this petition.

In 1757 a prisoner writes from Tenterden:

‘S’il faut que je reste en Angleterre, permettez-moi encore de vous prier de vouloir bien m’envoier dans une meilleure place, n’ayant pas déjà lieu de me louer du peuple de ce village. Sur des plaintes que plusieurs Français ont portées au maire depuis que je suis ici, il a fait afficher de ne point insulter aux Français, l’affiche a été le même jour arrachée. On a remis une autre. Il est bien désagréable d’être dans une ville où l’on est obligé de défendre aux peuples d’insulter les prisonniers. J’ai ouï dire aux Français qui ont été à Maidstone que c’était très bien et qu’ils n’ont jamais été insultés ... ce qui me fait vous demander une autre place, c’est qu’on déjà faillit d’être jeté dans la boue en passant dans les chemins, ayant eu cependant l’intention de céder le pavé.’

In reply, the Commissioners of the ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office ask the Agent at Tenterden why, when he heard complaints, he did not inform the Board. The complainant, however, was not to be moved, as he had previously been sent to Sissinghurst for punishment.

In 1758, twenty officers at Tenterden prayed for removal elsewhere, saying that as the neighbourhood was a residential one for extremely rich people, lodgings at moderate prices were not to be had, and that the townspeople cared so little to take in foreign guests of their description, that if they were taken ill the landlords turned them out. This application was ear-marked for inquiry.

No doubt the poor fellows received but scanty courtesy from the rank and file of their captors, and the foreigner then, far more than now, was deemed fair game for oppression and robbery. In support of this I will quote some remarks by Colonel Thierry, whose case certainly appears to be a particularly hard one.

Colonel Thierry had been sent to Stapleton Prison in 1812 for having violated his parole by writing from Oswestry to his niece, the Comtesse de la Frotté, without having submitted the letter, according to parole rule, to the Agent. He asks for humane treatment, a separate room, a servant, and liberty to go to market.

‘Les vexations dont on m’a accablé en route sont révoltantes. Les scélérats que vos lois envoyent à Tyburn ne sont pas plus mal traités; une semblable conduite envers un Colonel, prisonnier de guerre, est une horreur de plus que j’aurai le droit de reprocher aux Anglais pour lesquels j’ai eu tant de bontés lorsqu’ils sont tombés en mon pouvoir. Si le Gouvernement français fût instruit des mauvais traitements dont on accable les Français de touts grades, et donnait des ordres pour user de représailles envers les Anglais détenus en France ... le Gouvernement anglais ordonnerait-il à ses agents de traiter avec plus d’égards, de modération, d’humanité ses prisonniers.’

In a postscript the Colonel adds that his nephew, the Comte de la Frotté, is with Wellington, that another is in the Royal Navy, and that all are English born. One is glad to know that the Colonel’s prayer was heard, and that he was released from Stapleton.

In 1758 a prisoner writes from Tenterden:

‘Last Thursday, March 16th, towards half-past eight at night, I was going to supper, and passed in front of a butcher’s shop where there is a bench fixed near the door on which three or four youths were sitting, and at the end one who is a marine drummer leaning against a wall projecting two feet on to the street. When I came near them I guessed they were talking about us Frenchmen, for I heard one of them say: “Here comes one of them,” and when I was a few paces beyond them one of them hit me on the right cheek with something soft and cold. As I entered my lodging I turned round and said: “You had better be careful!” Last Sunday at half-past eight, as I was going to supper, being between the same butcher’s shop and the churchyard gate, some one threw at me a stick quite three feet long and heavy enough to wound me severely....’

Also at Tenterden, a prisoner named D’Helincourt, going home one night with a Doctor Chomel, met at the door of the latter’s lodging a youth and two girls, one of whom was the daughter of Chomel’s landlord, ‘avec laquelle il avait plusieurs fois poussé la plaisanterie jusqu’à l’embrasser sans qu’elle l’eût jamais trouvé mauvais, et ayant engagé M. Chomel à l’embrasser aussi.’ But the other girl, whom they would also kiss, played the prude; the youth with her misunderstood what D’Helincourt said, and hit him under the chin with his fist, which made D’Helincourt hit him back with his cane on the arm, and all seemed at an end. Not long after, D’Helincourt was in the market, when about thirty youths came along. One of them went up to him and asked him if he remembered him, and hit him on the chest. D’Helincourt collared him, to take him to the Mayor, but the others set on him, and he certainly would have been killed had not some dragoons come up and rescued him.

