PAROLE LIFE
The following descriptions of life in parole towns by French writers may
not be entirely satisfactory to the reader who naturally wishes to get
as correct an impression of it as possible, inasmuch as they are from
the pens of men smarting under restrictions and perhaps a sense of
injustice, irritated by ennui, by the irksomeness of confinement in
places which as a rule do not seem to have been selected because of
their fitness to administer to the joys of life, and by the occasional
evidences of being among unfriendly people. But I hope to balance this
in later chapters by the story of the paroled officers as seen by the
captors.
The original French I have translated literally, except when it has
seemed to me that translation would involve a sacrifice of terseness or
force.
Listen to Lieutenant Gicquel des Touches, at Tiverton, after Trafalgar:
‘A pleasant little town, but which struck me as particularly monotonous
after the exciting life to which I was accustomed. My pay, reduced by
one-half, amounted to fifty francs a month, which had to satisfy all my
needs at a time when the continental blockade had caused a very sensible
rise in the price of all commodities.... I took advantage of my leisure
hours to overhaul and complete my education. Some of my comrades of more
literary bringing-up gave me lessons in literature and history, in
return for which I taught them fencing, for which I always had much
aptitude, and which I had always practised a good deal. The population
was generally kindly disposed towards us; some of the inhabitants urging
their interest in us so far as to propose to help me to escape, and
among them a young and pretty _Miss_ who only made one condition—that I
should take her with me in my flight, and should marry her when we
reached the Continent. It was not much trouble for me to resist these
temptations, but it was harder to tear myself away from the
importunities of some of my companions, who, not having the same ideas
as I had about the sacredness of one’s word, would have forced me to
escape with them.
‘Several succeeded: I say nothing about them, but I have often been
astonished later at the ill-will they have borne me for not having done
as they did.’
Gicquel was at Tiverton six years and was then exchanged.
A Freemasons’ Lodge, _Enfants de Mars_, was opened and worked at
Tiverton about 1810, of which the first and only master was Alexander de
la Motte, afterwards Languages Master at Blundell’s School. The Masons
met in a room in Frog Street, now Castle Street, until, two of the
officers on parole in the town escaping, the authorities prohibited the
meetings. The Tyler of the Lodge, Rivron by name, remained in Tiverton
after peace was made, and for many years worked as a slipper-maker. He
had been an officer’s servant.
The next writer, the Baron de Bonnefoux, we have already met in the
hulks. His reminiscences of parole life are among the most interesting I
have come across, and are perhaps the more so because he has a good deal
of what is nice and kind to say of us.
On his arrival in England in 1806, Bonnefoux was sent on parole to Thame
in Oxfordshire. Here he occupied himself in learning English, Latin, and
drawing, and in practising fencing. In the Mauritius, Bonnefoux and his
shipmates had become friendly with a wealthy Englishman settled there
under its French Government at l’Île de France. This gentleman came to
Thame, rented the best house there for a summer, and continually
entertained the French officer prisoners. The Lupton family, of one son
and two daughters, the two Stratford ladies, and others, were also kind
to them, whilst a metropolitan spirit was infused into the little
society by the visits of a Miss Sophia Bode from London, so that with
all these pretty, amiable girls the Baron managed to pass his unlimited
leisure very pleasantly. On the other hand, there was an element of the
population of Thame which bore a traditional antipathy to Frenchmen
which it lost no opportunity of exhibiting. It was a manufacturing
section, composed of outsiders, between whom and the natives an
ill-feeling had long existed, and it was not long before our Baron came
to an issue with them. One of these men pushed against Bonnefoux as he
was walking in the town, and the Frenchman retaliated. Whereupon the
Englishman called on his friends, who responded. Bonnefoux, on his side,
called up his comrades, and a regular _mêlée_, in which sticks, stones,
and fists were freely used, ensued, the immediate issue of which is not
reported. Bonnefoux brought his assailant up before Smith, the Agent,
who shuffled about the matter, and recommended the Baron to take it to
Oxford, he in reality being in fear of the roughs. Bonnefoux expressed
his disgust, Smith lost his temper, and raised his cane, in reply to
which the Baron seized a poker. Bonnefoux complained to the Transport
Office, the result of which was that he was removed to Odiham in
Hampshire, after quite a touching farewell to his English friends and
his own countrymen, receiving a souvenir of a lock of hair from ‘la
jeune Miss Harriet Stratford aux beaux yeux bleus, au teint éblouissant,
à la physionomie animée, à la taille divine’.
