As the years of their captivity dragged on, they would hear of the conquests and of the King-making by their idol Buonaparte, now the Emperor Napoleon, and they would look forward in the near future to a Buonaparte on the throne of George III, and to their triumphal progress through the conquered country on the way back to their own dear France. Then their hopes would fade again (as, alas! their bodily comfort would be decreased) as there came crowding in the prisoners sent from the Peninsula by Wellington, who although he had been ordered on the 3rd February 1811 not to send any more prisoners on account of the crowded state of the prisons, in 1811–12 sent 20,000. [250] Later on would spread through the courts the story of the disastrous invasion of Russia and the awful retreat from Moscow. In the next year, 1813, they might hear that Wellington had crossed the Bidassoa, and thus secured for England—their hated hostess in their accursed abode at Norman Cross—the honour of being the first of the European powers to plant its victorious standard on French soil.
Hurtful as such items of news—which reached them solely through English sources or through equally unsympathetic French sources, such as the Bishop of Moulins, whose France was not their France—were to their patriotic feelings, they were all tending to bring about the day of their release. In 1814 the Allies invaded France, and successfully advanced upon Paris. Napoleon abdicated, and was allowed to retire to Elba, and at length the news reached Norman Cross that on the 30th May the Treaty of Paris, which meant freedom for all prisoners of war, had been signed.
Deeply as many an old soldier among the 4,617 of the prisoners at Norman Cross on that date resented the fall of the hero he had worshipped, his great general, the Emperor, bitterly as the majority resented the sight of the white flag of the Bourbons which had been mounted in each quadrangle, the one dominant feeling in the breasts of the prisoners was wild joy at their imminent freedom and restoration to their own loved country; they embraced, they danced, they sang, and they cried for joy. The military barracks had not been an abode of luxury or comfort, and the garrison caught the infection of exuberant joy; a party of them seized the Glasgow Mail Coach, on its arrival at Stilton, and drew it to Norman Cross, whither the coachman, horses, and guard were obliged to follow.
Among the prisoners who witnessed the scenes of rejoicing at this time was M. Foulley, who had been confined at Norman Cross for five years and three months. The scene impressed him so strongly, that after his return to France he made a model of the Depot as it appeared during the celebration of the departure of the first detachment of liberated prisoners for France. This model has already been criticised and described in Chapter II, but the place for the photograph is here, in the last chapter of this volume. The figures in the quadrangles, the garrison drawn up in line, with its back to the prison, at attention, ready to salute the departing prisoners, who only a day before it had to guard with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, tell of the buried hatchet, of the new-born peace between France and England, which has endured for ninety-eight years, and which is cemented and invigorated by the existing entente cordiale.
The prisoners began to prepare for departure. Some would set to work with a will to finish articles which had been bespoken, or which they wished to put in the market before their departure. Some could afford to take their stock of knick-knacks home, and would have money to draw from the agent and clerks—money they had realised by their work during the past eleven years. Undoubtedly, in some instances, the sum earned amounted to as much as one, two, or three hundred pounds, but without seeing the banking account, it will hardly be credited that any prisoner had actually made the rumoured thousand pounds. [252] Others would pack the articles they were taking home as memorials of their long sojourn in the land of their enemy. Every one would be in some way preparing for departure. Some permitted on parole would have to bid farewell to the friends they had made within their bounds, others would have to write to friends made in the market or in conversations surreptitiously carried on through the pales of the stockade fences.
Speedily, detachments began to move off. The Depot had been costing £300,000 a year, and every day it remained full represented a large sum. The local newspapers, where formerly they described the prisoners making their weary way under a strong escort from the coast to Norman Cross were now filled with reports of parties of released prisoners marching to the coast in comparative freedom. One paper notes how, of a detachment of 500, some got so drunk (is it much to be wondered at?) that they could not go on; while, on the contrary on 6th May, according to the Cambridge Chronicle, another detachment of 200, which was to embark from Chatham, passing through Cambridge on their way to that port, walked about the town and the University buildings, conducting themselves in an orderly manner.
So detachment followed detachment, until in the Times of 19th August 1814 appeared a paragraph, “Of all the great body of Prisoners of War, who were lately at Norman Cross Barracks, at this time only one single prisoner remains, and he, in consequence of illness preventing his removal.” What must have been this poor fellow’s feelings when he knew that all his fellow prisoners had left for their native country. Was he happily unconscious? We are sure that everything possible would be done to lighten his sad fate. Probably he was the last of his countrymen to be laid in the now desolate cemetery. [253a]
One shudders to think that his disappointment may have been as heartrending as that of the poor prisoner whose fate is narrated by Basil Thomson.