Apparently the Agents and Magistrates were too much afraid of offending the people to grant justice to these poor strangers.

At Cranbrook a French officer was assaulted by a local ruffian and hit him back, for which he was sent to Sissinghurst.

In 1808 and 1809 many complaints from officers were received that their applications to be allowed to go to places like Bath and Cheltenham for the benefit of their health were too often met with the stereotyped reply that ‘your complaint is evidently not of such a nature as to be cured by the waters of Bath or Cheltenham’. Of course, the Transport Office knew well enough that the complaints were not curable by the waters of those places, but by their life and gaiety: by the change from the monotonous country town with its narrow, gauche society, its wretched inns, and its mile limit, to the fashionable world of gaming, and dancing, and music, and flirting; but they also knew that to permit French officers to gather at these places in numbers would be to encourage plotting and planning, and to bring together gentlemen whom it was desirable to keep apart.

So in the latter year the Mayor of Bath received an order from the Earl of Liverpool that all prisoners of war were to be removed from the city except those who could produce certificates from two respectable doctors of the necessity of their remaining, ‘which must be done with such caution as, if required, the same may be verified on oath.’ The officers affected by this order were to go to Bishop’s Waltham, Odiham, Wincanton, and Tiverton.

Of complaints by prisoners on parole against the country people there must be many hundreds, the greater number of them dating from the period of the Seven Years’ War. During this time the prisoners were largely distributed in Kent, a county which, from its proximity to France, and its consequent continuous memory of wrongs, fancied and real, suffered at the hands of Frenchmen during the many centuries of warfare between the two countries, when Kent bore the brunt of invasion and fighting, may be understood to have entertained no particular affection for Frenchmen, despite the ceaseless commerce of a particular kind which the bitterest of wars could not interrupt.

A few instances will suffice to exemplify the unhappy relationship which existed, not in Kent alone, but everywhere, between the country people and the unfortunate foreigners thrust among them.

In 1757 a prisoner on parole at Basingstoke complained that he was in bed at 11 p.m., when there came ‘7 ou 8 drôles qui les défièrent de sortir en les accablant d’injures atroces, et frappant aux portes et aux fenêtres comme s’ils avoient voulu jeter la maison en bas.’ Another prisoner here had stones thrown at him ‘d’une telle force qu’elles faisoient feu sur le pavé,’ whilst another lot of youths broke windows and almost uprooted the garden.

From Wye in Kent is a whole batch of letters of complaint against the people. One of them is a round-robin signed by eighty prisoners complaining of bad and dear lodgings, and praying to be sent to Ashford, which was four times the size of Wye, and where there were only forty-five prisoners, and lodgings were better and cheaper.

At Tonbridge, in the same year, two parole officers dropped some milk for fun on the hat of a milk-woman at the door below their window. Some chaff ensued which a certain officious and mischief-making man named Miles heard, who threatened he would report the Frenchmen for improper conduct, and get them sent to Sissinghurst! The authors of the ‘fun’ wrote to the authorities informing them of the circumstances, and asking for forgiveness, knowing well that men had been sent to Sissinghurst for less. Whether the authorities saw the joke or not does not appear.

The rabble of the parole towns had recourse to all sorts of devices to make the prisoners break their paroles so that they could claim the usual reward of ten shillings. At Helston, on August 1, 1757, Hingston, the Parole Agent, sent to Dyer, the Agent at Penryn, a prisoner named Channazast, for being out of his lodgings all night. At the examination, Tonken, in whose house the man was, and who was liable to punishment for harbouring him, said, and wrote later:

‘I having been sent for by the mayor of our town this day to answer for I cannot tell what, however I’ll describe it to you in the best manner I am able. You must know that last Friday evening, I asked Monsieur Channazast to supper at my house who came according to my request. Now I have two Frenchmen boarded at my house, so they sat down together till most ten o’clock. At which time I had intelligence brought me that there was a soldier and another man waiting in the street for him to come out in order to get the ten shillings that was orders given by the Mayor for taking up all Frenchmen who was seen out of their Quarters after 9 o’clock. So, to prevent this rascally imposition I desired the man to go to bed with his two countrymen which he did accordingly altho’ he was not out of my house for the night——’

Reply: ‘Make enquiries into this.’

