Soon afterwards a posse of gensdarmes appeared and proceeded to make rigorous search. The prisoners were ordered to strip to their shirts, their hats and shoes were examined, their neckerchiefs, coats, waistcoats and pantaloons and stockings were visited and explored, but nothing was found until a button was seen to exceed a regular size and when cut in two was found to contain a double louis d’or. After this every button was disembowelled but no more cash was detected. Yet Ellison managed to retain five double louis sewn inside his flannel waistcoat and one under the arm of his coat. After the search, the prisoners were separated, a sentry placed over them and no communication allowed between them. The only food issued was a loaf of black bread and a pitcher of water. No bedding was given, not even straw.
To have failed brought down on the recaptured runaways the full weight of the commandant’s wrath. They were bullied, brow-beaten, threatened with all manner of pains and penalties, until they would make confession of what had induced them to attempt escape, who first suggested it, who aided and abetted, who procured the tools, who did the actual work of cutting out, and which of the fugitives had first proposed an escape; and no credence was given to the reply that the subject of escape had been the constant theme of conversation with the prisoners, a subject of perennial interest to all captives since they were first deprived of personal liberty. The commandant would believe nothing and in his fury ordered the culprits to be put in irons hand and foot, and kept so continuously day and night, subjecting them to exquisite torture in their damp, dirty, dungeon, unable to cope with the vermin that infested it. The irons were of diabolically ingenious design and very heavy, so that at best those weighted with them could only shuffle about, moving two or three inches at a time as far as the sill of the window for a breath of air.
A still sharper recompense was to be their portion. It was decided to remove them to another prison, Bitche, a gloomy fortress adjudged as the receptacle for the turbulent and disorderly, a place so hideous that it was commonly known as the “Castle of Tears.” En route they met fourteen of their fellows chained together on their way to Metz for trial by court-martial, on a charge of plotting to blow up the powder magazine of the fort in which they were lodged. They had attempted to escape by an underground passage leading out to the open. They had cut through the wooden door, undermined an iron one, and in forcing the third alarmed a sentry who gave the signal, and they were taken red-handed. Their trial was long and patient, and ended in conviction with sentences to the galleys for terms varying from seven to ten years. But after promulgation the president of the court announced that as many of the accused were British officers all would be pardoned out of respect for their cloth.
Our prisoners proceeding to Metz were, contrary to usual custom, often allowed to hire vehicles. The general rule was to march by “correspondence,” passing, that is to say, from town to town, or village, and from the headquarters of one brigade of gendarmerie to the next at a distance of five or six leagues. The machinery existed really for the transfer of conscripts, thirty or forty thousand of whom were continually on the move through the country, either to join their regiments or in durance for having already deserted. It was a common sight to see thirty or forty of these conscripts chained in a string like a lot of horses taken to a fair. It was a dismal procession from brigade to brigade, and prison to prison. The long tramp by day, the night spent under lock and key in cold damp places without fire or special covering, or more than a scanty allowance of straw. Austrian and Prussian prisoners were more harshly treated than the English or the conscripts. One of the gensdarmes who had formed the escort of Prussians into France told Mr. Ellison it was a constant practice to shoot in cold blood any who fell down from fatigue on the road.
This fortress of Bitche which had such an evil reputation was situated some thirty miles north of Strasburg and the same distance from Metz. It stands upon an isolated rocky hill rising a thousand feet above a verdant plain. It dates from the reign of Louis XIV and was so highly esteemed as a frontier defence that vast sums were spent on its construction. The French king, indeed, when called upon for more money, asked whether it was being built of golden bricks. Although excavated out of the solid rock, which was cut down perpendicularly from ninety to a hundred and fifty feet deep, it was faced all round with masonry. The central space was filled with barracks, store-houses and magazines. At each end were two strong works styled respectively the Grosse Tête and the Petite Tête, separate, but connected with the main fort by drawbridges. Fifty feet below the Grosse Tête a mortar battery had been built out and another battery mounting ten heavy guns commanded the approaches to the entrance to the fort. This entrance was on the east side where the carriage road, after winding round and round the hill, ended in a long incline, raised upon arches, ascending to the drawbridge and the main gate. Here began a tunnel, cut into the solid rock, blocked by two other gates, one in the centre and one at the far end. The garrison consisted of seventeen gensdarmes and a hundred veterans, and the place was under the command of a Major Clement who is spoken of as “a worthy, indulgent officer with much of the milk of human kindness in him.” He desired to govern humanely and showed great forbearance, but was very sorely tried by his charges, for the most part the refuse of the other prison depots. At this place were congregated the dissolute, the abandoned, the profligate, the drunken and the reckless.
