But the courage of Joseph Wall, which had borne him across the rocky slopes of Moro amidst the hail of Spanish bullets, did not quail before the scowling faces of his own men. Calling two of them from the ranks of the circle—Benjamin Armstrong, sergeant, and George Robinson, private—he charged them with disorderly conduct during the morning, and commanded his officers to try them by drumhead court-martial. As the penalty had been decided previously, the proceedings were brief. After a few moments’ discussion the little tribunal announced the sentence—eight hundred lashes apiece for the two mutineers. A gun-carriage having been dragged forward, the men in turn were ordered to strip. The mode of punishment struck terror into every heart. No cat-o’-nine-tails could be found; nor was it thought safe to trust a white man with the flogging. When the victim was bound to the cannon, one of the blacks was called up, a rope put into his hand, and he was ordered in military formula to “do his duty.” After twenty-five lashes a new operator took his turn in the usual way. During the whole time the garrison surgeon looked on, but made no comment. A thousand strokes of the ‘cat’ was a common punishment in those Draconic days, and it seemed immaterial whether the flagellation was inflicted with a bunch of knotted leathern thongs or with a rope’s-end. When at last the long agony was over, the two poor soldiers were taken to nurse their bruised and swollen backs in the hospital.
On the following morning, the 11th of July, the bloody work was continued. Drastic Wall thought fit to leave an imperishable record of his mode of government. Beneath the flaming blue sky the soldiers were marshalled upon the parade ground once more, and four of their number were selected for punishment in the same informal manner. George Paterson, the guard-room rebel, was sentenced to eight hundred lashes; Corporal Thomas Upton, a ringleader of the deputation, and Private William Evans, were condemned to receive three hundred and fifty and eight hundred strokes respectively; while Henry Fawcett, the drunken sentry, was let off with forty-seven. Having thus vindicated his authority, the terrible Governor proceeded to his ship, which, to the great joy of the awestruck garrison, weighed anchor the same day.
Soon after his departure the drama became a tragedy. A poisonous climate and scanty rations had undermined the physique of the soldiers; besides which, the sickly season was at hand. The ignorance of the medical attendants was supplemented by an immoderate use of brandy. Since the first occupation of the island, men had dropped like flies, while to the sick and wounded a visit to the hospital was almost equivalent to a sentence of death. Corporal Thomas Upton died two days after his punishment; Sergeant Armstrong succumbed on the 15th of the month; George Paterson only survived until the 19th of July. Meanwhile, Joseph Wall, on the high seas, knew none of these things.
Cruel, wanton, reckless as was the deed of the Governor of Goree, such things were of everyday occurrence in the army of his time. Sir Charles Napier has left record of the merciless floggings of which he was an eye-witness a decade later. Forty years after the Peace of Versailles a court-martial had no hesitation in passing a sentence of a thousand lashes. Although the rope’s-end employed in the punishment of Armstrong and his fellows was probably a more formidable instrument than the regimental ‘cat’ it was no more dangerous than the bunch of knotted cords used in the navy. A social system that permitted women and children to be hanged for petty larceny had a Spartan code for its soldiers on active service.
Moreover, any lack of firmness on the part of Joseph Wall might have brought him face to face with a serious mutiny. Riot was the sole means of expression of the inarticulate mob, both civil and military. A few months after the disturbance at Goree, General Conway, Governor of Jersey, was called upon to quell a fierce rebellion among his troops. About the same time wild insubordination was rife in the regiments quartered at Wakefield and Rotherham. The danger of a similar outbreak in a far-off island, garrisoned for the most part by gaol-birds, and close to the French possessions, was multiplied a hundredfold. Severe as were the methods of Wall, had such a man been in command at the Nore the nation would have been spared the terror and ignominy of ‘Admiral’ Parker. Unfortunately for himself, the discipline of the Irish giant was exerted to punish a personal affront. Had his soldiers refused to cheer the birthday of some German princeling, he might have flogged to death a whole company with impunity. Yet, relatively, the ways and means of inflammable Wall were tame. On the 4th of August 1782, Captain Kenneth Mackenzie, who ruled over a similar regiment of convicts at Fort Morea on the coast of Africa, blew to atoms a mutinous fellow-Scot, a private under his command, from the mouth of a cannon. For this deed, being brought to trial two years later, he was condemned to death, but subsequently granted a free pardon. At the time of his escape from the ‘Brown Bear’ at Reading, there were rumours (so Wall alleges) that the Governor of Goree had put to death soldiers in Mackenzie fashion. In which case he bore the stigma of another’s sin.
