Some of the prisoners at Thame were lodged in a building now called the ‘Bird Cage’, once an inn. A memory of the prisoners lingers in the name of ‘Frenchman’s Oak’ still given to a large tree there, it having marked their mile boundary.
General Villaret-Joyeuse, Governor of Martinique, was one of the many prisoners of fame or rank at Thame. He brought upon himself a rebuke from the Transport Office in 1809, for having said in a letter to his brother, ‘Plusieurs Français se sont détruits ne pouvant supporter plus longtemps l’humiliation et l’abjection où ils étaient réduits.’ The Transport Office told him that he had been grossly misinformed, and that during the past war only two prisoners were known to have destroyed themselves: one was supposed to have done so in consequence of the deranged state of his account with the French Government, and the other, having robbed his brother prisoner of a large amount, when detected, dreading the consequence. ‘When you shall have better informed yourself and altered the said letter accordingly, it will be forwarded to France.’
General Privé, one of Dupont’s officers, captured at Baylen, was called to order for making false statements in a letter to the French minister of war, in an offensive manner: ‘The Board have no objection of your making representations you may think proper to your Government respecting the Capitulation of Baylen, and transmitting as many Truths as you please to France, but indecent Abuse and reproachful Terms are not to be suffered.’
Wincanton
To Mr. George Sweetman I am indebted for some interesting particulars about parole prisoner life at Wincanton in Somersetshire. The first prisoners came here in 1804, captured on the Didon, and gradually the number here rose to 350, made up of Frenchmen, Italians, Portuguese, and Spaniards. In 1811 the census showed that nineteen houses were occupied by prisoners, who then numbered 297 and 9 women and children. An ‘oldest inhabitant’, Mr. Olding, who died in 1870, aged eighty-five, told Mr. Sweetman that at one time there were no less than 500 prisoners in Wincanton and the adjacent Bayford. Some of them were men of good family, and were entertained at all the best houses in the neighbourhood.
‘After the conquest of Isle of France,’ said Mr. Olding, ‘about fifty French officers were sent here, who were reputed to have brought with them half a million sterling.... They lived in their own hired houses or comfortable lodgings. The poorer prisoners took their two meals a day at the Restaurant pour les Aspirants. The main staple of their diet was onions, leeks, lettuce, cucumbers, and dandelions. The richer, however, ate butchers’ meat plentifully.’
Altogether the establishment of Wincanton as a parole town must have been of enormous benefit to a linen-weaving centre which was feeling severely the competition of the great Lancashire towns, and was fast losing its staple industry.
Mr. Sweetman introduces an anecdote which illustrates the great trading difficulties which at first existed between foreigners who knew nothing of English, and natives who were equally ignorant of French.
One of the many butchers who attended the market had bought on one occasion some excellent fat beef to which he called the attention of a model French patrician, and, confusing the Frenchman’s ability to understand the English language with defective hearing, he shouted in his loudest tones, which had an effect contrary to what he expected or desired. The officer (noted for his long pig-tail, old round hat, and long-waisted brown coat), to all the jolly butcher’s earnest appeals to him to buy, answered nothing but ‘Non bon, non bon!’
‘Well, Roger,’ said a brother butcher, ‘If I were you, he should have bone enough next time!’