The populace of Odiham he found much pleasanter than that of Thame, and
as the report of the part he had taken in the disturbance at Thame had
preceded him, he was enthusiastically greeted. The French officers at
Odiham did their best to pass the time pleasantly. They had a
Philharmonic Society, a Freemasons’ Lodge, and especially a theatre to
which the local gentry resorted in great numbers, Shebbeare, the Agent,
being a good fellow who did all in his power to soften the lot of those
in his charge, and was not too strict a construer of the laws and
regulations by which they were bound.
Bonnefoux made friends everywhere; he seems to have been a light-hearted
genial soul, and did not spare the ample private means he had in helping
less fortunate fellow prisoners. For instance, a naval officer named Le
Forsiney became the father of an illegitimate child. By English law he
had to pay six hundred francs for the support of the child, or be
imprisoned. Bonnefoux paid it for him.
In June 1807, an English friend, Danley, offered to take him to Windsor,
quietly of course, as this meant a serious violation of parole rules.
They had a delightful trip: Bonnefoux saw the king, and generally
enjoyed himself, and got back to Odiham safely. He said nothing about
this escapade until September, when he was talking of it to friends, and
was overheard by a certain widow, who, having been brought up in France,
understood the language, as she sat at her window above. Now this widow
had a pretty nurse, Mary, to whom Bonnefoux was ‘attracted’, and
happening to find an unsigned letter addressed to Mary, in which was:
‘To-morrow, I shall have the grief of not seeing you, but I shall see
your king,’ she resolved upon revenge. A short time after, there
appeared in a newspaper a paragraph to the effect that a foreigner with
sinister projects had dared to approach the king at Windsor. The widow
denounced Bonnefoux as the man alluded to: the Agent was obliged to
examine the matter, the whole business of the trip to Windsor came out,
and although Danley took all the blame on himself, and tried to shield
Bonnefoux, the order came that the latter was at once to be removed to
the hulks at Chatham.
In the meanwhile a somewhat romantic little episode had happened at
Odiham. Among the paroled prisoners there was a lieutenant (_Aspirant de
première classe_) named Rousseau, who had been taken in the fight
between Admiral Duckworth and Admiral Leissegnes off San Domingo in
February, 1806. His mother, a widow, was dying of grief for him, and
Rousseau resolved to get to her, but would not break his parole by
escaping from Odiham. So he wrote to the Transport Office that if he was
not arrested and put on board a prison ship within eight days, he would
consider his parole as cancelled, and would act accordingly, his
resolution being to escape from any prison ship on which he was
confined, which he felt sure he could do, and so save his parole.
Accordingly, he was arrested and sent to Portsmouth.
Bonnefoux, pending his removal to Chatham, was kept under guard at the
_George_ in Odiham, but he managed to get out, hid for the night in a
new ditch, and early the next morning went to a prisoner’s lodging-house
in the outskirts of Odiham, and remained there three days. Hither came
Sarah Cooper, daughter of a local pastry-cook, no doubt one of the
dashing young sailor’s many _chères amies_. She had been informed of his
whereabouts by his friends, and told him she would conduct him to
Guildford.
The weather was very wet, and Sarah was in her Sunday best, but said
that she did not mind the rain so long as she could see Bonnefoux. Says
the latter:
‘Je dis alors à Sara que je pensais qu’il pleuvrait pendant la nuit.
