The quiet pathos of the above two bald newspaper announcements must appeal to everybody who for a moment pictures in his mind what the six poor, drowned fellows, and the two friends—one taken, the other left—must have gone through in their desperate bids for liberty. These are the little by-scenes which make up the great tragedy of the War Prisoners in England.
In December of this year there was great sickness and mortality at Portchester.
In the same year a plot to murder sentries and escape was discovered the day before the date of the arranged deed. Forty men were concerned in the plot, and upon them were found long knives, sharpened on both sides, made out of iron hoops.
In 1807 a Portchester prisoner named Cabosas was fined one shilling at Winchester for killing a fellow prisoner in a duel, and in the same year one Herquiand was hanged at Winchester for murder in the Castle.
Clock made in Portchester Castle, 1809
by French prisoners of war, from bones saved from their rations
In 1810 it was reported that Portchester Castle was too crowded, and that only 5,900 prisoners could be kept in health there instead of the usual 7,000.
I will now give some accounts of life at Portchester, and I begin with one by an English officer, ‘The Light Dragoon,’ as a relief from the somewhat monotonous laments which characterize the average foreign chronicler, although it will be noted that our writer does not allow his patriotism to bias his judgement.
Placed on guard over the prisoners, he says:
‘Whatever grounds of boasting may belong to us as a nation, I am afraid that our methods of dealing with the prisoners taken from the French during the war scarcely deserves to be classed among them. Absolute cruelties were never, I believe, perpetrated on these unfortunate beings; neither, as far as I know, were they, on any pretence whatever, stinted in the allowance of food awarded to them. But in other respects they fared hardly enough. Their sleeping apartments, for instance, were very much crowded. Few paroles were extended to them (it is past dispute that when the parole was obtained they were, without distinction of rank, apt to make a bad use of it), while their pay was calculated on a scale as near to the line of starvation as could in any measure correspond with our nation’s renown for humanity. On the other hand, every possible encouragement was given to the exercise of ingenuity among the prisoners themselves by the throwing open of the Castle yard once or twice a week, when their wares were exhibited for sale, amid numerous groups of jugglers, tumblers, and musicians, all of whom followed their respective callings, if not invariably with skill, always with most praiseworthy perseverance. Moreover, the ingenuity of the captives taught them how on these occasions to set up stalls on which all manner of trinkets were set forth, as well as puppet shows and Punch’s opera.... Then followed numerous purchases, particularly on the part of the country people, of bone and ivory knick-knacks, fabricated invariably with a common penknife, yet always neat, and not infrequently elegant. Nor must I forget to mention the daily market which the peasantry, particularly the women, were in the habit of attending, and which usually gave scope for the exchange of Jean Crapaud’s manufacture for Nancy’s eggs, or Joan’s milk, or home-baked loaf....
‘It happened one night that a sentry whose post lay outside the walls of the old Castle, was startled by the sound as of a hammer driven against the earth under his feet. The man stopped, listened, and was more and more convinced that neither his fears nor his imagination had misled him. So he reported the circumstance to the sergeant who next visited his post, and left him to take in the matter such steps as might be expedient. The sergeant, having first ascertained, as in duty bound, that the man spoke truly, made his report to the captain on duty, who immediately doubled the sentry at the indicated spot, and gave strict orders that should as much as one French prisoner be seen making his way beyond the Castle walls, he should be shot without mercy.
‘Then was the whole of the guard got under arms: then were beacons fired in various quarters; while far and near, from Portsmouth not less than from the cantonments more close at hand, bodies of troops marched upon Portchester. Among others came the general of the district, bringing with him a detachment of sappers and miners, by whom all the floors of the several bedrooms were tried, and who soon brought the matter home to those engaged in it. Indeed one man was taken in the gallery he was seeking to enlarge, his only instrument being a spike nail wherewith to labour. The plot thus discovered was very extensive and must, if carried through, have proved a desperate one to both parties. For weeks previous to the discovery, the prisoners, it appeared, had been at work, and from not fewer than seven rooms, all of them on the ground floor, they had sunk shafts 12 feet in depth, and caused them all to meet at one common centre, whence as many chambers went off. These were driven beyond the extremity of the outer wall, and one, that of which the sentry was thus unexpectedly made aware, the ingenious miners had carried forward with such skill, that in two days more it would have been in a condition to be opened.
‘The rubbish, it appeared, which from these several covered ways they scooped out, was carried about by the prisoners in their pockets till they found an opportunity of scattering it over the surface of the great square. Yet the desperate men had a great deal more to encounter than the mere obstacles which the excavation of the castle at Portchester presented.
‘Their first proceeding after emerging into the upper air must needs have been to surprise and overpower the troops that occupied the barracks immediately contiguous, an operation of doubtful issue at the best, and not to be accomplished without a terrible loss of life, certainly on one side, probably on both. Moreover, when this was done, there remained for the fugitives the still more arduous task of making their way through the heart of the garrison town of Portsmouth, and seizing a flotilla of boats, should such be high and dry upon the beach. Yet worse even than this remained, for both the harbour and the roads wore crowded with men-of-war the gauntlet of whose batteries the deserters must of necessity have run....’