This peaceful and prosperous colony of condemned felons has replaced the great war prison where as many as ten thousand unhappy victims of their quarrelsome rulers, but innocent of all crimes, passed years of hopeless exile, prolonged suffering and irksome confinement. The population to-day is little more than a tenth of the number originally lodged here. These inmates, whose liberty and labour have been forfeited by their misdeeds, are treated with humane severity and subjected to an exact but well-contrived discipline intended to maintain order and insist upon unremitting industry. The principle inculcated by the motto over the old gate, parcere subjectis, is still observed so long as the convicts deserve it. Unquestioning submission to authority is insisted upon. Without this none of the results achieved as already set forth could have been even approximately attained. Dartmoor is one of the best illustrations of the English convict system which was introduced after the failure of transportation beyond seas. It is a progressive system far superior and more effective than that “Irish system” so much praised and, indeed, overrated. The law-breaker when expiating his offence is put, so to speak, upon a ladder of improvement. He is subjected to corrective processes, but with his own coöperation, so that his fate is really in his own hands. He is first chastened, then strengthened. He begins his penalty in the painful privacy of a separate cell; after six months of irksome monotonous confinement he is promoted to the healthy and laborious life in the open air of a “public work,”—Dartmoor, Portland, Parkhurst or Borstal. The employment is akin to that of the free workman, embracing many varieties of outdoor labour, digging, bricklaying, stone dressing, pile-driving, plate-laying and all the operations of farming and agriculture. Strong objections have been raised to the so-called “degrading associations,” but the conditions are identically those of all outdoor labour and the supposed mischief is not really great. No idle gossip is permitted; talk encourages idleness, and want of industry means loss of “marks,” or the forfeiture of a part of that precious boon of remission of time which is the sheet anchor of our English progressive system. To that system England owes the Portland Breakwater, the fortifications of the Verne, the extension of the dockyards of Chatham and Portsmouth with their vast inland lakes or basin of water, and last but not least the reclamation of Dartmoor bogs and their conversion into smiling gardens and fertile arable land.

Before leaving Dartmoor, it is right to refer to a graceful act performed in these latter days by a governor of the modern prison. It was in effect atonement for previous blameworthy neglect. In the old days there was much mortality among the war prisoners. The severity of the climate although greatly exaggerated was responsible for much, and numbers suffered from their own recklessness in gambling away their clothing and their constant addiction to drink. Scanty attention was paid to the graves of those who succumbed at Dartmoor, and we read that “the burial place of the unfortunate captives has been sadly neglected; horses and cattle have broken up the soil and left the bones of the dead to whiten in the sun.” Matters were no doubt made worse by the long years during which the buildings remained unoccupied. The reproach was at length removed by Captain Walter Stopford,[9] who, when governor of the prison in 1865, was at great pains to have the remains collected in two separate enclosures, and two monuments erected to the memory of the gallant men, Americans and Frenchmen, deceased in a strange land, the victims of the sad fortunes of war.

CHAPTER IX
FRENCH WAR PRISONS

French war prisons in Napoleon’s time—Civilians detained in France in large numbers—The various prisons on the north-eastern frontier—General Wirion, a cruel and rapacious gaoler—Verdun described—A hot-bed of vice and iniquity—Wirion’s exactions—Treatment of prisoners—Wirion’s suicide—Succeeded by the inhuman Colonel Courcelles—Evidence of a subordinate, Anthony Latreille—Fierce reprisals—Life at Verdun described by an eyewitness, Captain Seacombe Ellison—Breaks out of the citadel of Verdun and is injured—After long wanderings is recaptured and removed to the fortress of Bitche, commonly known as the “Castle of Tears”—Description of Bitche—The Grande Souterrain.

WHEN in 1803 there was a fresh rupture between France and England and a renewal of embittered hostilities, Napoleon took great umbrage at the action of his marine neighbour. He was hot with anger at the sudden seizure, without notice, of all French ships in British ports, on the declaration of war, and decided upon immediate reprisals. He decreed that all British subjects on French soil should be arrested and detained. This arbitrary act was made worse by the plain notice that the prisoners, for the most part non-combatants, need not look for release. No exchanges were to be permitted and imprisonment promised to become permanent or to last at least to the far-off end of the war. Many thousands of luckless, harmless folk were involved by this harsh measure, altogether at variance with the law of nations. At the end of the war the total reached the large number of more than twenty-one thousand. Numbers of English people had but recently taken advantage of the Peace of Amiens to visit Paris or set up their residence in France. Some of the cases were very hard, as that of the young doctor about to establish himself in a practice upon the south coast, who ran over to Paris for a short holiday but was caught by the order of arrest and held prisoner for many years.