Elle répliqua que peu lui importait; enfin j’objectai cette longue
course à pied, sa toilette et ses capotes blanches, car c’était un
dimanche, et elle leva encore cette difficulté en prétendant qu’elle
avait du courage et que dès qu’elle avait appris qu’elle pouvait me
sauver elle n’avait voulu ni perdre une minute pour venir me
chercher. . . . Je n’avais plus un mot à dire, car pendant qu’elle
m’entraînait d’une de ses petites mains elle me fermait gracieusement la
bouche.’
They reached Guildford at daybreak, and two carriages were hired, one to
take Bonnefoux to London, the other to take Sarah back to Odiham. They
parted with a tender farewell, Bonnefoux started, reached London safely,
and put up at the Hôtel du Café de St. Paul.
In London he met a Dutchman named Vink, bound for Hamburg by the first
vessel leaving, and bought his berth on the ship, but had to wait a
month before anything sailed for Hamburg. He sailed, a fellow passenger
being young Lord Onslow. At Gravesend, officers came on board on the
search for Vink. Evidently Vink had betrayed him, for he could not
satisfactorily account for his presence on the ship in accordance with
the strict laws then in force about the embarkation of passengers for
foreign ports; Bonnefoux was arrested, for two days was shut down in the
awful hold of a police vessel, and was finally taken on board the
_Bahama_ at Chatham, and there met Rousseau, who had escaped from the
Portsmouth hulk but had been recaptured in mid-Channel.
Bonnefoux remained on the Chatham hulk until June 1809, when he was
allowed to go on parole to Lichfield. With him went Dubreuil, the rough
privateer skipper whose acquaintance he made on the _Bahama_, and who
was released from the prison ship because he had treated Colonel and
Mrs. Campbell with kindness when he made them prisoners.
Dubreuil was so delighted with the change from the _Bahama_ to
Lichfield, that he celebrated it in a typical sailor fashion, giving a
banquet which lasted three days at the best hotel in Lichfield, and
roared forth the praises of his friend Bonnefoux:
De Bonnefoux nous sommes enchantés,
Nous allons boire à sa santé!
Parole life at Lichfield he describes as charming. There was a nice,
refined local society, pleasant walks, cafés, concerts, réunions, and
billiards. Bonnefoux preferred to mix with the artisan class of
Lichfield society, admiring it the most in England, and regarding the
middle class as too prejudiced and narrow, the upper class as too
luxurious and proud. He says:
‘Il est difficile de voir rien de plus agréable à l’œil que les réunions
des jeunes gens des deux sexes lois [_sic_] des foires et des marchés.’
Eborall, the Agent at Lichfield, the Baron calls a splendid chap: so far
from binding them closely to their distance limit, he allowed the French
officers to go to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, to the races at Lichfield, and even
to Birmingham. Catalini came to sing at Lichfield, and Bonnefoux went to
hear her with Mary Aldrith, his landlord’s daughter, and pretty Nancy
Fairbrother.
And yet Bonnefoux resolved to escape. There came on ‘business’ to
Lichfield, Robinson and Stevenson, two well-known smuggler
escape-agents, and they made the Baron an offer which he accepted. He
wrote, however, to the Transport Office, saying that his health demanded
his return to France, and engaging not to serve against England.
With another naval officer, Colles, he got away successfully by the aid
of the smugglers and their agents, and reached Rye in Sussex. Between
them they paid the smugglers one hundred and fifty guineas. At Rye they
found another escaped prisoner in hiding, the Captain of the _Diomède_,
and he added another fifty guineas. The latter was almost off his head,
and nearly got them caught through his extraordinary behaviour. However,
on November 28, 1809, they reached Boulogne after a bad passage.
Robinson with his two hundred guineas bought contraband goods in France
and ran them over to England. Stevenson was not so lucky, for a little
later he was caught at Deal with an escaped prisoner, was fined five
hundred guineas, and in default of payment was sent to Botany Bay.
General d’Henin was one of the French generals who were taken at San
Domingo in 1803. He was sent on parole to Chesterfield in Derbyshire,
and, unlike several other officers who shared his fate, was most popular
with the inhabitants through his pleasing address and manner. He married
whilst in Chesterfield a Scots lady of fortune, and for some years
resided with her at Spital Lodge, the house of the Agent, Mr. Bower. He
and Madame d’Henin returned to Paris in 1814, and he fought at Waterloo,
where his leg was torn off by a cannon shot.
