“It was impossible to enjoy greater advantages than we possessed, in the retired village of Charni, during the summer months; and I avoided the bustle and constant interruption, which I met with at Verdun from various quarters. We had some excellent and valuable friends, in whose society we found much gratification; their habits were similar to our own; with them we lived on terms of the kindest intimacy, and avoided, by having this residence, the necessity of keeping up an intercourse with others who found enjoyment only in society of a very different description. As the autumn however approached, we thought it necessary to remove into Verdun, as Charni was too low for a winter residence. We continued to live in retirement, as my health was too weak to admit of my entering into evening parties, and it was with great difficulty that I could prevail upon my beloved and excellent companion to leave me only for a few hours. Even the change from Charni to Verdun was beneficial to me. The progress I made towards recovery was very apparent, and my mind being consequently relieved, I was in a great measure restored to happiness. The mercy and goodness of God has visited me through life, in a very remarkable manner; and this ought to excite the warmest gratitude, and the most entire resignation to all He should in future require of me.
“One other circumstance at this period occurred most providentially, which relieved me from much anxiety. My pecuniary circumstances had always been far from affluent. The loss of my ship just fitted out; the necessity of keeping two houses; and the other unavoidable expences of my situation, had exhausted the little which I had made in the late war. At this time I received two sums most opportunely, namely £468, prize money from Genoa, of which I had given up all hopes; and nearly £400 as a remuneration from the Admiralty for the charge I had taken of the prisoners. This materially increased our comforts; but the circumstance derived its chief value in the estimation of my angelic wife, from the effect it produced in tranquillizing my mind. To please and obey her God; to share in, or contribute to the happiness of those dear to her, was the great and invariable object of her life. She thus gave additional charms to prosperity itself, by the delight she took in the joy of all around her: but how often have I felt her sweet influence of still greater value in cheering me under the pressure of adversity.
“In order to re-establish my health entirely, I was anxious to remove into a milder climate; I was also very desirous of procuring a residence for my family, at a distance from the general depôt, where much of the society was very exceptionable, and where we were constantly unsettled, by the multitude of reports daily in circulation, suggested without any foundation by the hopes and fears of our fellow prisoners, or from mere idleness. With this view I solicited permission to pass the winter at Tours. The Minister of Marine, M. Decrés again stood my friend, and after some delay, in consequence of Buonaparte being at Berlin, he at length succeeded, and informed me in the kindest manner of my request being granted. We made our preparations with almost as much pleasure, as though it had been for a journey to England. I employed myself during the remainder of our stay at Verdun, in concluding all my affairs relative to the prisoners at that depôt. The French government had recently forbidden any further supplies being given to the British prisoners, by their own country; declaring that each nation should support its own prisoners. The fact was, that whilst the Englishmen were so liberally provided for by their own government, there was no hope of inducing them to desert; and all intrigues carried on by the French to seduce them from their allegiance proved fruitless. In consequence of this new arrangement, my presence was no longer necessary at Verdun. I settled all my affairs relative to the prisoners, and this was rendered less complicated by an order recently issued by the French Government, that all supplies sent from England to her people should cease, and each nation support their own prisoners. I had nothing therefore now to do, but to close my accounts previous to my departure. The situation of the prisoners of inferior rank, became in consequence wretched in the extreme. They were now deprived of the comforts to which they had been accustomed; they neither saw nor heard of their officers; they knew nothing of the continued solicitude of their truly paternal government, and of the efforts it had made in their behalf. All hopes of exchange had died away, and complete despair seemed to have taken possession of the sufferers. Numbers attempted to make their escape, and some few succeeded; but many were intercepted and cruelly treated; whilst additional measures of severity were adopted to prevent further attempts at desertion. All who were taken at this time, were sent off, as close prisoners to the fortress of Bitche, and confined in the dark and gloomy souterrain. It was at this time that Mr. Wolfe, finding that the principal objects of his solicitude, the children, were all removed to the distant depôts, and that none would be permitted to reside at Verdun, came forward in a manner most creditable to himself, as a volunteer to reside at Givet, a depôt in which there were twelve hundred prisoners, but no officers. He was aware that he must deprive his family of all the advantages they possessed of comfort and society at Verdun, and subject them to many privations; but this excellent man did not hesitate, whatever sufferings or inconveniences might await him, to put in execution a resolution which was made in the hope of being instrumental to the temporal and eternal welfare of his suffering countrymen.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE REV. MR. WOLFE, ONE OF THE DETENUS.—HEARS OF THE STATE OF THE PRISONERS AT GIVET, AND RESOLVES ON GOING TO RESIDE AMONG THEM.—EXTRACTS FROM HIS WORK ENTITLED THE “BRITISH PRISONERS IN FRANCE.”