From Torrington in the same year eighteen prisoners pray to be sent elsewhere:

‘Insultés à chaque instant par mille et millions d’injures ou menaces, estre souvent poursuivis par la popullace jusqu’à nos portes à coups de roches et coups de bâtons. En outre encore, Monseigneur, avant hier il fut tirré un coup de fusil à plomb à cinque heures apres midy n’etant distant de notre logement que d’une portée de pistolet, heureusement celuy qui nous l’envoyoit ne nous avoit point assez bien ajusté . . . qu’il est dans tous les villages des hommes proposés pour rendre justice tres surrement bien judiscieux mais il est une cause qui l’empeche de nous prouver son equité comme la crainte de detourner la populasce adverse . . . nous avons été obligés de commettre à tous moments à suporter sans rien dire ce surcrois de malheurs. . . .’

Two more letters, each signed by the same eighteen prisoners, follow to the same intent. The man who fired the shot was brought up, and punishment promised, but nothing was done. Also it was promised that a notice forbidding the insulting of prisoners should be posted up, but neither was this done. The same letters complain also of robbery by lodging keepers, for the usual rate of 4s. a week was raised to 4s. 6d., and a month later to 5s. One prisoner refused to pay this. The woman who let the lodging complained to ‘Enjolace,’ the Agent, who tells the prisoner he must either pay what is demanded, or go to prison.

A prisoner at Odiham in the same year complained that a country girl encouraged him to address her, and that when he did, summoned him for violently assaulting her. He was fined twelve guineas, complains that his defence was not heard, and that ever since he had been insulted and persecuted by the country people.

In 1758 a letter, signed by fifty-six prisoners at Sevenoaks, bitterly complains that the behaviour of the country people is so bad that they dare not go out. In the same year a doctor, a prisoner in Sissinghurst Castle, complains of a grave injustice. He says that when on parole at Sevenoaks he was called in by a fellow countryman, cured him, and was paid his fee, but that ‘Nache’, the Agent at Sevenoaks, demanded half the fee, and upon the prisoner’s refusal to pay him, reported the case to the Admiralty, and got him committed to Sissinghurst.

A disgraceful and successful plot to ruin a prisoner is told from Petersfield in 1758.

Fifteen officers on parole appealed on behalf of one of their number named Morriset. He was in bed on December 22, at 8 a.m., in his lodging at one ‘Schollers’, a saddler, when Mrs. ‘Schollers’ came into the room on the pretext of looking for a slipper, and sat herself on the end of the bed. Suddenly, in came her husband, and, finding his wife there, attacked Morriset cruelly. Morriset to defend himself seized a knife from a waistcoat hanging on the bed, and ‘Schollers’ dropped his hold of him, but took from the waistcoat three guineas and some ‘chelins’, then called in a constable, accused Morriset of behaving improperly with his wife, and claimed a hundred pounds, or he would summons him. Morriset was brought up before the magistrates, and, despite his protestations of innocence, was sent to Winchester Jail. In reply to the appeal, the Commissioners said that they could not interfere in what was a private matter.

In the same year a prisoner wrote from Callington:

‘Lundy passé je fus attaqué dans mon logement par Thomas, garçon de Mr. Avis qui, après m’avoir dit toutes les sottises imaginables, ne s’en contenta pas, sans que je luy répondis à aucune de ses mauvaises parolles, il sauta sur moy, et me frapa, et je fus obligé de m’en défendre. Dimance dernier venant de me promener à 8 heures du soir, je rancontray dans la rue près de mon logement une quarantaine d’Anglois armés de bâtons pour me fraper si je n’avois peu me sauver à la faveur de mes jambes. Mardy sur les 7 heures de soir je fus attaqué en pleine place par les Anglois qui me donnèrent beaucoup de coups et m’étant défait d’eux je me sauvai à l’oberge du Soleil ou j’ai été obligé de coucher par ordre de Mr. Ordon, veu qu’il y avoit des Anglois qui m’attendoient pour me maltraiter.’

But even in 1756, when the persecution of prisoners by the rural riff-raff was very bad, we find a testimony from the officers on parole at Sodbury in Gloucestershire to the kindly behaviour of the inhabitants, saying that only on holidays are they sometimes jeered at, and asking to be kept there until exchanged.

