A Colonel Butler was also arrested at Hamburg in November 1806. In the French Dragoons until the Revolution, he had for eleven or twelve years, along with Dutheil, been an agent for the Bourbons and had paid secret visits to Paris. Two of his many children were there and were rich with their mother’s property. What became of him is not stated. Possibly he escaped.
James Smithson, natural son of the Duke of Northumberland, born in France in 1765, and future founder of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, was likewise arrested at Hamburg in 1809, but at the solicitation of Banks received a passport for England. He had visited Paris in 1791, when he wrote—‘The office of king is not yet abolished, but they daily feel the inability or rather the great inconvenience of continuing it. May other nations at the time of their reforms be wise enough to cast off at first the contemptible incumbrance!’ Smithson, who must by this time have been sadly disillusioned with the Revolution, died at Genoa in 1829, having mostly spent his later years in Paris.
George Sinclair, eldest son of Sir John, the great agriculturist, in 1806, at the age of sixteen, was arrested by the French as a spy, having been found between the French and German lines just before the battle of Jena. Sinclair, who became a general and lived till 1868, published in 1826 in the Representative an interesting account of his interview at Auma with Napoleon, before whom he was taken, together with his companion, a German named Rigel, by Count Frohberg. He found Napoleon in a dressing-gown and white night-cap, and he was required not only to show that he had been on purely private business, but to trace all his movements on a map and to answer questions as to the German troops through which he had passed. ‘All Napoleon’s questions,’ he says, ‘were remarkable by their perfect clearness. He omitted nothing that was necessary; he asked nothing superfluous.’ ‘What guarantee can I have,’ said Napoleon, ‘of the truth of your story? Englishmen do not usually travel on foot and without a servant and in such a dress.’ Sinclair was wearing a coarse brown overcoat. ‘It is true, sire,’ he replied, ‘that my conduct may seem a little odd, but imperative circumstances and the impossibility of procuring a horse forced me to do all that I have done.’ He produced some family letters, which Napoleon asked Frohberg to skim, and one of them was from Sir John Sinclair, commending his study of Greek and Latin and exhorting him to master German and French. Thereupon Napoleon, softening his tone, said, ‘So you have learned Latin and Greek. What authors have you read?’ Surprised at such a question, Sinclair named Homer, Thucydides, Cicero, and Horace. It was well he could not or did not name Tacitus, the object of Napoleon’s aversion. ‘Very good, very good,’ he rejoined, and turning to General Berthier, he said, ‘I do not think this young man is a spy, but the other is probably less innocent, and they must be kept together to avoid suspicion.’ A nod indicated that the interview was over, and Sinclair, bowing, withdrew. ‘When taken before him,’ he writes, ‘I had the strongest prejudice against him. I considered him the enemy of my country and the oppressor of the rest of Europe. On quitting him, the grace and fascination of his smile and that superior intelligence which illumined his face had entirely subjugated me.’ Napoleon directed Frohberg to tell the young man he was much pleased with the frankness of his answers. Rigel in like manner exonerated himself, and both, subjected to a few days’ honourable detention, were liberated after the battle of Jena, a place which Sinclair had passed on his route and had pointed out to Napoleon on the map.
Should we reckon among the British—she was at any rate among the notable—involuntary visitors the Countess of Albany, widow of the Young Pretender, quasi-widow of the poet Alfieri, and quasi-wife of Fabre of Montpellier? She started from Florence for Paris in 1806, with the view of publishing Alfieri’s works, but turned back at Turin on finding that François Xavier Fabre, as an émigré, would not be allowed to re-enter France. In the autumn of 1809, however, Napoleon required her to come to Paris to exculpate herself from a charge of intrigues with England. All that she had really done had been to refuse to receive Clarke when French Minister at Florence, and to apply to the English Government for an annuity to compensate the one lost by the death of her brother-in-law, Cardinal York, the titular Henry IX. She had accordingly been granted £1000 a year. She easily cleared herself, and Napoleon seems to have been a little ashamed of disturbing so inoffensive a woman. He jestingly told her that her influence on Florentine society hampered the fusion desired by him between Tuscans and French. This, he said, was why he had summoned her to live in Paris, where she would have more ample opportunity of gratifying her artistic tastes. The interview lasted only a quarter of an hour, Napoleon gave her his box at the theatre one night that she might see Talma. It was not till the end of 1810 that she was permitted to return to Florence.[254] A letter addressed to her in 1814 piquantly contrasted her husband’s expulsion from France in 1748 with her own enforced residence there, adding, ‘You have left many regrets in the great Babylon.’