The name of Mr. Wolfe having been thus introduced, I feel it due to the memory of that faithful and devoted man, to leave for a moment the subject of the present memoir, in order to turn to the labours in which he was associated, and to a work which he voluntarily undertook, in conjunction with his friend, Captain Brenton. Mr. Wolfe, as has been stated, was arrested at Fontainbleau, where he was making a short stay in a tour subsequent to his marriage: and from thence was consigned with the other detenus to the depôt at Verdun. His situation there admitted many alleviations in the captivity to which he was doomed. He found several valuable and agreeable men, the associates of his confinement. He had, as we have seen, opportunities for exercising his ministry; and he must have felt, that though the situation was not one which he would have chosen, it was still one in which he perhaps had less to regret, than the greater part of those around him. But while he was thus residing at Verdun, the reports which he continually received of the state of the British seamen who were confined at Givet, awoke such feelings of pity in Mr. Wolfe’s mind, that he determined in a spirit of self-devotion, as rare as it is admirable, to move with his family to Givet, to take up his residence among them, and to try to forward the means of their improvement by personal exertions. This sacrifice can hardly be appreciated as it ought to be, by those who are ignorant of the condition to which the men were reduced, through their own vices, and the oppression to which they were at the time subjected. Mr. Wolfe’s friends remonstrated with him seriously on the danger to which he was exposing himself, and the partner of his exile, by taking up his permanent abode among men, whom despair and suffering had rendered almost ferocious; and whose sole relief seemed to be, making others more wretched than themselves. But he had seen the need to which they were reduced. He had counted the cost, and he decided on a step, which if it involved great personal privation, and some personal danger, was followed by such an amount of blessing as few have been permitted to witness.
On first removing to Givet, he found his countrymen sunk in every kind of abomination, half starved by the dishonesty of the French Commissaries, destitute of every comfort, and in a state of mind which aggravated all their external sufferings. The cruel, and unfeeling policy of the French government at the time, led them to make the condition of the prisoners as wretched as possible, that they might be the more easily tempted, by the agents employed to seduce them from their allegiance; and the evils of captivity were studiously aggravated by the want of necessary food and covering, that the seamen might be induced to enlist in the French service. This species of treatment falling on minds ill prepared to resist it, had led to a degree of frightful demoralization. Some few were drawn away by the offers made to them, and justified their desertion by the cold and hunger they had suffered. The rest seeing no prospect of release, without employment, and without resource, sought for momentary forgetfulness in intoxication, when liquor could be procured; and then sunk into despondency, and sullen discontent. A more fearful exhibition of human nature it is hardly possible to conceive; and yet into this scene Mr. Wolfe resolved to throw himself; and among men, such as these, he asked, and with some difficulty obtained permission to reside. The result of this noble enterprise of Christian benevolence, of this work and labour of love, should only be given in his own words, and having asked, and obtained the kind permission of her who was his partner in this act of self-devotion, to make this use of his publication, I do not hesitate at borrowing from the work which Mr. Wolfe published in 1830, entitled the “British Prisoners in France,” the narrative of the experiment he made, and which from that moment connected him, while life lasted, in affectionate regard with the subject of the present memoir.