My adventures during the late war

by Donat Henchy O'Brien

It was on the night of the 28th of August 1807 that we determined to take French-leave of our “prison-house”; and we had provided an excellent rope to enable us to scale the ramparts. Each had procured his portion, or quantum, of between three and four fathoms; but that which Tuthill had obtained was merely thumb-line. This, of course, was tailed on, or put at the bottom of the rope, in order that if it gave way we should have the less distance to fall.

It may be imagined that our hearts beat high with conflicting emotions. That great sufferings were to be endured, and great dangers encountered, but little interested spirits so young and ardent as ours; or they were rather overwhelmed by that love of daring and honourable enterprise which often stimulates youth as well as manhood to the greatest and best exertions. On one side we had to reflect upon the mortification of capture, with an increased severity, and, what to us seemed infinitely worse, a prolonged duration of confinement; whilst, on the other, should success crown our determined efforts, our hearts thrilled with the thoughts of once more walking the deck of a British ship-of-war, in all the elation of a confidence that we were serving our king and our country in a righteous cause.

I returned to my lodgings; but it is necessary for me to observe that on my way I happened to meet with a friend, a Lieutenant Essel of the navy, who, with the greatest frankness, communicated to me that he had come to a resolution to attempt his escape from France, and he expressed how much he wished that I would accompany him. This singular coincidence naturally excited in my mind a suspicion that he had arrived at a knowledge of our secret, and I declined giving him a direct answer for the present; but I reflected that as he did not mention either of my companions, it was a proof that he did not know of our design, or that he exercised a prudence which might render him worthy of confidence. I quitted him, repaired to my comrades, and communicated to them all that had passed. After a consultation, upon a point to us so momentous, we agreed that he might join our perilous expedition, provided that he was not in debt, and that he could otherwise escape from the town without dishonour. Very high feelings and scrupulous notions of honour pervaded our naval officers. Our new comrade satisfied us upon all these points. He assured us that he had been deprived of his passport, or “permission”; that he had settled all his affairs; and that he had a surplus of £50 to join with our funds in meeting the difficulties we were but too sure to encounter. Under these circumstances we all cordially shook hands; and never did four young adventurers attempt an exploit under a more friendly and gallant resolution to share a common fate.

The time so long expected arrived; and at the hour before midnight we met at the appointed spot. How much were we chagrined and vexed to find that not only at this late hour were the sentinels unusually on the alert, but that—what seemed more extraordinary—great numbers of people were passing to and fro. We were obliged to defer our escape to the night following.

I confess I felt the greatest regret at quitting my poor sick relative, our only other comrade, M’Grath; nor could I make him acquainted with the step I was about to take without experiencing an emotion impossible to be described. His feelings at our separation were as acute as my own.

The sea-coast, of course, was the point fixed upon for our destination; and we agreed that about Étaples was the most likely part to procure a boat.

The anxiety and uneasiness which we felt the next day were beyond description. Some of our countrymen who called to see us, en passant, threw out such insinuations, and made such remarks upon our conduct of late, that we were under the most serious apprehensions of being shackled, and on the road to Bitche, before the much-desired hour, eleven at night. “The ——,” says Shakespeare, “fears each bush an officer.” We were well aware that there were several Englishmen employed and paid regularly for conveying the most trivial occurrence that might take place amongst the prisoners to the French general. I have frequently known prisoners of war, through malice, to be taken out of their beds in the night, fettered, and conducted, under an escort of gendarmes, to the depots of punishment, without ever being informed of the crime or fault of which they had been accused; and merely from some of those miscreants giving false information, in order to be revenged for any private animosity they might have had against the person so treated.

The long-wished-for moment at length arrived: the intermediate time had passed in great excitement. We met. Everything seemed quiet, and favourable to our escape. We were in the spirit to take every advantage of circumstances, or to create circumstances, if creating them were possible. In a few seconds, by the aid of our rope, and by the assistance of a friend, Alexander Donaldson, many years back my shipmate, a master in the navy, and afterwards a prisoner of war,—he was a native of Portsoy, in Banffshire, but is now no more,—we got down these most formidable ramparts of between seventy and eighty feet high. We descended, to our surprise, with little damage, except the loss of some of the skin from my hands. This was caused by the whipcord part of the line, which we were not able to grasp firmly, and it brought my companions altogether on my back and shoulders, in the ditch, before I could move or extricate myself. Happy were we to find ourselves, so far at least, at liberty. Our course was N.W. Each man buckled on his knapsack, arranged his implements and weapons of defence, and, full of the spirit of determined adventure and of resolute suffering, we started upon our course.

The next morning, the 30th August 1807, at about three o’clock the day began to dawn, and as we had run during most of the time since we had quitted our miserable imprisonment, we conjectured that we were at least five British leagues from Verdun. We determined not to approach any houses, nor to expose ourselves during the daytime, except in a case of the greatest necessity.

We were, fortunately, close to the very wood which we had pricked off upon our map for our first halt: it was in the vicinity of Varennes, where Louis XVI., his queen, sister, and two children were arrested in their flight from the Tuileries in 1791, and were conducted back to Paris. We instantly entered this wood, and, after a long search, we succeeded in finding a thick part, though, unfortunately, it was contiguous to a footpath. However, we hid ourselves so well, that, unless information had been spread of our flight, and people came purposely in search of us, we had no apprehension of being discovered. In this our lair we lay with tolerable comfort and security, until about nine o’clock, when our confidence vanished, and we were greatly annoyed; for we found the pathway to be much frequented, and the voices of passengers, and of children who came to enjoy their Sunday morning in nutting and sporting in the wood, greatly distressed the whole of us. Fortunately none of the nut-trees or bushes were very close to us, and at noon we had the happiness of seeing the intruders hurry home to their dinners. We likewise took our refreshments, and thought it wise to destroy our hats, and to supply their places with white beaver caps, à la Française, with which we had provided ourselves.