JULY 1809
There was reason to believe that a direct application to know whether any order had arrived, would obtain no answer; therefore after waiting a month, I wrote to ask "whether His Excellency would permit my wife to come and join me, should she present herself before Port Napoléon." It was not in reality my intention that she should leave England, but I hoped to draw the desired information from the answer; and in six weeks [SEPTEMBER 1809], after another vessel had arrived from France, one was given to the following effect: "The captain-general will not oppose the residence of your wife in the colony; but with respect to a safe conduct, it is necessary that Mrs. Flinders should apply to the ministers of His Britannic Majesty, who should make the request to those of His Majesty the Emperor and King;" which was equivalent to saying, either that no fresh order to set me at liberty had been received, or that it would not be put into execution.
At this time there was much talk of an attack upon the island, said to be projected by the British government; and all the English officers, prisoners of war, were taken from their paroles and closely shut up. In the middle of the month our cruisers quitted the island unexpectedly, and a fortnight afterwards it was known that they gone to Bourbon, and made an attack upon the town of St. Paul; both the town and bay were then in their possession, as also La Coraline frigate and two Indiamen her prizes, upon which this government had counted for supplying its deficiency of revenue. During the attack, great disorders had been committed by the black slaves, and the humane care of commodore Rowley and his captains had alone prevented greater excesses; this intelligence put a stop to the raising of regiments of slaves for the defence of Mauritius, which the captain-general had commenced under the name of African battalions, much against the sense of the inhabitants. These various circumstances, with the distress of the government for money, caused much agitation in the public mind; and it was to be apprehended that general De Caen would scarcely suffer me to remain with the usual degree of liberty, whilst all the other prisoners were shut up. I endeavoured by great circumspection to give no umbrage, in order to avoid the numberless inconveniences of a close imprisonment; but in the beginning of October [OCTOBER 1809] a letter came from colonel Monistrol, saying that "His Excellency the captain-general having learned that I sometimes went to a considerable distance from the habitation of Madame D'Arifat, had thought proper to restrain my permission to reside in the interior of the colony on parole, to the lands composing that habitation." This order showed that the general had either no distinct idea of a parole of honour, or that his opinion of it differed widely from that commonly received; a parole is usually thought to be a convention, whereby, in order to obtain a certain portion of liberty, an officer promises not to take any greater; but general De Caen seemed to expect me to be bound by the convention, whilst he withdrew such portion of the advantages as he thought proper, and this without troubling himself about my consent. If any doubts remained that the order of the French government had in strict justice liberated me from parole, this infraction by the captain-general was sufficient to do them away; nevertheless the same reasons which had prevented me declaring this conviction long before, restrained the declaration at this time; and I returned the following answer to colonel Monistrol, written in French that no pretext of bad translation might afterwards be alleged.
Sir,
Yesterday at noon I had the honour of receiving your letter of the 1st. inst. It is true that I have sometimes profited by the permission contained in the parole which I had given (que j'avais donnée) on Aug 23, 1805, by which I was allowed to go as far as two leagues from the plantation of Madame D'Arifat; but since His Excellency the captain-general has thought good to make other regulations, I shall endeavour to conduct myself with so much prudence respecting the orders now given, that His Excellency will not have any just cause of complaint against me.
I have the honour to be, etc.
The two objects I had in view in giving this answer, were, to promise nothing in regard to my movements, and to avoid close imprisonment if it could be done without dishonour; had it been demanded whether I still considered the parole to be in force, my answer was perfectly ready and very short, but no such question was asked. Many circumstances had given room to suspect, that the captain-general secretly desired I should attempt an escape; and his view in it might either have been to some extraordinary severity, or in case his spies failed of giving timely information, to charging me with having broken parole and thus to throw a veil over his own injustice. Hence it might have been that he did not seek to know whether, being restricted to the plantation of Madame D'Arifat, I still admitted the obligatory part of the parole to be binding; and that the expression in my answer--the parole which I had given, implying that it existed no longer, passed without question. However this might be, I thenceforward declined accepting any invitations beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the plantation; and until the decisive moment should arrive, amused by solitude with instructing the two younger sons of our good family in the elements of mathematical science, with inventing problems and calculating tables that might be useful to navigation, and in reading the most esteemed French authors.