His residence in England seems to have made him somewhat of an
Anglophile, for in Horne’s _History of Napoleon_ he is accused of
favouring the British at Waterloo, and it was actually reported to
Napoleon by a dragoon that he ‘harangued the men to go over to the
enemy’. This, it was stated, was just before the cannon shot struck him.
From Chesterfield, d’Henin wrote to his friend General Boyer at
Montgomery, under date October 30, 1804. After a long semi-religious
soliloquy, in which he laments his position but supposes it to be as
Pangloss says, that ‘all is for the best in this best of worlds’, he
speaks of his bad health, of his too short stay at ‘Harrowgate’ (from
which health resort, by the way, he had been sent, for carrying on
correspondence under a false name), of his religious conversion, and of
his abstemious habits, and finishes:
‘Rien de nouveau. Toujours la même vie, triste, maussade, ennuyeuse,
déplaisante et sans fin, quand finira-t-elle? Il fait ici un temps
superbe, de la pluie, depuis le matin jusqu’au soir, et toujours de la
pluie, et du brouillard pour changer. Vie de soldat! Vie de chien!’
All the same, it is consoling to learn from the following letters
written by French officers on parole to their friends, that compulsory
exile in England was not always the intolerable punishment which so many
authors of reminiscences would have us believe. Here is one, for
instance, written from a prisoner on parole at Sevenoaks to a friend at
Tenterden, in 1757:
‘I beg you to receive my congratulations upon having been sent into a
country so rich in pretty girls: you say they are unapproachable, but it
must be consoling to you to know that you possess the trick of winning
the most unresponsive hearts, and that one of your ordinary looks
attracts the fair; and this assures me of your success in your secret
affairs: it is much more difficult to conquer the middle-class sex....
Your pale beauty has been very ill for some weeks, the reason being that
she has overheated herself dancing at a ball with all the Frenchmen with
whom she has been friendly for a certain time, which has got her into
trouble with her mother.... Roussel has been sent to the “Castle”
(Sissinghurst) nine days ago, it is said for having loved too well the
Sevenoaks girls, and had two in hand which cost him five guineas, which
he had to pay before going. Will you let me know if the country is
suitable for you, how many French there are, and if food and lodgings
are dear?
‘To Mr. Guerdon. A French surgeon on parole at Tenterden.’
The next is from a former prisoner, then living at Dunkirk, to Mrs.
Miller at the Post Office, Leicester, dated 1757. Note the spelling and
punctuation:
‘MADAME,—
Vous ne scaurié croire quell plaisire j’ai de m’entretenir avec vous mon
cœur ne peut s’acoutumer à vivre sans vous voire. Je nait pas encore
rencontré notre chère compagnon de voyage. Ne m’oublié point, ma chère
Elizabeth vous pouvé estre persuadé du plaisire que j’auré en recevant
de vos nouvelles. Le gros Loys se porte bien il doit vous écrire aussi
qu’à Madame Covagne. Si vous voye Mrs. Nancy donne luy un baisé pour
moy’.
A prisoner writes from Alresford to a friend in France:
‘I go often to the good Mrs. Smith’s. Miss Anna is at present here. She
sent me a valentine yesterday. I go there sometimes to take tea where
Henrietta and Betsi Wynne are. We played at cards, and spent the
pleasantest evening I have ever passed in England.’
A Captain Quinquet, also at Alresford, thus writes to his sister at
Avranches:
‘We pass the days gaily with the Johnsons, daughters and brother, and I
am sure you are glad to hear that we are so happy. Come next Friday! Ah!
If that were possible, what a surprise! On that day we give a grand ball
to celebrate the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of papa and mamma.
There will be quite twenty people, and I flatter myself we shall enjoy
ourselves thoroughly, and if by chance on that day a packet of letters
should arrive from you—Mon Dieu! What joy!’
