PRISONERS OF WAR IN WALES
IN MONTGOMERYSHIRE
I am indebted to Canon Thomas of Llandrinio Rectory, Llanymynech, for
information which led me to extract the following interesting details
from the Montgomeryshire Archaeological Collections.
Batches of French officers were on parole during the later years of the
Napoleonic wars at Llanfyllin, Montgomery, Bishop’s Castle, Newtown, and
Welshpool.
_Llanfyllin_
About 120 French and Germans were quartered here during the years 1812
and 1813. Many of them lived together in a large house, formerly the
Griffith residence, which stood where is now Bachie Place. Others were
at the ‘Council House’ in High Street. In a first-floor room of this
latter may still be seen thirteen frescoes in crayon executed by the
prisoners, representing imaginary mountain scenery. Formerly there were
similar frescoes in a neighbouring house, once the _Rampant Lion_ Inn,
now a tailor’s shop, but these have been papered over, and according to
the correspondent who supplies the information, ‘utterly destroyed’.
These prisoners were liberally supplied with money, which they spent
freely. An attachment sprang up between a prisoner, Captain Angerau, and
the Rector’s daughter, which resulted in their marriage after the Peace
of 1814. It is interesting to note that in 1908 a grandson of Captain
Angerau visited Llanfyllin.
The following pleasing testimony I take from _Bygones_, October 30,
1878:
‘The German soldiers from Hessia, so well received by the inhabitants of
Llanfyllin during their captivity, have requested the undersigned to
state that the kindness and the favour shewn them by the esteemed
inhabitants of Llanfyllin will ever remain in their thankful
remembrance.
‘C. W. WEDIKIND.
‘Newtown, June 17, 1817.’
_Montgomery_
A correspondent of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ contributed a notice of
the death at Montgomery of an old gentleman named Chatuing who had been
nearly four years a prisoner in that town, and who had preferred to
remain there after the Peace of 1814.
Occasionally we come across evidence that there were men among the
prisoners on parole who were not above acting as Government spies among
their fellows. One Beauvernet at Montgomery was evidently one of these,
for a Transport Office letter to the Agent in that town in 1806 says:
‘Mr. Beauvernet may rest perfectly satisfied that any information
communicated by him will not in any way be used to his detriment or
disadvantage.’
Allen, the Montgomery Agent, is directed to advance Beauvernet £10, as
part of what ultimately would be given him. One Muller was the object of
suspicion, and he was probably an escape agent, as in later letters
Beauvernet is to be allowed to choose where he will ‘work’, and
eventually, on the news that Muller has gone to London, is given a
passport thither, and another £10. Of course it does not follow from
this that Beauvernet was actually a prisoner of war, and he may have
been one of the foreign agents employed by Government at good pay to
watch the prisoners more unostentatiously than could a regular prisoner
agent, but the opening sentence of the official letter seems to point to
the fact that he was a prisoner.
A French officer on parole at Montgomery, named Dumont, was imprisoned
for refusing to support an illegitimate child, so that it came upon the
rates. He wrote, however, to Lady Pechell, declaring that he was the
victim ‘of a sworn lie of an abandoned creature’, complaining that he
was shut up with the local riff-raff, half starved, and penniless, and
imploring her to influence the Transport Board to give him the
subsistence money which had been taken from him since his committal to
prison to pay for the child. What the Transport Board replied does not
appear, but from the frequency of these complaints on the part of
prisoners, there seems no doubt that, although local records show that
illicit amours were largely indulged in by French and other officers on
parole, in our country towns, much advantage of the sinning of a few was
taken by unprincipled people to blackmail others.
In the _Cambrian_ of May 2, 1806, is the following:
‘At the last Quarter Sessions for Montgomeryshire, a farmer of the
neighbourhood of Montgomery was prosecuted by order of the Transport
Office for assaulting one of the French prisoners on parole, and,
pleading guilty to the indictment, was fined £10, and ordered to find
sureties for keeping the peace for twelve months. This is the second
prosecution which the Board has ordered, it being determined that the
prisoners shall be protected by Government from insult while they remain
in their unfortunate position as Prisoners of War.’
_Bishop’s Castle_
At Bishop’s Castle there were many prisoners, and in _Bygones_ Thomas
Caswell records chats with an old man named Meredith, in the workhouse,
who had been servant at the _Six Bells_, where nine officers were
quartered. ‘They cooked their own food, and I waited upon them. They
were very talkative ... they were not short of money, and behaved very
well to me for waiting upon them.’
The attempted escape of two Bishop’s Castle prisoners is described on
page 391.