For twenty years after his flight from England Joseph Wall remained a fugitive from justice, being an exile for the greater proportion of the time. Paris was his principal abode, where he was able to meet many compatriots, who held commissions in the French army. Yet, although poor and in disgrace, he was never tempted to swerve from his allegiance to his king. To have joined the colours of France would have raised him from comparative poverty to affluence, but he kept loyal, treasuring the hope that some day he would be able to return to his country a free man. There is evidence of his presence in Paris at the time of the flight to Varennes in 1792; but previously he paid a visit to Scotland, and had married the fifth daughter of Baron Fortrose, Frances Mackenzie, who gave birth to a son in 1791. At one time he resided in Italy, where he wandered as far as Naples. All these years his crime lay heavy upon his conscience, and it is said that several times he meditated surrender. There is a legend that once he went as far as Calais with this intention, but, his resolution failing at the last moment, he remained on shore. By a strange chance, the boat in which he should have reached the packet was swamped in the harbour before his eyes—a noteworthy fact, like the drowning-escape of immortal Catherine Hayes, for all who credit the old adage.
About the year 1797—so the European Magazine tells us, although the date seems premature by three years—he came over to London incognito, where he lived with his wife in Upper Thornhaugh Street, Bedford Square, under the name of Thompson. One day, while some workmen were painting the house, he happened to express a few words of sympathy for a sickly apprentice lad, who he had been told was in a decline. “Yes, poor little fellow,” observed the foreman; “his father was flogged to death by that inhuman scoundrel, Governor Wall.” Sometimes in real life poetic justice will assert its power.
For a long while the outlaw was undecided whether to run the risk of surrender. Under the shield of oblivion he might have continued to live in the metropolis without danger, for his crime was almost forgotten. Yet there were urgent reasons why he should vindicate his character, as his wife was entitled to property which she could not receive unless her husband appeared in person in a court of law. Before such a step could be taken it was necessary for him to stand his trial. In his dilemma he consulted Mr Alley, the famous counsel, who, in the face of his flight from justice, could give him only cold comfort. However, Joseph Wall was not the man to shirk risk in pursuit of a definite object. On the 5th of October 1801 he sent a letter to Lord Pelham, Secretary of State, announcing his presence in England; while on the 2nd of November he appeared before the Privy Council, and was committed to Newgate.
The Special Commission appointed to judge the case of Governor Wall met on the 20th of January 1802. At nine o’clock in the morning the Court assembled in all the majesty of a State trial. Its president was Sir Archibald Macdonald, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, a political Scot who, like many of his betters, owed his position to a wife. Sir Giles Rooke of Common Pleas, and Sir Soulden Lawrence of King’s Bench, two merciful and kind-hearted judges, sat on either side to give assistance. Never was there a more formidable array of counsel for the Crown. Grim and spiteful Attorney-General Edward Law; the urbane and much-underrated Spencer Perceval, Solicitor-General; Thomas Plumer, George Wood, and Charles Abbott, all three destined to hold distinguished positions on the Bench; and lastly, William Fielding, who, like his more famous father, became a London magistrate. Nor were the three barristers for the defence less illustrious: Newman Knowlys was appointed Recorder of London; John Gurney, one of the greatest of criminal advocates, rose to be a judge; and Alley, defender number three, was as astute a lawyer as any of the rest.
No shudder of sympathy sweeps through the crowded court as the figure of the crimson giant passes into the dock. Outside swell the low growls of a gutter-wallowing mob; within, every heart cries aloud for vengeance upon the grim tyrant. Joseph Wall faces his accusers, as he faced all enemies, with fearless eyes and undaunted soul. From the firm, martial tread and high, unbent brow, none would judge that this is an old man, who has lived for sixty-five years. At the close of the indictment the voice of the prisoner rings through the court, to the surprise of all.