The Grande Souterrain—the great underground cellar or main dungeon—was a perfect pandemonium, filled with rough, savage sailors, desperate dare-devils, rendered utterly reckless by interminable confinement, untamable, ungovernable, a constant terror to their guardian, who dreaded coming in contact with them. There can be little doubt that if they could have seen their way to leave France finally they would have risen, overpowered the garrison and walked straight out of the fort into the country. They were ripe always for disturbance; the least thing offended them. One of their crowd was an Englishman who bore a colonel’s commission in the Russian service, but who had been arrested in France on suspicion of being a spy. He was a prime favourite with the sailors and when he was committed to the cachot for some prison offence, they combined and rescued him from arrest. Upon this the garrison of veterans intervened, but their appearance on the scene was the signal for a general mutiny. The prisoners tore up the guard beds to provide weapons and armed themselves with great billets of fire wood, bidding defiance to the old soldiers. Their leader, however, cautioned them not to be the assailants. “Let us wait,” he cried, “till blood is drawn from any of us; then we will fall upon the Frenchmen and murder the whole lot.” Their attitude was so imposing, their determination so plain that the authorities practically gave in and on being promised by the prisoners that they would behave peaceably, withdrew their veterans.
Again, it was a standing order in the fort that all lights should be extinguished at eight o’clock, but on occasions when fresh inmates arrived, when drink was on tap and the spirit of rejoicing prevailed, this regulation was openly defied. If the gensdarmes after mildly protesting ventured down into the Souterrain they were met with a storm of missiles, hats, shoes, and logs of wood were thrown at the lantern as a target and then at the gensdarmes themselves, who were compelled to beat a hasty retreat.
Boxing matches and prize fights were of constant occurrence and at first the guards, not understanding them, desired to interfere, thinking the prisoners might injure one another; their interference was fiercely resented and the commandant decided to leave them alone, saying that if they would they might kill each other; that he, for his part, would listen to no more complaints, nor give the injured redress, and henceforth the prisoners must govern themselves. They took him at his word and disposed of all offences by a formal court-martial, chosen from their own body, when accused and accuser were brought face to face and the former, if found guilty, was forthwith flogged with a cat o’ nine tails, which after use was entrusted for safe keeping to the brigadier of gensdarmes. But no gendarme might raise his hand with impunity against a prisoner. One dared to strike a sailor with the scabbard of his sword, which the offended tar snatched out of his hand and threw over the ramparts, adding, “There, you may go and fetch it for yourself.”
All were determined prison breakers at Bitche; attempts at escape were frequent, and kept the poor commandant constantly on the rack to circumvent them. He was greatly blamed for the cruelty employed in enforcing safe custody. One story is told of a ship’s carpenter who had escaped from another depot but was caught and brought to Bitche, where he was lodged in the Grande Souterrain. With active mind and practised hands he contemplated breaking through from the underground into the ditch of the fort and worked steadily, assisted by two more, night after night until they had reached a last door. It was said that their progress had been watched and regularly reported to the commandant by his spies, and that when the final attempt was to be made the commandant was stationed with a party of gensdarmes outside the door to meet the fugitives as they came through. A cowardly attack was at once made on them; they were fired upon and slashed at with sabres, so that two were stabbed to death, but the third saved himself by jumping back into the prison. As a warning to others, the two dead bodies were publicly exposed next day, but so much disfigured by wounds that they were barely recognisable.
Another nearly successful escape ended disastrously. A naval lieutenant and five others, occupying a dungeon beneath the Grosse Tête, contrived to loosen one of the iron bars of the grating and get through. They had possessed themselves of a rope which they had made fast to another bar and part of its length was left lying across the passage. Unfortunately a sergeant with a relief of sentries, stumbled over the rope, and the prisoners who were already outside, descended the rope in great haste one after the other. It suddenly snapped; the lieutenant who was placed lowest on the rope fractured his skull and the others following were seriously injured. One strained both ankles; a second from concussion of the brain lost his reason, and the remaining two were more or less bruised.