Yet the next year, eighteen officers at the same place formulate to the Commissioners of the Sick and Wounded the following complaints:

1. Three Englishmen attacked two prisoners with sticks.

2. A naval doctor was struck in the face by a butcher.

3. A captain and a lieutenant were attacked with stones, bricks, and sticks, knocked down, and had to fly for safety to the house of Ludlow the Agent.

4. A second-captain, returning home, was attacked and knocked down in front of the Bell inn by a crowd, and would have been killed but for the intervention of some townspeople.

5. Two captains were at supper at the Bell. On leaving the house they were set on by four men who had been waiting for them, but with the help of some townspeople they made a fight and got away.

6. Between 10 and 11 p.m. a lieutenant had a terrible attack made on his lodging by a gang of men who broke in, and left him half dead. After which they went to an inn where some French prisoners lodged, and tried to break in ‘jusqu’au point, pour ainsy dire, de le demolir,’ swearing they would kill every Frenchman they found.

From Crediton a complaint signed by nearly fifty prisoners spoke of frequent attacks and insults, not only by low ruffians and loafers, but by people of social position, who, so far from doing their best to dissuade the lower classes, rather encouraged them. Even Mr. David, a man of apparently superior position, put a prisoner, a Captain Gazeau, into prison, took the keys himself, and kept them for a day in spite of the Portreeve’s remonstrance, but was made to pay damages by the effort of another man of local prominence.

The men selected as agents in the parole towns too often seem to have been socially unfitted for their positions as the ‘guides, philosophers, and friends’ of officers and gentlemen. At Crediton, for instance, the appointment of a Mr. Harvey called forth a remonstrance signed by sixty prisoners, one of whom thus described him:

‘Mr. Harvey à son arrivée de Londres, glorieux d’être exaucé, n’eut rien de plus pressé que de faire voir dans toutes les oberges et dans les rues les ordres dont il était revetu de la part des honorables Commissaires; ce qui ne pourra que nous faire un très mauvais effet, veu que le commun peuple qui habite ce pays-ci est beaucoup irrité contre les Français, à cause de la Nation et sans jusqu’au présent qu’aucun Français n’est donné aucun sujet de plainte.’

Again, in 1756 the aumonier of the Comte de Gramont, after complaining that the inhabitants of Ashburton are ‘un peuple sans règle et sans éducation’, by whom he was insulted, hissed, and stoned, and when he represented this to the authorities was ‘garrotté’ and taken to Exeter Prison, ridicules the status of the agents—here a shoemaker, here a tailor, here an apothecary, who dare not, for business reasons, take the part of the prisoners. He says he offered his services to well-to-do people in the neighbourhood, but they were declined—deceit on his part perhaps being feared.

From Ashford, Kent, a complainant writes, in 1758, that he was rather drunk one evening and went out for a walk to pick himself up. He met a mounted servant of Lord Winchilsea with a dog. He touched the dog, whereupon the servant dismounted and hit him in the face. A crowd then assembled, armed with sticks, and one man with a gun, and ill-treated him until he was unconscious, tied his hands behind him, emptied his pockets, and took him before Mr. Tritton. Knowing English fairly well, the prisoner justified himself, but he was committed to the cachot. He was then accused of having ill-treated a woman who, out of pity, had sent for her husband to help him. He handed in a certificate of injuries received, signed by Dr. Charles Fagg. His name was Marc Layne.

Complaints from Goudhurst in Kent relate that on one occasion three men left their hop-dressing to attack passing prisoners. Upon another, the French officers were, mirabile dictu, playing ‘criquet’, and told a boy of ten to get out of the way and not interfere with them, whereupon the boy called his companions, and there ensued a disturbance. A magistrate came up, and the result was that a Captain Lamoise had to pay £1 1s. or go to Maidstone Jail.

That the decent members of the community reprobated these attacks on defenceless foreigners, although they rarely seem to have taken any steps to stop them, is evident from the following story. At Goudhurst, some French prisoners, coming out of an inn, were attacked by a mob. Thirty-seven paroled officers there signed a petition and accompanied it with this testimony from inhabitants, dated November 9, 1757:

‘We, the inhabitants of the Parish of Goudhurst, certifie that we never was insulted in any respect by the French gentlemen, nor to their knowledge have they caused any Riot except when they have been drawn in by a Parcel of drunken, ignorant, and scandalous men who make it their Business to ensnare them for the sake of a little money.

