James Payne, the bookseller, died in Paris in 1809 at the age of forty-three, leaving a young widow who went back to England in 1811. She was escorted by the Widmers, nephews of the calico-printer Oberkampf, who thus returned the long compulsory stay with their uncle of Robert Hendry. Hendry was a Glasgow dyer, whom Napoleon on a visit to Oberkampf’s calico-factory allowed to return home, nominally for a visit; but this was doubtless an euphemism for release. John Leatham, formerly of Madras, died at Nantes in 1811. Peter Colombine, of London, died in Paris in 1813. He was probably the brother of the Norwich alderman known to Mrs. Opie, who in 1802 was defrauded of his property and reduced to accepting an annuity of £100 from the Corporation of that city.
The Rev. J. Bentinck, an Oxonian who is said to have been promised a bishopric, died at Paris in June 1804. The Rev. John Dring, rector of Heathfield, Sussex, died at Orleans in 1806. Coulson Walhope, ex-M.P., was subjected to special surveillance, apparently on account of a report, doubtless calumnious, that he had visited France just after Napoleon’s return from Egypt with the design of shooting him. Walhope likewise ended his days at Verdun in 1807, shortly after giving a dinner-party. A doctor captured at sea committed suicide in 1805, leaving a bottle inscribed, ‘No more medicine after this.’ A third clergyman, White of Lancaster, died at Verdun in 1806, and a fourth, Annesley, at Geneva in 1807, his widow being then allowed a passport for England. He was probably a kinsman of the colonel already mentioned, but I cannot trace him in the Annesley pedigree. Thomas Talbot, aged twenty-eight, suffocated himself by charcoal at Paris in 1806, leaving a letter to his mother with a list of his debts (probably at cards) which he begged her to discharge.[258] Dr. Walter Kirby also died at Paris. A man named Burgh or Burke, on account of gambling debts, shot himself at Paris in August 1813.
A considerable number of incurable prisoners had been sent back by England, and in 1810 there were negotiations for an exchange. Colin Alexander Mackenzie[259] was sent to Morlaix for that purpose, with William Dickinson as his secretary. He went on to Paris, to witness Napoleon’s marriage festivities. France proposed an exchange en masse, with payment of a sum of money to cover the difference in numbers. On this being declined, she suggested an exchange, man for man, grade for grade, and offered to throw 20,000 Spaniards into the bargain. She wished 3000 Frenchmen to be exchanged for 1000 English and 2000 Spaniards. England offered to give 3000 French for 17,000 Hanoverians, but France insisted on 6000 of the former. As for the détenus, the British Government, reluctantly waiving the legality of their arrest, proposed that Lord Lovaine should be exchanged for a general, sons of peers or privy councillors for colonels or navy captains, baronets and knights for officers, untitled gentlemen for captains of the line or naval lieutenants, tradesmen for subalterns, servants and mechanics for privates or seamen. There was a difficulty, however, as to Hanoverians and Spaniards, and no agreement was arrived at. Mackenzie, who had arrived on the 24th April, accordingly left on the 6th November. During his stay at Morlaix his movements had been closely watched, and objection was taken to his wolf-hunting expeditions, as though these might screen confabulations with royalists or observations on privateers. There had been, however, and continued to be, individual liberations. England continued to send back prisoners incurably ill, and on the other hand a sailor who had become blind was released in 1809 by France. He took with him a book in which a number of Verdun captives had written messages to friends. Powell, vicar of Abergavenny, having shown much kindness to French prisoners there, Clarke recommended, let us hope successfully, the exchange of an English sailor in whom the vicar was interested.[260] Admiral Villeneuve in 1806 was exchanged at Morlaix, but unwilling to face Napoleon after his defeat, he committed suicide at Rennes on the way to Paris. There was also an offer to exchange Admiral Jurien de la Gravière for two colonels, but this was not accepted. The balance of prisoners was always largely against France, while the balance of escapes was—shall we say in favour?—of France. Thus in 1812 the British Government published a list of 270 escapes and 590 attempted escapes by French officers, whereupon the Moniteur gave a list of 355 English escapes, which it was urged was a much greater proportionate number. Sir James Craufurd figured at the head of the list. But the great majority of these English fugitives were officers or sailors of merchant vessels captured at sea after the resumption of hostilities. Some of the French escapes were effected through a noted English smuggler named Robinson; we do not hear of his assisting any of his own countrymen, as this would obviously have stopped his favourable reception in France.