Such of the English as were allowed to inhabit Paris, the permits for which, however, were, as we have seen, grudgingly granted and liable to be cancelled by wholesale, had the slender consolation of reflecting that they were in the ‘hub’ of the universe, for Paris in the height of Napoleon’s rule was more the centre of fashion and business than it has ever been since. It swarmed with Jews—bankers, jewellers, and merchants—to whom the war afforded many opportunities of enriching themselves. It also swarmed with adventurers of all nationalities, so that in February 1803 the regulations as to visitors, whether French or foreign, were made almost as stringent as those issued during the Revolution. A list of the inmates had not indeed, as then, to be placarded outside every house, but every householder was required to notify the police of the arrival of any visitor or lodger and to send in the passport. This had to be applied for within three days by such guest or lodger, to whom a permit to stay in or quit Paris was then granted. A foreigner’s permit was conditional on the certificate of his ambassador, or, in default of an ambassador, by a banker or two well-known citizens.[255]
On the other hand there was no lack of celebrities or of men who interest us on account of distinguished descendants. Let us begin with Pius VII., the first Pope who had touched French soil since the return to Rome from Avignon in 1408. Like the Doge of Genoa at Versailles, he must have thought himself the most surprising object in Paris. Manzoni, the Italian poet and novelist, Oersted, the Danish scientist, and Francis Arago, the future astronomer, whose family had sought at Perpignan a refuge from Spanish commotions, may next be noted. Spurzheim, the phrenologist, comes considerably lower down in eminence. The statesmen include Baron Hardenberg, destined to regenerate Prussia, and Count Nesselrode, the future author of the Holy Alliance and the Crimean War. The Poles include Prince Constantine Czartoryski, who, though a member of a great patriotic family, served in the Russian army, Count John Wielopolski, and Stanislas Wolowski, probably a collateral ancestor of the economist who sat in the French National Assembly of 1871. Marquis Emanuel del Campo, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, ex-ambassador at London and in 1795 at Paris, was the natural son of a Spanish grandee, an envoy also to London, by an Englishwoman named Field, a name which he had turned into Campo. He commenced life in an orphanage. James and Julius Beccaria were probably kinsmen of the Milanese philosopher. Count Tolstoi, the Russian ambassador, and Andrew Tolstoi, apparently his son, may have been ancestors of the great novelist. Ferdinand de Hérédia was probably the father of the French Minister of Public Works in 1887, and grandfather of the academician and poet. Dias and Emanuel Oliveira, the former a merchant at Oporto, the latter a doctor, were probably ancestors of the Benjamin Oliveira who in the House of Commons anticipated Cobden by advocating reduced tariffs on foreign wines. Joseph Samuda, a Barcelona merchant, was probably uncle of the great East London shipbuilder and M.P. Philip Gavazzi, an Italian merchant, may have been the father of the anti-papal ecclesiastic who joined Garibaldi in Naples and died in 1889.
Englishmen domiciled, if not naturalised, abroad were not subject to detention, which indeed was not prospective in the decree, but was limited to persons then on French soil. The Berlin decree of 1807 ordered, it is true, the capture of all British subjects irrespective of sex or age found in territories occupied by French or allied troops; but this does not seem to have been enforced. Hence the police registers[256] show visits to Paris between 1806 and 1813 by Englishmen settled on the Continent, but it is not always easy to distinguish these from men of English names, descendants of Jacobites or other emigrants, born abroad. In any case the registers are evidence that British subjects or men of British descent were sprinkled all over Europe, some as soldiers of fortune, others as manufacturers or artisans, and a few as land-owners. Thus the register of Spaniards gives us Colonel Peter Aylmer, Patrick MacMahon, a merchant at San Sebastian, Thomas Moore, a landowner born in Spain, William Mulvey, a native of Cadiz, O’Farrill, Ambassador to Berlin, William Stirling, a merchant born at Barcelona, Charles Willcox, a landowner also born there, and Colonel Charles Augustus Joseph Walsh de Serrant, one of whose family conveyed the Young Pretender to Scotland in 1745. The so-called Portuguese included Henry Gallwey and Joseph O’Moran, latter a commercial traveller.
The Dutchmen comprise General O’Connor, a native of Holland, Benjamin John Hopkinson, a domiciled landowner, and Robert Twiss, a merchant, apparently the father of Francis and Richard Twiss, and the grandfather of Horace Twiss. The Belgians were considered Frenchmen, or we should have heard of William Cockerill, one of the three sons of the man who founded the famous ironworks at Seraing. The Prussians and Poles, who are classed together, comprise William Flint and Augustus and John Simpson, merchants, Catherine and Richard Fitzgerald, land-owners, natives of Dublin, Samuel Turner, ‘president of canton,’ whatever that may mean, also from Dublin, and Baron Butler, a major captured in the field. Among Danes are Edmund de Bourke, Ambassador to Spain, and David Turnbull, a manufacturer at Altona. The Russians include Baron John Richard Bourke, Reuben Beasley, a merchant, Dr. William Birt, and William Lind, surgeon, both natives of St. Petersburg.
Among Swiss are John Archer and Walter and David Johnston, two sons of a wine merchant at Bordeaux who had not yet been naturalised in France, but was unmolested and allowed in 1812 to visit Paris. Last but not least is William Kirkpatrick, a son of the Scottish (Closeburn) baronet, who was a winemerchant at Malaga, and had married Françoise de Grévignée, daughter of a Walloon, also settled at Malaga. Kirkpatrick, who had been appointed Consul at Hamburg by the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, was in Paris in 1808 and was anxious to return to Malaga, but the French police suspected him of relations with England and had arrested his partner Turnbull. His daughter Maria Emanuele, born in 1796, was destined to be the mother of the Empress Eugénie, while her mother’s sister, wife of Mathieu de Lesseps, was destined to be the mother of Ferdinand de Lesseps.
There were of course in eleven years deaths, and even tragical deaths, among the captives. The Marquis and Marchioness of Tweeddale were allowed to visit Paris in November 1803, but were soon relegated to Verdun, and the gendarme who escorted them thither insisted, Lawrence tells us, on riding inside the carriage and even on dining with them. Lady Tweeddale, sister of Lord Lauderdale, died at Verdun in 1804, and her husband, while awaiting permission to have her buried in England, was also taken ill, and died two months afterwards.[257] Napoleon’s offer, ‘as a mark of respect for Fox,’ of twelve months’ leave, came too late. James Parry, ex-editor of the Courier, had been imprisoned in 1799 for six months for an article animadverting on the Tsar, whom the British Government then wished to court; he had sold his newspaper to Daniel Stuart, proprietor of the Morning Post, and in 1802 had settled at Arles. Though for three years a paralytic he was mercilessly ordered to Verdun and died there. His young son was adopted by Ginguené, the eminent literary critic.