_Newtown_
‘Mr. David Morgan of the Canal Basin, Newtown, who is now (February
1895) 81 years of age, remembers over 300 prisoners passing through
Kerry village on their way from London via Ludlow, to Newtown. He was
then a little boy attending Kerry school, and the children all ran out
to see them. All were on foot, and were said to be all officers. A great
number of them were billeted at various public-houses, and some in
private houses in Newtown. They exerted themselves greatly in putting
out a fire at the _New Inn_ in Severn Street, and were to be seen, says
my informant, an aged inhabitant, “like cats about the roof “. When
Peace was made, they returned to France, and many of them were killed at
Waterloo. The news of that great battle and victory reached Newtown on
Pig Fair Day, in June 1815. I have a memorandum book of M. Auguste
Tricoche, one of the prisoners, who appears to have served in the French
fleet in the West Indies, and to have been taken prisoner at the capture
of Martinique in 1810.’
_Welshpool_
‘On the occasion of a great fire at the corner shop in December 1813,
there was a terrific explosion of gunpowder which hurled portions of
timber into the Vicarage garden, some distance off. The French prisoners
were very active, and some of them formed a line to the Lledan brook
(which at that time was not culverted over), whence they conveyed water
to the burning building to others of their comrades who courageously
entered it.
‘Dr. P. L. Serph, one of the prisoners, settled down at Welshpool, where
he obtained a large practice as a physician and surgeon, and continued
to reside there until the time of his death. Dr. Serph married Ann, the
daughter of John Moore, late of Crediton in the county of Devon,
gentleman, by Elizabeth his wife. Mrs. Serph died in 1837, and there is
a monument to their memory in Welshpool churchyard.
‘There is at Gungrog a miniature of Mrs. Morris Jones painted by a
French prisoner; also a water colour of the waterfall at Pystyl Rhaiadr,
which is attributed to one of them. I recollect seeing in the possession
of the late Mr. Oliver E. Jones, druggist, a view of Powis Castle,
ingeniously made of diverse-coloured straws, the work of one of the
prisoners.
‘It is said that French blood runs in the veins of some of the
inhabitants of each of these towns where the prisoners were located.
‘R. WILLIAMS.’
IN PEMBROKESHIRE
_Pembroke_
In 1779 Howard the philanthropist visited Pembroke, and reported to this
effect:
He found thirty-seven American prisoners of war herded together in an
old house, some of them without shoes or stockings, all of them scantily
clad and in a filthy condition. There were no tables of victualling and
regulations hung up, nor did the prisoners know anything more about
allowances than that they were the same as for the French prisoners. The
floors were covered with straw which had not been changed for seven
weeks. There were three patients in the hospital house, in which the
accommodation was very poor.
Fifty-six French prisoners were in an old house adjoining the American
prison. Most of them had no shoes or stockings, and some had no shirts.
There was no victualling table and the prisoners knew nothing about
their allowance. Two or three of them had a money allowance, which
should have been 3/6 per week each, for aliment, but from this 6_d._ was
always deducted. They lay on boards without straw, and there were only
four hammocks in two rooms occupied by thirty-six prisoners. There was a
court for airing, but no water and no sewer. In two rooms of the town
jail were twenty French prisoners. They had some straw, but it had not
been changed for many weeks. There was no supply of water in the jail,
and as the prisoners were not allowed to go out and fetch it, they had
to do without it. On one Sunday morning they had had no water since
Friday evening. The bread was tolerable, the beer very small, the
allowance of beef so scanty that the prisoners preferred the allowance
of cheese and butter. In the hospital were nine French prisoners,
besides five of the _Culloden’s_ crew, and three Americans. All lay on
straw with coverlets, but without sheets, mattresses, or bedsteads.
This was perhaps the worst prison visited by Howard, and he emphatically
recommended the appointment of a regular inspector. In 1779 complaints
came from Pembroke of the unnecessary use of fire-arms by the militiamen
on guard, and that 150 prisoners were crowded into one small house with
an airing yard twenty-five paces square—this was the year of Howard’s
visit. His recommendations seem to have had little effect, for in 1781
twenty-six prisoners signed a complaint that the quantity and the
quality of the provisions were deficient; that they had shown the Agent
that the bread was ill-baked, black, and of bad taste, but he had taken
no notice; that he gave them cow’s flesh, which was often bad, thinking
that they would refuse it and buy other at their own expense; that he
vexed them as much as he could, telling them that the bread and meat
were too good for Frenchmen; that on their complaining about short
measure and weight he refused to have the food measured and weighed in
their presence in accordance with the regulations; that he tried to get
a profit out of the straw supplied by making it last double the
regulation time without changing it, so that they were obliged to buy it
for themselves; and that he had promised them blankets, but, although it
was the raw season of the year, none had yet been issued.