Applications for release or for permission to visit England latterly became numerous. Release was besought in many instances on the plea of age and infirmity (and we may suppose that doctors were complaisant in granting such certificates) or for having rescued French citizens from fire or shipwreck. Two sailors who in a rescue from the waves had actually been captured had irresistible claims not so much to clemency as to gratitude. Poor Colonel Cope’s botanical studies, moreover, had not apparently warded off insanity, on which ground his sister in 1813 petitioned for his release. William Story, the chemist, had reached the age of sixty-three, and Napoleon’s decree had fixed sixty as the limit of detention. He applied for six months’ leave of absence to take possession of property bequeathed to him. Viscountess Kirkwall urged that unless her brother, whose father’s death had made him Lord De Blaquiere, was allowed to settle affairs in person, the family would be ruined. Lord Lovaine, with his sons Algernon and Percy, born in France, likewise petitioned for a business visit.[261] Sir Michael Cromie in 1811, pleading that he had been a friend of Fox, and had purchased property in France, asked leave to go to England to his daughter’s wedding.[262] Samuel Hayes, who in 1802 had come over with his children that they might learn French, was allowed in 1813, having become nearly blind, to return home. As late as the 18th March 1814, sixteen released prisoners embarked at Morlaix.
Curiously enough, an escaped prisoner was sent back by the English Government on the very eve of the termination of the war. It is the only case on record. A Lieutenant Sheehy, aged twenty-seven, of the 89th Infantry, had escaped from Verdun in October 1813, but the Prince Regent and the Commander-in-Chief, rebuking him for breach of parole, despatched him by flag of truce to Morlaix, where he arrived on the 5th March 1814. The Morlaix commissary reported that he denounced the Prince Regent as a sot, and that if he had talked like this in England it might account for his being returned, but that such talk might be a blind for some secret mission. Pending instructions from Paris, Sheehy was kept in custody, and we hear no more of him.[263]
The failure of the Mackenzie negotiations must have been a terrible disappointment for captives who had already waited nine years and a half. As late as 1812 there was so little prospect of deliverance that a prisoner at Briançon amused himself by scratching a sun-dial on a slate, appending to the motto ‘Rule Britannia’ imprecations against Napoleon.[264] In April 1813, twenty-five chests of Bibles and Testaments had been sent by a flag of truce, apparently by the Bible Society, to Morlaix for distribution among the captives. They were detained at the custom-house pending a decision, and we do not hear the result,[265] but in any case the books could scarcely have reached their intended recipients.
