THE CEMETERY—RELIGIOUS MINISTRATIONS—BISHOP OF MOULINS
No column high-lifted doth shadow their dust,
And o’er their poor ruin no willow trees wave;
Yet their honour is safe in the thought of the Just,
And their agony fireth the hearts of the Brave
Unto deeds that shall shine through Oblivion’s rust.
NORMAN HILL, _Père Lechaise_.
FOR a short period after the occupation of the Depot, the prisoners who
died were buried outside the prison wall, in the north-east corner of the
site. The discovery of human skeletons by workmen engaged in excavating
gravel in this locality gave rise to tales of violent deaths in duels and
of surreptitious burials, tales which have to be dismissed as idle since
our researches have brought to light the fact that the spot was for a
brief period—the exact length of which cannot be determined—the
burial-place of the prisoners. It is certain that very few burials took
place in this corner. Early in the history of the prison, as mentioned
in a previous chapter, the Government bought a portion of a field on the
opposite—the western—side of the North Road for use as the prisoners’
cemetery, and in this field rest the remains of at least 1,770 of the
captives taken by us in that long war.
There is nothing now to distinguish the prisoners’ cemetery from the
surrounding fields; it is only by careful observation that the
irregularities of the surface can be recognised as the mounds which mark
the graves, these in the course of a hundred years having become very ill
defined.
The occasional disturbance of the bones of the dead in agricultural
operations, or by irreverent explorations of the graves by the village
lads, alone keep alive in the minds of the rustic population the
knowledge of this burial-place. The burial-places attached to other
depots for prisoners of war have one after the other been distinguished
by a monument erected to the memory of those who lie in them. Too long
has the respect due to the memory of the brave men who fought and
suffered for their country, and died at Norman Cross, been forgotten.
Too long, alike by the nation whose foes these prisoners were and by the
nation whose sons they were, has this God’s Acre, doubly sacred, because
in it lie only patriots who died for their native land, been neglected
and left without a mark to show that it is a sacred spot. Happily the
animosity of a hundred years ago has been replaced by _L’Entente
Cordiale_, and a movement originated by Mr. H. B. Sands, the late
Secretary of the Association which has adopted that title, is even now in
progress, the object of the movement being to acquire a portion of the
ground, to fence it, and to erect upon it, close to the North Road, a
monument with a suitable inscription to the memory of the foreign
soldiers and sailors who, after years of captivity, died in the prison,
and were buried in this neglected spot.
The information as to any provision for the spiritual welfare of the
prisoners is very meagre. Marriages and births, calling for the
sanctification of a church, there were none, but 1,770 deaths and burials
there certainly were, as the certificates show.
Neither in the register nor on the certificate of those deaths, whether
the prisoners were Roman Catholic or Protestant, does the name of priest
or parson appear.
This applies only to the prisoners who died in confinement, not to the
soldiers who guarded them. The Depot was in the parish of Yaxley, and in
the churchyard of St. Peter’s, the parish church, the majority of the
British soldiers who died while quartered at the barracks were buried,
and their names are entered in the parish register and signed by the
officiating minister.
The first entry connected with the Depot in the Yaxley Register is that
of “John Smart, suffocated at the Barracks, February 12th, 1797.” He was
probably a workman employed during the erection of the buildings, which
were not occupied until two months later; after this date, and up to
1814, occur entries of soldiers’ burials at the rate of from twenty to
thirty per annum.
The last funeral from the barracks was that of Captain Pressland on 21st
March 1814. After fifteen years the soldiers’ graves were crowding the
churchyard to such an extent, that in 1813 a plot of land adjoining the
barrack-master’s house was purchased by the Government for a special
burial-place for the barracks, and the ground was consecrated by the
Bishop of Lincoln on 29th October in that year. The first soldier was
buried in it on 4th November 1813, just seven months before the clearing
of the barracks and the prisons was accomplished. This plot has been
absorbed into the property on which stands the barrack-master’s house,
now owned by J. A. Herbert, J.P. When and how the absorption took place
is not known; it is now an orchard, and the few gravestones there were in
it have disappeared. From the Register of Folksworth, about a mile from
the barracks, it would appear that this village was a favourite place for
the wives of the married soldiers quartered at Norman Cross to reside;
several baptisms of the soldiers’ children, and one or two of the adult
soldiers themselves, are there registered.
The prisoners’ cemetery and the barracks were in the mission of the Roman
Catholic priest who lived at King’s Cliffe, but no register of deaths
kept by him is known to exist, nor is there any record by a minister of
religion of any burial service in this cemetery.