He adds, quite in the style of a settled local gossip, scraps of news,
such as that Mrs. Jarvis has a daughter born; that poor Mr. Jack Smith
is dead; that Colonel Lewis’s wife, a most amiable woman, will be at the
ball; that Miss Kimber is going to be married; that dear little Emma
learns to speak French astonishingly well; that Henrietta Davis is quite
cured from her illness, and so forth.
There is, in fact, plenty of evidence that the French officers found the
daughters of Albion very much to their liking. Many of them married and
remained in England after peace was declared, leaving descendants who
may be found at this day, although in many cases the French names have
become anglicized.
In Andover to-day the names of Jerome and Dugay tell of the paroled
Frenchmen who were here between 1810 and 1815, whilst, also at Andover,
‘Shepherd’ Burton is the grandson of Aubertin, a French prisoner.
At Chesterfield (Mr. Hawkesly Edmunds informs me), the names of Jacques
and Presky still remain.
Robins and Jacques and Etches are names which still existed in Ashbourne
not many years ago, their bearers being known to be descended from
French prisoners there.
At Odiham, Alfred Jauréguiberry, second captain of the _Austerlitz_
privateer, married a Miss Chambers. His son, Admiral Jauréguiberry,
described as a man admirable in private as in public life, was in
command of the French Squadron which came over to Portsmouth on the
occasion of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Naval Review in 1887, and he found
time to call upon an English relative.
Louis Hettet, a prisoner on parole at Bishop’s Castle, Montgomeryshire,
in 1814, married Mary Morgan. The baptism of a son, Louis, is recorded
in the Bishop’s Castle register, March 6, 1815. The father left for
France after the Peace of 1814; Mrs. Hettet declined to go, and died at
Bishop’s Castle not many years ago. The boy was sent for and went to
France.
Mrs. Lucy Louisa Morris, who died at Oswestry in 1908, aged 83, was the
second daughter of Lieutenant Paris, of the French Navy, a prisoner on
parole at Oswestry.
In 1886 Thomas Benchin, descendant of a French prisoner at Oswestry,
died at Clun, in Shropshire, where his son is, or was lately, living.
Benchin was famed for his skill in making toys and chip-wood ornaments.
Robinot, a prisoner on parole at Montgomery, married, in June 1807, a
Miss Andrews, of Buckingham.
At Wantage, in 1817, General de Gaja, formerly a prisoner on parole,
married a grand-daughter of the first Duke of Leicester, and his
daughter married, in 1868, the Rev. Mr. Atkinson, vicar of East Hendred.
At Thame, François Robert Boudin married Miss Bone, by banns, in 1813;
in the same year Jacques Ferrier married Mary Green by banns; Prévost de
la Croix married Elizabeth Hill by licence; and in 1816 Louis-Amédée
Comte married Mary Simmons, also by licence. All the bridegrooms were or
had been prisoners on parole.
In the register of Leek I find that J. B. B. Delisle, Commandant of the
port of Caen, married Harriet Sheldon; François Néan married Mary Lees,
daughter of the landlord of the _Duke of York_; Sergeant Paymaster
Pierre Magnier married Frances Smith, who died in 1874, aged 84; Joseph
Vattel, cook to General Brunet, married Sarah Pilsbury. Captains
Toufflet and Chouquet left sons who were living in Leek in 1880 and 1870
respectively, and Jean Mien, servant to General Brunet, was in Leek in
1870.
Notices of other marriages—at Wincanton, for instance—will be found
elsewhere.
Against those who married English girls and honourably kept to them,
must, however, be placed a long list of Frenchmen who, knowing well that
in France such marriages were held invalid, married English women, and
basely deserted them on their own return to France, generally leaving
them with children and utterly destitute. The correspondence of the
Transport Office is full of warnings to girls who have meditated
marriage with prisoners, but who have asked advice first. As to the
subsistence of wives and children of prisoners, the law was that if the
latter were not British subjects, their subsistence was paid by the
British Government, otherwise they must seek Parish relief. In one of
the replies the Transport Office quotes the case of Madame Berton, an
Englishwoman who had married Colonel Berton, a prisoner on parole at
Chesterfield, and was permitted to follow her husband after his release
and departure for France, but who, with a son of nineteen months old, on
arrival there, was driven back in great want and distress by the French
Government.
