“Courcelles pretended that his orders were to confine the prisoners in the caverns of the citadel, and not in the convent—that appropriating this to their use from motives of humanity, it was but just, he said, that they reimbursed him for the necessary repairs the building had lately undergone. The midshipmen appealed to their commanding officer; this gentleman promised to resist for them the iniquitous claim. At the expiration of the month, Courcelles desired him to retain a certain sum for lodging money. ‘You may, sir,’ replied the officer, ‘lord it over my countrymen, for unhappily they are too much in your power, but you shall never force me to aid you; and no punishment you can inflict would ever induce me to act dishonourably. Your order is unjust and I will not listen to it.’ This firm language so intimidated Courcelles that he did not enforce it.
“The midshipmen finding that he gave way so easily, petitioned the Minister of War, in hopes that a statement of their circumstances might ameliorate their situation. They stated their grievances as follows:—‘That they had been compelled to purchase his wines; that the difference (a small fraction) between the franc and the livre tournois was still withheld; that an attempt had been made to force them to pay for the apartments into which they had been thrust; with other minor things.’
“The petition had the desired effect. The Duc de Feltre, with that justice and humanity which ever distinguished his conduct towards the prisoners, immediately caused the matter to be examined. A general with two British officers were nominated to inquire into it. The general observed to Courcelles that two of the charges were comparatively trifling but that the payment in livres instead of francs could not so easily be surmounted; and he wished to know what he had to say thereon. Courcelles answered, ‘Nothing—I have never had to do with the prisoners’ pay; it is the gendarmerie alone that have been employed in this service; no profit has arisen to me—I am ignorant on the subject.’ ‘Sir,’ said the general, ‘the gendarmerie are under your orders; if they have committed abuses, you are answerable for them.’ I was then sent for; and after answering a number of questions, the following dialogue took place between the two men:
“ ‘How happens it that, resident in a town where so much money has been spent and yourself one of the principal persons that has been employed, no part of the treasure has come to you?’
“ ‘I confess that, since my stay in Verdun, I have annually consumed above one hundred pounds more than my pay and that I have received this sum from the generosity of the English.’ ”
Reference has been made above to the bitter pangs endured by the commandant on the frequency of successful escapes. They were undertaken with remarkable boldness in the teeth of abundant and it might have seemed insurmountable obstacles, and accomplished after facing and surmounting extraordinary hardships and incredible sufferings. This will be best realised by recounting in some detail a few of the most noteworthy evasions of British prisoners of war. One is recorded in a small book, “Prison Scenes,” from the hand of a principal actor in the enterprise, Mr. Seacombe Ellison, the master of a Liverpool merchantman, the brig Rachel, carrying sixteen guns. The ship was captured by a French privateer, off the American coast on her passage home from Honduras, and taken to Bordeaux whence her captain and crew were sent to Verdun. His experiences at that much and rightly abused depot have been largely drawn upon in the following pages.
When the hope of release became more and more vague, Mr. Ellison cast about him to compass his escape. In conference with some of his comrades various plans were debated and dismissed as too hazardous; but at last one was adopted. Mr. Ellison tells us that he always viewed the undertaking with dread “particularly when in the morning he looked out of the window and the weather happened to be wet and cold.” The idea was to get across the French frontier, to pass the Rhine and travelling through Baden, Wurtemburg and Bavaria enter Austria and make for the sea at Trieste. This was in effect the route taken when finally success crowned their efforts. But they were to be sorely tried by misfortune before they regained their liberty. The first aim was to rid themselves of the obligation of parole given. As has been said, it was only necessary to commit some trifling breach of the regulations to secure committal to the citadel, from which the open country might be reached without passing through the gates of the fortress; such an escape, moreover, when shut up in the citadel, would exonerate the bondsmen who were jointly responsible with them for safe custody.
