A cousin of the Marquis, the Comtesse de Béon, knew a Miss Vernon, one of the Queen’s ladies of honour, and she introduced the Marquis to Lord ‘Malville’, whose seat was near Bridgnorth, and who invited him to the house. I give d’Hautpol’s impression in his own words:
‘Ce lord était poli, mais, comme tous les Anglais, ennemi mortel de la France. J’étais humilié de ses prévenances qui sentaient la protection. Je revins cependant une seconde fois chez lui; il y avait ce jour-là nombreuse compagnie; plusieurs officiers anglais s’y trouvaient. Sans égards pour ma position et avec une certaine affectation, ils se mirent à déblatérer en français contre l’Empereur et l’armée. Je me levai de table indigné, et demandai à Lord Malville la permission de me retirer; il s’efforce de me retenir en blâmant ses compatriotes, mais je persistai. Je n’acceptai plus d’invitations chez lui.’
All good news from the seat of war, says the Marquis, was carefully hidden from the prisoners, so that they heard nothing about Lützen, Bautzen, and Dresden. But the news of Leipsic was loudly proclaimed. The prisoners could not go out of doors without being insulted. One day the people dressed up a figure to represent Bonaparte, put it on a donkey, and paraded the town with it. Under the windows of the lodging of General Veiland, who had been taken at Badajos, of which place he was governor, they rigged up a gibbet, hung the figure on it, and afterwards burned it.
At one time a general uprising of the prisoners of war in England was seriously discussed. There were in Britain 5,000 officers on parole, and 60,000 men on the hulks and in prisons. The idea was to disarm the guards all at once, to join forces at a given point, to march on Plymouth, liberate the men on the hulks, and thence go to Portsmouth and do the same there. But the authorities became suspicious, the generals were separated from the other officers, and many were sent to distant cantonments. The Marquis says that there were 1,500 at Bridgnorth, and that half of these were sent to Oswestry. This was in November, 1813.
So to Oswestry d’Hautpol was sent. From Oswestry during his stay escaped three famous St. Malo privateer captains. After a terrible journey of risks and privations they reached the coast—he does not say where—and off it they saw at anchor a trading vessel of which nearly all the crew had come ashore. In the night the prisoners swam out, with knives in their mouths, and boarded the brig. They found a sailor sleeping on deck; him they stabbed, and also another who was in the cabin. They spared the cabin boy, who showed them the captain’s trunks, with the contents of which they dressed themselves. Then they cut the cable, hoisted sail and made off—all within gunshot of a man-of-war. They reached Morlaix in safety, although pursued for some distance by a man-of-war. The brig was a valuable prize, for she had just come from the West Indies, and was richly laden. This the Frenchmen at Oswestry learned from the English newspapers, and they celebrated the exploit boisterously.
Just after this the Marquis received a letter from Miss Vernon, in which she said that if he chose to join the good Frenchmen who were praying for restoration of the Bourbons, she would get him a passport which would enable him to join Louis XVIII at Hartwell. To this the Marquis replied that he had been made prisoner under the tricolour, that he was still in the Emperor’s service, and that for the moment he had no idea of changing his flag, adding that rather than do this he preferred to remain a prisoner. Miss Vernon did not write again on this topic until the news came of the great events of 1814—the victories of the British at San Sebastian, Pampeluna, the Bidassoa, the Adur, Orthez and Toulouse, when she wrote:
‘I hope that now you have no more scruples; I send you a passport for London; come and see me, for I shall be delighted to renew our acquaintance.’
He accepted the offer, went to London, and found Miss Vernon lodged in St. James’s Palace. Here she got apartments for him; he was fêted and lionized and taken to see the sights of London in a royal carriage. At Westminster Hall he was grieved to see the eagle of the 39th regiment, taken during the retreat from Portugal, and that of the 101st, taken at Arapiles. Then he returned to France.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE PRISONERS ON PAROLE IN SCOTLAND
With the great Scottish prisons at Perth, Valleyfield, and Edinburgh I have dealt elsewhere, and it is with very particular pleasure that I shall now treat of the experiences of prisoners in the parole towns of Scotland, for the reason that, almost without exception, our involuntary visitors seem to have been treated with a kindness and forbearance not generally characteristic of the reception they had south of the Tweed, although of course there were exceptions.