In contrast with the practice of the British Government in paying for
the subsistence of the French wives and children of prisoners of war, is
that of the French Government as described in the reply of the Transport
Office in 1813 to a Mrs. Cumming with a seven-year-old child, who
applied to be allowed a passage to Morlaix in order to join her husband,
a prisoner on parole at Longwy:
‘The Transport Office is willing to grant you a passage by Cartel to
Morlaix, but would call your attention to the situation you will be
placed in, on your arrival in France, provided your husband has not by
his means or your own the power of maintaining you in France, as the
French Government make no allowance whatever to wives and children
belonging to British prisoners of war, and this Government has no power
to relieve their wants. Also to point out that Longwy is not an open
Parole Town like the Parole Towns in England, but is walled round, and
the prisoners are not allowed to proceed beyond the walls, so that any
resources derivable from your own industry appears to be very
uncertain.’
The Transport Office were constantly called upon to adjudicate upon such
matters as this:
‘In 1805, Colonel de Bercy, on parole at Thame, was “in difficulty”
about a girl being with child by him. The Office declined to interfere,
but said that if the Colonel could not give sufficient security that
mother and child should not be a burden upon the rates, he must be
imprisoned until he did.’
By a rule of the French Government, Englishwomen who had already lived
in France with their husbands there as prisoners of war could not return
to France if once they left it. This was brought about by some English
officers’ wives taking letters with them on their return from England,
and, although as a matter of policy it could not be termed tyrannical,
it was the cause naturally of much distress and even of calamity.
The next account of parole life in England is by Louis Garneray, the
marine painter, whose description of life on the hulks may be remembered
as being the most vivid and exact of any I have given.
After describing his rapture at release from the hulk at Portsmouth and
his joyous anticipation of comparative liberty ashore, Garneray says:
‘When I arrived in 1811 under escort at the little village (Bishop’s
Waltham in Hampshire) which had been assigned to me as a place of
residence, I saw with some disillusion that more than 1,200 [_sic_]
French of all ranks [_sic_] had for their accommodation nothing but some
wretched, tumble-down houses which the English let to them at such an
exorbitant price that a year’s rent meant the price of the house itself.
As for me, I managed to get for ten shillings a week, not a room, but
the right to place my bed in a hut where already five officers were.’
The poor fellow was up at five and dressed the next morning:
‘What are you going to do?’ asked one of my room mates. ‘I’m going to
breathe the morning air and have a run in the fields,’ I replied.
‘Look out, or you’ll be arrested.’
‘Arrested! Why?’
‘Because we are not allowed to leave the house before six o’clock.’
Garneray soon learned about the hours of going out and coming in, about
the one-mile limit along the high road, that a native finding a prisoner
beyond the limit or off the main road had not only the right to knock
him down but to receive a guinea for doing so. He complained that the
only recreations were walking, painting, and reading, for the Government
had discovered that concerts, theatricals, and any performances which
brought the prisoners and the natives together encouraged familiarity
between the two peoples and corrupted morals, and so forbade them.
Garneray then described how he came to break his parole and to escape
from Bishop’s Waltham.
He with two fellow-prisoner officers went out one hot morning with the
intention of breakfasting at a farm about a mile along the high road.
Intending to save a long bit they cut across by a field path. Garneray
stumbled and hurt his foot and so got behind his companions. Suddenly,
hearing a cry, he saw a countryman attack his friends with a bill-hook,
wound one of them on the arm, and kill the other, who had begun to
expostulate with him, with two terrible cuts on the head. Garneray,
seizing a stick, rushed up, and the peasant ran off, leaving him with
the two poor fellows, one dead and the other badly wounded. He then saw
the man returning at the head of a crowd of countrymen, armed with
pitchforks and guns, and made up his mind that his turn had come.
