One point should be noted, that in searching the records to ascertain the various regiments quartered at Norman Cross, in order to fix the date of Macgregor’s plan, it was incidentally found that while the West Kent Regiment was quartered there in 1813, detachments lay at Peterborough, Whittlesea, and other neighbouring towns; these were probably for the purpose of acting if any difficulty arose with the prisoners on parole. The punishment for breaking parole was, as already mentioned, if the prisoner were recaptured, very severe. Not only was the ration allowance reduced until all expenses incurred in the capture were paid off, but committal to one of the prisons or to the hulks was also inflicted.
The local histories of various towns where depots for prisoners of war on parole were established have been consulted with very disappointing results. There must be local sources of information in some of the ninety-one towns enumerated in the footnote at page 192, and any future writer on the subject of the prisoners of war confined in Britain between 1793–1814 is advised, if he has leisure for research, to seek information from these districts. The following condensed notes on the prisoners on parole at Leek are given as an example of what took place in one of the towns where facts have been put on record in a local history. Unfortunately no such record is available for any of the towns in the Norman Cross district. It was only within the last fifty years that the following scanty information was collected and recorded. Sleigh’s History of Leek was published in 1862, only forty-seven years after Waterloo, when Mr. Neau was still alive, and when the children of the few parole prisoners who settled in Leek when their captivity was at an end must have been still only middle-aged people, and yet in this first edition the prisoners are not mentioned.
In 1883 there were published, in Notes and Queries, [215a] some interesting paragraphs dealing with the subject of the prisoners of war, and these were embodied in the second edition of Sleigh’s Leek, published in 1883. [215b] From these paragraphs the following condensed notes are culled. The officers received all courtesy and hospitality from the principal inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood. Those with good private means used to dine out in full uniform, each with his body servant stationed behind his chair. It is also stated that these prisoners used to go out early and collect snails as a bonne-bouche for breakfast. There were some men of mark among them. Of these, three died during their captivity, and were buried with many other parole prisoners in the God’s acre attached to the old church. There are memorial stones to Joseph Dobee, Captain of La Sophie, ob. 2nd December 1811, æt. 54; to Chevalier J. Baptiste Mullot, Captain of the 72nd French Regiment, ob. 9th June 1811, æt. 43; and to Charles Luneand, Captain in the French Navy, ob. 4th March 1822. The latter officer must have settled in Leek, the date of his death being seven years after Waterloo.
There are short notes on several others who were on parole at the Depot. General Brunet, captured at St. Domingo in 1803, his aide-de-camp, his adjutant, Col. Felix of the Artillery, and Lieut. Devoust of the Navy, son of the Senator of that name, are mentioned. There is a note that M. Bartin, a French naval officer, prisoner on parole about the space of eleven years, behaved himself extremely well all the time he lived with us. John Mien, servant to General Brunet, who was living in his eighty-fifth year in 1870, as a boy of seven witnessed the execution of Louis XVI., and heard the drums roll at Santerre’s command to drown the monarch’s speech.
Several of the parole prisoners married. M. Salvert, commander in the navy, married Helen Govstry of Leek Moor. Jean Toufflet, a sea-captain, left issue in the town; his widow, née Lorouds, died the 5th February 1870, æt. 84. M. Chouquet, a sea-captain, left a son living in 1870. Joseph Vattel, cook to General Brunet, married Sarah Spilsbury. One, Vandome, a naval officer and a most excellent linguist, used to render the English papers into his native tongue for the benefit of his comrades at the billiard-tables established by the officers.
That the prisoners on parole, like their fellow countrymen in close confinement, added to their means of living by their industry, is proved by the note in the history of Leek that there is in existence an old card, intimating that “James Francis Neau, of Derby Street, sold straw hats, beautiful straw, ivory and bone fancy articles, made by the French prisoners,” and many exquisite models of ships and other nick-nacks, still in existence, testify to the facile talent and marvellously patient industry of these prisoners.
This Francis Neau was a privateer officer who married a Mary Lees; she was living in 1870.
There was a remarkable duel. A Captain Decourbes had been fishing, and, coming in after curfew bell had tolled at 8 p.m., had to report himself to Captain Grey, R.N., the Commissary. He afterwards met a Captain Robert at the billiard-room at the Black’s Head, who grossly insulted him and struck him in the face, so that the duel became inevitable. Neau, who was present, was deputed to furnish them with firearms; but after ransacking the town, he could only succeed in borrowing one horse-pistol from a private in the Yeomanry. The two met on Balidone Moor at three the next morning, and tossed for the first shot. Decourbes won, and hit his adversary in the breast so that the ball entered at one side and came out at the other. Robert, who was previously lame and had come on to the ground on crutches, then, grievously wounded as he was, gathered himself up and returned the fire, shooting Decourbes in the nape of the neck. Lieut. Vird of the 72nd Regiment of Foot acted as Robert’s second; he was subsequently killed at Waterloo.
They all walked back together to Leek, the two combatants treating their wounds very lightly; but Decourbes’ wound went wrong, and he died of it in the course of ten days or a fortnight.
The number of prisoners at Leek never exceeded 200, and they came by detachments in 1803, 1805, 1809, and 1812, almost all clearing out after Napoleon’s abdication 5th April 1814.