In 1797 the Admiralty inspector reported that the condition of the dépôt
at Pembroke was very unsatisfactory; the discipline slack, as the Agent
preferred to live away at Hubberstone, and only put in an occasional
appearance; and that the state of the prisoners was mutinous to a
dangerous degree.
_The Fishguard affair of 1797_
If the Great Western Railway had not brought Fishguard into prominence
as a port of departure for America, it would still be famous as the
scene of the last foreign invasion of England. On February 22, 1797,
fifteen hundred Frenchmen, half of whom were picked men and half galley
slaves, landed from four vessels, three of which were large frigates,
under an Irish General Tate, at Cerrig Gwasted near Fishguard. They had
previously been at Ilfracombe, where they had burned some shipping.
There was a hasty gathering of ill-armed pitmen and peasants to
withstand them, and these were presently joined by Lord Cawdor with
3,000 men, of whom 700 were well-trained Militia. Cawdor rode forward to
reconnoitre, and General Tate, deceived, as a popular legend goes, into
the belief that he was opposed by a British military force of great
strength, by the appearance behind his lordship of a body of Welshwomen
clad in their national red ‘whittles’ and high-crowned hats,
surrendered.
Be the cause what it might, by February 24, without a shot being fired,
700 Frenchmen were lodged in Haverfordwest Jail, 500 in St. Mary’s
Church, and the rest about the town. Later on, for security, 500
Frenchmen were shut up in the Golden Tower, Pembroke, and with this last
body a romance is associated. Two girls were daily employed in cleaning
the prison, and on their passage to and fro became aware of two handsome
young Frenchmen among the prisoners selling their manufactures at the
daily market, who were equally attracted by them. The natural results
were flirtation and the concoction of a plan of escape for the
prisoners. The girls contrived to smuggle into the prison some shin
bones of horses and cows, which the prisoners shaped into digging tools,
and started to excavate a passage sixty feet long under the prison walls
to the outer ditch which was close to the harbour, the earth thus dug
out being daily carried away by the girls in the pails they used in
their cleaning operations. Six weeks of continuous secret labour saw the
completion of the task, and all that now remained was to secure a vessel
to carry the performers away. Lord Cawdor’s yacht at anchor offered the
opportunity. Some reports say that a hundred prisoners got out by the
tunnel and boarded the yacht and a sloop lying at hand; but at any rate,
the two girls and five and twenty prisoners secured the yacht, and,
favoured by a thick fog, weighed anchor and got away. For three days
they drifted about; then, meeting a brig, they hailed her, represented
themselves as shipwrecked mariners, and were taken aboard. They learned
that a reward of £500 was being offered for the apprehension of the two
girls who had liberated a hundred prisoners, and replied by clapping the
brig’s crew under hatches, and setting their course for St. Malo, which
they safely reached.
The girls married their lovers, and one of them, Madame Roux, ci-devant
Eleanor Martin, returned to Wales when peace was declared, and is said
to have kept an inn at Merthyr, her husband getting a berth at the
iron-works.
Another of General Tate’s men, a son of the Marquis de Saint-Amans,
married Anne Beach, sister-in-law of the Rev. James Thomas, Vicar of St.
Mary’s, Haverfordwest, and head master of the Grammar School. General
Tate himself was confined in Portchester Castle.
IN MONMOUTHSHIRE
_Abergavenny_
There were some two hundred officers on parole here, but the only memory
of them extant is associated with the Masonic Lodge, ‘Enfants de Mars et
de Neptune’, which was worked by them about 1813–14. Tradition says that
the officers’ mess room, an apartment in Monk Street, remarkable for a
handsome arched ceiling, also served for Lodge meetings. De Grasse
Tilly, son of Admiral De Grasse, who was defeated by Rodney in the West
Indies, was a prominent member of this Lodge. At the present
‘Philanthropic’ Lodge, No. 818, Abergavenny, are preserved some collars,
swords, and other articles which belonged to members of the old French
prisoners’ Lodge.
IN BRECKNOCKSHIRE
Prisoners were at Brecon; tombs of those who died may be seen in the old
Priory Churchyard, and ‘The Captain’s Walk’ near the County Hall still
preserves the memory of their favourite promenade.
In 1814 the Bailiff of Brecon requested to have the parole prisoners in
that town removed. The reason is not given, but the Transport Office
refused the request.