Various fortresses and strongholds on the northeastern frontier were constituted places of durance among which the war prisoners were divided. Of these Verdun, Longwy, Givet, Valenciennes, Arras, Briançon, Cambray, Sedan and Bitche were chief. At one time Verdun was used as a common centre and placed under the supervision and command of a general officer, Wirion by name, whose cruelties and extortions placed him in the category of the brutal and oppressive gaolers who have inflicted so much suffering on their fellow creatures in all ages and countries. Of Wirion I shall have occasion to speak further. Verdun was the most important of these northeastern places of detention. It is an ancient city of the Gauls and played its part in early ecclesiastical history, the seat of a bishop who kept his state as a count and prince of the Holy Roman Empire. As it grew in wealth and splendour it was fortified and the foundation laid of the strong citadel which survived until the Napoleonic era and has since been worked into the scheme of frontier defence. Its aspect is architecturally imposing with its bishop’s palace, citadel and cathedral. It is situated on the Meuse which divides the town into two parts, flowing through rich meadows under umbrageous trees, past well wooded ramparts. It was made the centre and headquarters of the prisoners’ depots, and was always crowded with the victims of an unrighteous policy, governed by merciless and rapacious tyrants, and may be taken as typical of many similar places that disgraced the Napoleonic regime. It is but fair to add that when the atrocities committed were fully exposed, the Emperor was swift to call the offenders to account, to weed them out and replace them by honourable soldiers of high principle and good repute, who speedily retrieved the character of their cloth. But the evil deeds of their predecessors stand out in the records of the time and will be best appreciated by a brief reference to the just retribution that overtook them. Of a total of eleven French officers employed in the superior administration of the depots of prisoners, three committed suicide to escape punishment, five were tried by court-martial and sentenced to be dismissed from the service, one was condemned to the galleys, and another reduced to the ranks.

The chief culprit was Wirion, a general officer and Inspector General of Imperial Gendarmerie, the Commander in Chief of the war prisoners, who shot himself; next in order of cruelty was Colonel Courcelles, the commandant of Verdun and senior officer in the department of the Meuse, who was cashiered; three others were lieutenants of gendarmerie, two were aides-de-camp to General Wirion, who were both dismissed from the service. The commandant of Bitche only saved himself by a testimonial of his prisoners. There were many more delinquents, mostly insignificant, against whom the evidence was not sufficiently strong.

Verdun at that time was a hot-bed of vice and iniquity. The collection within the narrow limits of a second class provincial town of persons of rank and affluence,—for the English détenus were largely people of good social pretensions,—for the most part idle and at all times horribly bored and with no legitimate outlets for their energies, or useful means of employing their time, tended to general demoralisation. Detention long protracted, with small hope of enlargement, drove the weak and self-indulgent without mental resources to the solace of the bottle, and numbers became confirmed sots. Well meant efforts to reform them seldom succeeded; deaths from delirium tremens or by felo de se were frequent. The argument often used was that when a man could get drunk twice a day for fourpence, he made the best use of his time. Life otherwise was not worth having. A French peasant who had dragged a drunken prisoner out of a ditch and saved his life, asked for his reward. “He would have deserved twice as much if he had left me there. What could be better for me than death?” was the reply.

The place was for years a perfect hell. Gambling tables for roulette and rouge et noir had been established by the permission of the presiding authorities and were openly encouraged. General Wirion was a partner and received a large percentage of profit. The rooms were just what may be seen to-day at Monte Carlo; the tables of green cloth covered with coin surrounded by a varied crowd, high and low, English peers and indescribable riff-raff, with loose characters who came in hundreds from Paris. Vice stalked shameless through the throng; high play was incessant, large sums were won and lost, the latter chiefly, and as money could be easily borrowed, ruin, disgrace and death constantly overtook the unfortunate. Napoleon in 1806 very rightly forbade play and abolished the tables, which from the first were only introduced for the English, the French residents not being permitted to gamble.

In such a community as this Wirion and his myrmidons reaped a fine harvest. Fees and fines were levied on the smallest and most trivial grounds; every luxury was taxed by privilege and must be bought at a price. No device was omitted that would put money into Wirion’s pocket. It was said of him that he “persecuted the rich for his profit, the poor for his pleasure.” He had begun life as a police officer and he drew upon his training and experience to establish a system of espionage by which he was kept informed of all that went on; he learned all he wanted to know as to the private means of his prisoners and to what extent he might squeeze money out of them. He began to ill-use them from the moment they appeared in Verdun.