However, he explained the situation, and had the satisfaction of seeing
that the crowd sided with him against their brutal compatriot. They
improvised a litter and carried the two victims back to the cantonment,
whilst the murderer quietly returned to his work.
When the extraordinary brutality of the attack and its unprovoked nature
became known, such indignation was felt among the French officers in the
cantonment that they drew up a remonstrance to the British Government,
with the translation of which into English Garneray was entrusted.
Whilst engaged in this a rough-mannered stranger called on him and
warned him that he had best have nothing to do with the remonstrance.
He took the translated document to his brother officers, and on his way
back a little English girl of twelve years quietly and mysteriously
signed to him to follow her. He did so to a wretched cottage, wherein
lived the grandmother of the child. Garneray had been kind to the poor
old woman and had painted the child’s portrait for nothing, and in
return she warned him that the constables were going to arrest him.
Garneray determined to escape.
He got away from Bishop’s Waltham and was fortunate enough to get an
inside place in a night coach, the other places being occupied by an
English clergyman, his wife, and daughter. Miss Flora soon recognized
him as an escaped prisoner and came to his rescue when, at a halting
place, the coach was searched for a runaway from Bishop’s Waltham.
Eventually he reached Portsmouth, where he found a good English friend
of his prison-ship days, and with him he stayed in hiding for nearly a
year, until April 1813.
Longing to return to France, he joined with three recently-escaped
French officers in an arrangement with smugglers—the usual
intermediaries in these escapes—to take them there. To cut short a long
story of adventure and misadventure, such as we shall have in plenty
when we come to that part of this section which deals with the escapes
of paroled prisoners, Garneray and his companions at last embarked with
the smugglers at an agreed price of £10 each.
The smugglers turned out to be rascals; and a dispute with them about
extra charges ended in a mid-Channel fight, during which one of the
smugglers was killed. Within sight of the French coast the British ship
_Victory_ captured them, and once more Garneray found himself in the
_cachot_ of the Portsmouth prison-ship _Vengeance_.
Garneray was liberated by the Treaty of Paris in 1814, after nine years’
captivity. He was then appointed Court Marine Painter to Louis XVIII,
and received the medal of the Legion of Honour.
The Marquis d’Hautpol was taken prisoner at Arapiles, badly wounded, in
July 1812, and with some four hundred other prisoners was landed at
Portsmouth on December 12, and thence sent on parole to ‘Brigsnorth,
petite ville de la Principauté de Galles’, clearly meant for Bridgnorth
in Shropshire. Here, he says, were from _eight to nine hundred_ other
prisoners, some of whom had been there eight or nine years, but
certainly he must have been mistaken, for at no parole place were ever
more than four hundred prisoners. The usual rules obtained here, and the
allowance was the equivalent of one franc fifty centimes a day.
Wishing to employ his time profitably he engaged a fellow-prisoner to
teach him English, to whom he promised a salary as soon as he should
receive his remittances. A letter from his brother-in-law told him that
his sisters, believing him dead, as they had received no news from him,
had gone into mourning, and enclosed a draft for 4,000 francs, which
came through the bankers Perregaux of Paris and ‘Coutz’ of London. He
complains bitterly of the sharp practices of the local Agent, who paid
him his 4,000 francs, but in paper money, which was at the time at a
discount of twenty-five per cent, and who, upon his claiming the
difference, ‘me répondit fort insolemment que le papier anglais valait
autant que l’or français, et que si je me permettais d’attaquer encore
le crédit de la banque, il me ferait conduire aux pontons’. So he had to
accept the situation.
The Marquis, as we shall see, was not the man to invent such an
accusation, so it may be believed that the complaints so often made
about the unfair practice of the British Government, in the matter of
moneys due to prisoners, were not without foundation. The threat of the
Agent to send the Marquis to the hulks if he persisted in claiming his
dues, may have been but a threat, but it sounds as if these gentlemen
were invested with very great powers. The Marquis and a fellow prisoner,
Dechevrières, adjutant of the 59th, messed together, modestly, but
better than the other poorer men, who clubbed together and bought an ox
head, with which they made soup and ate with potatoes.
