'I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand,
And he said 'How's poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?'
''Tis the most distressful country, for it's plainly to be seen
They are hanging men and women for the wearing of the Green.'
It was no isolated secret that Turner had acquired and disclosed. General Corbet, speaking of Morres, Tandy and Blackwall, gives an interesting account of their subsequent imprisonment at Hamburg, and how successive plans to effect their escape became marvellously foiled. 'I lost myself in vain conjectures,' he writes. 'It was not until a long time after that I learned the infamous treason of which I was the victim. I was very far from suspecting the author.' And then, in a foot-note, he indicates him with great caution, dreading the penalty of an action for libel.
A man [he writes] residing at Hamburg, who had all my confidence, and that of my three companions in misfortune, was at this precise time sold to England, and was one of Crawford's numerous agents. He was informed of all our projects, and communicated them to this minister. This man is now [1807] actually in London,[212] and pensioned by the Government.[213]
It is strange that Corbet was able to anticipate by half a century the revelation made in the 'Cornwallis Papers,' that a secret pension had been given to Turner for information in Ninety-eight. But his privately printed brochure may indeed be styled a sealed book.
Some hours after the arrest Maragan, the French resident, wrote to the Senate at Hamburg claiming Tandy and his colleagues as French citizens, and threatening to leave the Hague unless they were released. Crawford opposed the demand in terms equally strong, and, needless to say, carried his point. The French chargé d'affaires, observing Tandy's critical state of health, offered a large sum to the officer of the guard to permit his escape, but the superior influence of Crawford overrode all obstacles.
The letter of Tandy, from which an extract has already been made, states that after his arrest one hundred louis d'or were taken from him and never returned. His sufferings in prison he describes as so severe that life became well nigh insupportable, and more than once he prayed to be led out on the ramparts and shot.
John Philpot Curran gives us some idea of what these sufferings were:—
He was confined in a dungeon little larger than a grave; he was loaded with irons; he was chained by an iron that communicated from his arm to his leg, and that so short as to grind into his flesh. Food was cut into shapeless lumps, and flung to him by his keepers as he lay on the ground, as if he had been a beast; he had no bed to lie on, not even straw to coil himself up in if he could have slept.
The details given by Corbet of their detention are hardly less painful. At last he and Morres were removed to a new prison.