Oswestry
Oswestry, in Shropshire, was an important parole town. In 1803, when rumours were afloat that a concerted simultaneous rising of the French prisoners of war in the Western Counties was to be carried out, a hurried transfer of these latter was made to the more inland towns of Staffordshire and Shropshire. and it has been stated that Oswestry received no less than 700, but this has been authentically contradicted, chiefly by correspondents to Bygones, a most complete receptacle of old-time information concerning Shropshire and the Welsh border, access to which I owe to the kindness of Mr. J. E. Anden of Tong, Shifnal.
Among the distinguished prisoners at Oswestry were the Marquis d’Hautpol, on whose Memories of Captivity in England I have already drawn largely; General Phillipon, the able defender of Badajos, who escaped with Lieut. Garnier from Oswestry; and Prince Arenburg, who was removed thither to Bridgnorth upon suspicion of having aided a fellow prisoner to escape.
The prisoners were, as usual, distributed in lodgings about the town; some were at the Three Tuns inn, where bullet marks in a wall are said to commemorate a duel fought between two of them.
From the London Chronicle of May 20, 1813, I take the following:
‘There is in this town (Oswestry) a French officer on parole who is supposed by himself and countrymen to possess strength little inferior to Samson. He is Monsieur Fiarsse, he follows the profession of a fencing-master, and is allowed to have considerable skill in that way. He had been boasting that he had beat every Englishman that opposed him in the town where he was last on parole (in Devonshire), and he sent a challenge the other day to a private of the 64th Regiment to a boxing-match. It was accepted. The Frenchman is a very tall, stout-built man, of a most ferocious countenance; the soldier is a little, round-faced man, as plump as a partridge. Five rounds were fought; the first, I understand, the Frenchman threw a blow at his adversary with all his strength which brought him down; he rose, however, in a moment, and played his part so well that I think M. Fiarsse will never like to attack a British soldier again! The little fellow made him spin again, he dealt his blows with such judgement. After the fifth round, Fiarsse said: “It is ‘nough! I vill no moe!”’
There were French Royalist refugees at Oswestry as elsewhere, and one of the hardest tasks of local parole agents was to prevent disturbances between these men and their bitter opponents the Bonapartist officer prisoners, dwelling in the same towns. In fact, the presence of large numbers of French Royalists in England, many of them very highly connected, brought about the very frequent attacks made on them in contemporary French literature and journalism for playing the parts of spies and traitors, and originated the parrot-cry at every French diplomatic or military and naval reverse, ‘Sold by the princes in England!’
There are graves of French prisoners in Oswestry churchyard. Upon one is ‘Ci-gît D. J. J. J. Du Vive, Capitaine-Adjudant aux États-Majors généraux: prisonnier de guerre sur parole; né à Pau, Dépt des Basses-Pyrénées, 26 Juillet 1762; décédé à Oswestry, 20 Juillet 1813.’