Yet although nobody foresaw the end of the war, Napoleon seems to have shown a little more leniency, while England in 1813 sent back 8000 invalided prisoners, and agreed, moreover, to occasional exchanges even of soldiers for civilians. Thus in 1812 she offered to exchange a French captain for the banker Boyd, but this offer must have been declined, for in 1814 Boyd pleaded the loss of the sight of one eye as ground for repeating it.[266] Release must soon have ensued without the necessity of an exchange. In December 1813, fourteen English doctors were exchanged for French prisoners, and we may hope that these included Moir, Armstrong, Watt, Campbell, Hogarth, and Jones, whose volunteer services to the French wounded had been notified to Napoleon by General Clarke, as a hint for their release.[267]
The allies having entered France on the north-east and Wellington on the south, the Verdun, Arras, and other captives were removed further inland. Napoleon, writing on the 11th January 1814 to Clarke, said, ‘I suppose you have removed the English from Verdun’; but it was not till the following day that the first detachment started for Blois. Prisoners with means provided their own vehicles or horses, but others, mostly captains and officers of merchantmen, seem to have been marched on foot. Most of them, Lord Blayney[268] says, were accompanied by French mistresses who had acquired a surprising mastery of English sailors’ oaths. A second detachment set out next day. This sudden removal had caused consternation, for though many had been captured during the war, many others had been at Verdun ever since 1803, and had got to feel at home there. Those, moreover, just under sixty when originally detained, were getting into years and disinclined to stir. Logically, of course, they should have been released on reaching that age, but logic was not to be looked for from Napoleon. Tradesmen and house-owners, moreover, had given numerous prisoners credit, yet the latter, if out of funds, had perforce to leave their creditors in the lurch. They could not wait for remittances, the order for departure in three days being imperative. Some, indeed, borrowed money of friends, but when the Verdun shopkeepers collected at the gate to make a last demand for their dues, some of the prisoners who could have paid coolly showed their purses to their creditors and then returned them to their pockets, sarcastically remarking that the Cossacks would discharge the debt. Five Arras captives made their way to the coast in lieu of going south, but finding no boat gave themselves up. Two others succeeded in their purpose. On the way to Blois, the younger child of Tuckey fell ill and died. On reaching their supposed destination, the prisoners were ordered on to Guéret. That town on the 11th of March 1814 had no less than 1064 English prisoners. Tidings of Wellington’s advance naturally created restlessness among them. Sixty-four escaped from the convent at Périgueux, to which they had been consigned, although the officers had some days before, lest they should head a rising, been transferred to Cahors. A hundred and one escaped in a body from Angoulême, and as many more, under a negro named Louis, conspired to follow suit, but were detected in time. The gendarmerie captain recommended their removal to spots more out of reach of the English army.[269] There had, moreover, been escapes on the way south. In February seven men, ordered from Arras to Tours, gave their convoy the slip, but were arrested in a barn near St. Valéry. Five other fugitives were apprehended near Montreuil. A Frenchman at Dunkirk was arrested for offering to facilitate escapes.
News soon arrived of Napoleon’s abdication. The Bitche prisoners, who had been sent to Chatellerault, would but for that event have been sent on to Rennes. A few of the English in Paris had obtained permission to remain, and were there witnesses of the short siege and the entrance of the allies. One of these was James Richard Underwood, for whom the dethroned Josephine had interceded. He published in the London Magazine an account of the siege and capitulation.
Article 3 of the treaty of peace of 1814 stipulated ‘that the respective prisoners of war shall be bound to pay before their departure from the place of their detention any private debts which they may have contracted there, or at least to give satisfactory security.’ This doubtless took effect in England, where prisoners could not leave without the knowledge or sanction of the authorities, but in France, occupied by foreign armies, there were obviously no means of enforcing it. Hence it is not surprising to find that at Verdun there were indignant creditors. We do not hear of complaints in any other town, but at Bitche and other fortresses the captives were lodged and victualled by the French Government, and though clothes must have worn out, the shopkeepers were probably chary of giving credit, while the captives on parole in Paris, Orleans, and other towns were men of means and doubtless of a high sense of honour. The eight or eleven hundred prisoners at Verdun, on the other hand, were of all sorts and conditions. Some could not, others would not, pay. When, therefore, Verdun learned that the sixty millions paid by France to England to satisfy claims for compensation for confiscation had left a balance of nine millions, it perceived an opportunity for sending in its bill. What could be more legitimately paid out of this balance than the three and a half million debts of the prisoners? Negotiations were carried on from 1837, and in October 1839, doubtless by the advice of the French Government, Routhier, a barrister, empowered to represent the creditors, went over to London. On a second visit he was accompanied by four townsmen, themselves apparently creditors. The memorial drawn up by them said:—