After the evacuation of the town and bay of St. Paul at Bourbon, the blockade of Mauritius was resumed by commodore Rowley with increased strictness. The frigate La Canonnière and the prize formerly H. M. ship Laurel, which the want of a few thousand dollars had induced the government to let for freight to the merchants, were thus prevented sailing; and a cartel fitted long before to carry the English prisoners to the Cape of Good Hope, and waiting only, as was generally supposed, for the departure of these two ships, was delayed in consequence. When captains Woolcombe and Lynne of the navy had been desired in August to keep themselves in readiness, I had committed to the obliging care of the latter many letters for England, and one for admiral Bertie at the Cape; but instead of being sent away, these officers with the others were put into close confinement, and their prospects retarded until the hurricane season, when it was expected the island would have a respite from our cruisers.
DECEMBER 1809
In the beginning of December, despatches were said to have arrived from France, and the marine minister having received my memorial in the early part of the year, full time had been given to send out a fresh order; but disappointment on such arrivals had been so constant during greater part of the six years to which my imprisonment was now prolonged, that I did not at this time think it worth asking a question on the subject. A British cartel, the Harriet, arrived from India on the 12th, with the officers of La Piémontaise and La Jena; the Harriet was commanded by Mr. John Ramsden, formerly confined with me in the Garden Prison, and the commissary of prisoners was Hugh Hope, Esq., whom Lord Minto had particularly sent to negotiate an exchange with general De Caen. The cartel had been stopped at the entrance of the port by the blockading squadron, and been permitted to come in only at the earnest request of Mr. Hope and the parole of the prisoners to go out again with him should the exchange be refused. In a few days I received an open letter from Mr. Stock, the former commissary; and having learned that Mr. Hope proposed to use his endeavours for my release, a copy of all the letters to and from colonel Monistrol, subsequent to the marine minister's order, was transmitted, that he might be better enabled to take his measures with effect; and towards the end of the month, a letter from the commissary informed me of the very favourable reception he had met with from the captain-general, of the subject of my liberty having been touched upon, and of his entertaining hopes of a final success. The flattering reception given to Mr. Hope had been remarked to me with surprise from several hands; but a long experience of general De Caen prevented any faith in the success of his application for my release: I feared that Mr. Hope's wishes had caused him to interpret favourably some softened expressions of the general, which he would in the end find to merit no sort of confidence.
JANUARY 1810
La Venus frigate, after her exploit at Tappanouli, got into the Black River on the first of January, notwithstanding the presence of our cruisers; she had on board a part of the 69th regiment, with the officers and passengers of the Windham, including five ladies, and announced the capture of two other ships belonging to the East-India Company; and two days afterward, the frigates La Manche and La Bellone entered Port Louis with the United Kingdom and Charleston, the Portuguese frigate Minerva, and His Majesty's sloop Victor (formerly La Jena). This was a most provoking sight to commodore Rowley, whom baffling winds and his position off the Black River prevented stopping them; whilst the joy it produced in the island, more especially amongst the officers of the government who had been many months without pay, was excessive. The ordinary sources of revenue and emolument were nearly dried up, and to have recourse to the merchants for a loan was impossible, the former bills upon the French treasury, drawn it was said for three millions of livres, remaining in great part unpaid; and to such distress was the captain-general reduced for ways and means, that he had submitted to ask a voluntary contribution in money, wheat, maize, or any kind of produce from the half-ruined colonists. Promises of great reform in the administration were made at that time; and it was even said to have been promised, that if pecuniary succour did not arrive in six months, the captain-general would retire and leave the inhabitants to govern themselves; and had the frigates not returned, or returned without prizes, it seemed probable that such must have been the case.*