(Signed.)

Stephen Osbourne. Thos. Ballard. John Savage.

Jasper Sprang. Richard Royse. J. Dickinson.

W. Hunt. John Bunnell. Zach. Sims.’

The complainants made declaration:

1. That the bad man Rastly exclaimed he would knock down the first Frenchman he met.

2. Two French prisoners were sounding horns and hautboys in the fields. The servant of the owner ordered them to go. They went quietly, but the man followed them and struck them. They complained to Tarith, the Agent, but he said that it did not concern him.

3. This servant assembled fifteen men with sticks, and stopped all exit from Bunnell’s inn, where five French prisoners were drinking. The prisoners were warned not to leave, and, although ‘remplis de boisson’, they kept in. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock came; they resolved to go out, one of them being drunk; they were attacked and brutally ill-used.

The Agent assured them that they should have justice, but they did not get it.

As physical resistance to attacks and insults would have made matters worse for the Frenchmen, besides being hopeless in the face of great odds of numbers, it was resolved in one place at any rate, the name of which I cannot find, to resort to boycotting as a means of reprisal. I give the circulated notice of this in its original quaint and illiterate French:

‘En conséquence de la délibération faite et teneu par le corps de François deteneus en cette ville il a esté ordonné qu’après qu’il aura cette Notoire, que quelque Marchand, Fabriquant, Boutiquier etcetera de cette ville aurons insulté, injurié, ou comis quelque aiesais (?) au vis à vis de quelque François tel que puis être, et que le fait aura été averée, il sera mis une affiche dans les Lieus les plus aparants portant proscription de sa Maison, Boutique, Fabrique etcetera, et ordonné et defendeu à tout François quelque qualité, condition qu’il soy sous Paine d’être regardé et déclaré traité à la Patrie et de subire plus grande Punition suivent l’exsigence du cas et qu’il en sera decidé.

‘La France.’

The above is dated 1758.

In 1779 the parole prisoners at Alresford complained of being constantly molested and insulted by the inhabitants, and asked to be sent elsewhere. Later, however, the local gentry and principal people guarantee a cessation of this, and the prisoners pray to be allowed to stay. The officer prisoners asked to be allowed to accept invitations at Winchester, but were refused. In the same year prisoners at Redruth complained of daily insults at the hands of an uncivilized populace, and from Chippenham twenty-nine officers signed a complaint about insults and attacks, and stated that as a result one of them was obliged to keep his room for eight days.

On the other hand, prisoners under orders to leave Tavistock for another parole town petition to be allowed to remain there, as the Agent has been so good to them; and as a sign that even in Kent matters were changing for the better, the prayer of some parole prisoners at Tenterden to be sent to Cranbrook on account of the insults by the people, is counterbalanced by a petition of other prisoners in the same town who assert that only a few soldiers have insulted them, and asking that no change be made, as the inhabitants are hospitable and kindly, and the Agent very just and lenient.

Much quiet, unostentatious kindness was shown towards the prisoners which has not been recorded, but in the Memoir of William Pearce of Launceston, in 1810, it is written that he made the parole prisoners in that town the objects of his special attention; that he gave them religious instruction, circulated tracts among them in their own language, and relieved their necessities, with the result that many reformed and attended his services. One prisoner came back after the Peace of 1815, lived in the service of the chapel, and was buried in its grave-yard. En parenthèse the writer adds that the boys of Launceston got quite into the habit of ejaculating ‘Morbleu!’ from hearing it so constantly on the lips of the French prisoners.

In the Life of Hannah More, written by William Roberts, we read:

‘Some French officers of cultivated minds and polished manners being on their parole in the neighbourhood of Bristol, were frequent guests at Mr. More’s house, and always fixed upon Hannah as their interpreter, and her intercourse with their society is said to have laid the ground of that free and elegant use of their language for which she was afterwards distinguished.’

CHAPTER XXIX
PAROLE LIFE. SUNDRY NOTES

In this and the succeeding chapter I gather together a number of notes connected with the life of the paroled prisoners in Britain, which could not conveniently be classed under the headings of previous chapters.