A cousin of the Marquis, the Comtesse de Béon, knew a Miss Vernon, one
of the Queen’s ladies of honour, and she introduced the Marquis to Lord
‘Malville’, whose seat was near Bridgnorth, and who invited him to the
house. I give d’Hautpol’s impression in his own words:
‘Ce lord était poli, mais, comme tous les Anglais, ennemi mortel de la
France. J’étais humilié de ses prévenances qui sentaient la protection.
Je revins cependant une seconde fois chez lui; il y avait ce jour-là
nombreuse compagnie; plusieurs officiers anglais s’y trouvaient. Sans
égards pour ma position et avec une certaine affectation, ils se mirent
à déblatérer en français contre l’Empereur et l’armée. Je me levai de
table indigné, et demandai à Lord Malville la permission de me retirer;
il s’efforce de me retenir en blâmant ses compatriotes, mais je
persistai. Je n’acceptai plus d’invitations chez lui.’
All good news from the seat of war, says the Marquis, was carefully
hidden from the prisoners, so that they heard nothing about Lützen,
Bautzen, and Dresden. But the news of Leipsic was loudly proclaimed. The
prisoners could not go out of doors without being insulted. One day the
people dressed up a figure to represent Bonaparte, put it on a donkey,
and paraded the town with it. Under the windows of the lodging of
General Veiland, who had been taken at Badajos, of which place he was
governor, they rigged up a gibbet, hung the figure on it, and afterwards
burned it.
At one time a general uprising of the prisoners of war in England was
seriously discussed. There were in Britain 5,000 officers on parole, and
60,000 men on the hulks and in prisons. The idea was to disarm the
guards all at once, to join forces at a given point, to march on
Plymouth, liberate the men on the hulks, and thence go to Portsmouth and
do the same there. But the authorities became suspicious, the generals
were separated from the other officers, and many were sent to distant
cantonments. The Marquis says that there were 1,500 at Bridgnorth, and
that half of these were sent to Oswestry. This was in November, 1813.
So to Oswestry d’Hautpol was sent. From Oswestry during his stay escaped
three famous St. Malo privateer captains. After a terrible journey of
risks and privations they reached the coast—he does not say where—and
off it they saw at anchor a trading vessel of which nearly all the crew
had come ashore. In the night the prisoners swam out, with knives in
their mouths, and boarded the brig. They found a sailor sleeping on
deck; him they stabbed, and also another who was in the cabin. They
spared the cabin boy, who showed them the captain’s trunks, with the
contents of which they dressed themselves. Then they cut the cable,
hoisted sail and made off—all within gunshot of a man-of-war. They
reached Morlaix in safety, although pursued for some distance by a
man-of-war. The brig was a valuable prize, for she had just come from
the West Indies, and was richly laden. This the Frenchmen at Oswestry
learned from the English newspapers, and they celebrated the exploit
boisterously.
Just after this the Marquis received a letter from Miss Vernon, in which
she said that if he chose to join the good Frenchmen who were praying
for restoration of the Bourbons, she would get him a passport which
would enable him to join Louis XVIII at Hartwell. To this the Marquis
replied that he had been made prisoner under the tricolour, that he was
still in the Emperor’s service, and that for the moment he had no idea
of changing his flag, adding that rather than do this he preferred to
remain a prisoner. Miss Vernon did not write again on this topic until
the news came of the great events of 1814—the victories of the British
at San Sebastian, Pampeluna, the Bidassoa, the Adur, Orthez and
Toulouse, when she wrote:
‘I hope that now you have no more scruples; I send you a passport for
London; come and see me, for I shall be delighted to renew our
acquaintance.’
He accepted the offer, went to London, and found Miss Vernon lodged in
St. James’s Palace. Here she got apartments for him; he was fêted and
lionized and taken to see the sights of London in a royal carriage. At
Westminster Hall he was grieved to see the eagle of the 39th regiment,
taken during the retreat from Portugal, and that of the 101st, taken at
Arapiles. Then he returned to France.