All the necessary preliminaries were completed by the intending runaways at their lodgings in town; they bought very privately all the tools and appliances required to assist them in breaking out—gimlets, small lock saws and a fine saw made of a watch spring and set in a steel handle, to be used in filing through iron bars; they also obtained maps and marked out their projected route. These various articles, with a store of food sufficient for eighteen days, were conveyed during daylight to a secure hiding place in a wood beyond the walls, to which they had access, while the gates were open. At the last moment they secreted the rope to be used in their descent into the ditch, by lapping it round and round their bodies under their waistcoats; it was about the thickness of a log line or a window cord, so that a great length could be conveniently secreted. Carrying all these on their persons they proceeded to the office of the lieutenant of gendarmerie pretending that they were late for roll call. Whereupon the choleric officer promptly ordered them to the citadel under close arrest.
This citadel was familiar ground; from frequent visits they knew all its intricacies and soon saw that the plan they had conceived was perfectly feasible. They had access to the chapel adjoining the citadel and belonging to the convent of St. Vannes. Happily but few prisoners were in confinement in the citadel and no one suspected or spied upon them. A passage through the chapel was effected by taking out one of the panels of the door; a series of holes were bored through with the gimlet but the panel was retained in its place by leaving one bit of wood intact. At the appointed hour the loose panel was broken out, not without noise, but no alarm was given; then all passed through the aperture, although one man stuck fast in the opening and was with difficulty extricated. Once through the body of the church, they groped about seeking a place of exit and came upon an altar above which was a window undefended by bars, through which they climbed and quietly descended into the convent garden. They now gained the open enclosure of the citadel, reached the general’s garden, easily surmounted a low wall to find a descent of twenty feet on the far side, down which they slid, narrowly escaping accident. Here they came upon a sentry box and found a sentinel soundly asleep within. They were now at the inner edge of the rampart but not at the point at which they had originally intended to pass; the drop was at least sixty-five feet, nearly double that which they had expected, but they now unwound the ropes from around their bodies and cast lots as to who should go down first. Three fugitives preceded Ellison and descended safely, but Ellison could not hold the rope, which had become slack and slimy, and let go his hold, finishing with a fall of fifteen to twenty feet.
They were now at the bottom of the ditch, two of them, Ellison and another, in horrible pain from their falls, but not seriously injured, and after a rest they hobbled away to their selected hiding place in the recesses of the wood. At this moment the gun fired announcing the escape, but they crept further in amongst the bushes and were not discovered. Here they lay four whole days and nights, two of them in great bodily pain and all in much discomfort, for rain fell continuously. On the fifth night, when the injured men were somewhat stronger, they left the wood and reached the bank of the Meuse, now closely pursued by villagers who were blowing horns. What was to be done? They had run into the toils, the enemy was before and behind, the river on each side and none of them swimmers. They turned off the road, ran along the bank and to their great joy found a boat, into which they jumped, and were across in a moment and very soon out of hearing of their pursuers. Their situation was by no means secure, but they were undisturbed and at dark resumed their march. Progressing by night, lying in the woods by day, they had still plenty of food and a small supply of brandy, but their chief need was lack of water. By the help of their maps they kept in a pretty direct course, never entering a house or holding any communication with persons they met. On the eleventh day their hiding place was on the edge of a steep hill; one of the party was now exhausted and almost spent, but they would not desert him, being still resolved to sink or swim together. That evening they made a somewhat earlier start and on reaching a village found to their dismay that there were still many people about. One was a gendarme who accosted them, demanding their passports with much insistence; although he could not read, he demurred at accepting the papers put forward, which were not really passports, and while the discussion was proceeding a brigadier of gensdarmes came up and all was lost. “Ah, gentlemen,” he exclaimed, “I am glad to see you; I have been expecting you for above a week,” and pulling out a paper he read out their names and descriptions. Next morning the disappointed fugitives under a strong escort began to retrace their steps towards Verdun, which they re-entered on the second day. “We made,” he relates, “as may readily be imagined, a sorry appearance; our clothes bearing evident signs of what had been the nature of our lodgings, and our linen shewing that it had not lately been in the hands of the laundress. We were paraded through the streets into the citadel and lodged in the Tour d’Angouleme, a small round building with only two apartments, one above the other, with a circular stair outside, leading to the upper one.”