It must, I fear, be accepted that the men who were in captivity at Norman
Cross during the seventeen years the prison was occupied received very
little spiritual help, and in times of pressure many of those whose bones
lie in the prisoners’ burial-place were, too probably, interred without
religious rites of any kind, and scarcely ever with a single mourner at
the grave side.
From the possibilities, nay probabilities of the burials during the
epidemic of 1800–01, let us turn with a shudder and a sigh of regret for
whatever blame attaches to our country for that tragic year in the
history of Norman Cross.
Mrs. Sands says that, in examining the register in the Record Office, she
and her late husband found that a large number of those buried came from
Protestant provinces of France.
The Depot being in Yaxley parish, it is probable that during its
occupation the vicar would be asked to bury the Protestants and possibly
to minister to the sick and others in the prison. But that no entry of
any such burial is found in the parish registers, nor any note by an
incumbent of duty performed either in the prison or cemetery, points to
the fact that the prison was considered extra-parochial. The present
vicar, the Rev. E. H. Brown, who is keenly interested in the subject of
this narrative, has ascertained from a relative of the Rev. T. Hinde
that, to her certain knowledge, that clergyman, a former curate of
Yaxley, was “Protestant chaplain to Norman Cross Barracks.” Mr. Brown
adds that Mr. Hinde was apparently curate from September 1813 to January
1816; this would cover the last eight months only of the prison
occupation.
This statement, from a member of Mr. Hinde’s family, leaves room to
_hope_ that the Vicar of Yaxley or his curate actually officiated as
Protestant minister for those prisoners who were his co-religionists
during their enforced sojourn within the boundaries of his cure.
But it must be borne in mind that those days were not as ours, and that
there was little probability that Britain’s prisoners would be better
treated than her soldiers and sailors. A writer in _Notes and Queries_
quotes, respecting the treatment of the latter:
“Gleig—‘The Subaltern’ of 1813–14, who subsequently took holy orders
and wrote a _Life of Wellington_—assures us that a hundred years ago
Tommy Atkins was ‘spaded under’ without benefit of clergy, and it is
highly improbable that any existing memorial marks, nay, that any
memorial ever marked, the grave of even one of the thousands of
British privates who lie among the Spanish hills and valleys. All
that the tourist can hope to find in these distant and lonely spots
is the occasional tomb of a British officer, or (quite exceptionally)
of a favourite ‘non-com.’” {177}
That priests did frequent the prison in the earlier years of the war,
1797–1802, before the Peace of Amiens, we know from the correspondence of
the Transport Commissioners with the agents. The prisoners themselves
petitioned to have priests sent to them, and at length two priests were
permitted to reside in the prison. That these gentlemen did not strictly
confine themselves to the spiritual duties of their office we have reason
to believe from an instruction given to Captain Pressland, the agent
appointed when the prison was reopened in 1803. He was told that,
“profiting by experience gained during the previous war,” the Board had
decided that “no priests were to be admitted, except in extreme cases,
and then under carefully arranged restrictions, as they had abused the
privileges allowed them,” and that “a turnkey or clerk was to be present
during the whole time they were in the hospital.” This memorandum
evidently implies that at this time there was no regular provision for
the spiritual needs of the general body of prisoners, no chaplain
appointed by the authorities, and that no regular visitation except to
the sick and dying was to be permitted.
The Government was not without evidence that many of these priests had
supplemented the spiritual aid by acting as go-betweens and secretly
conveying correspondence to and from the prisoners. Any collusion
between the prisoners and possible foreign agents outside was provided
against by the regulation that all letters should pass through the
agent’s hands.
The continual recurrence throughout the war of plots for a general
rising, originating with the French Government; the frequent attempts
either of single prisoners or a combined body of them to escape, were
probably, at the period with which we are dealing, felt to be sufficient
reason for an order which in the present day would hardly be tolerated by
the British public. A year later, in 1804, the commissioners, while
affirming that they had no power to prevent French priests living in
Stilton, were most decided in declining to allow them to live in the
Depot, saying that at such a critical time they could not possibly grant
such a privilege to foreigners “of that equivocal description”!
The Transport Board must have seen reason to relax the orders, for three
years after this direction was given we find the Bishop of Moulins not
resident in the Depot, but living at Stilton a mile from it, on an
allowance received from the British Government, and earning a high
character for his work among the prisoners. He was also officiating
outside the prison, for in the register kept by the neighbouring priest,
the Rev. W. Hayes of King’s Cliffe, in whose mission Stilton was, are,
among others, the following three entries of baptisms to which allusion
has already been made in Chap. IV, p. 59:
1st. “1807.—John Stephen Felix Delapoux, son of John Andrew Delapoux and
of Sarah Mason (his lawful wife), of Norman Cross, Yaxley,
Huntingdonshire, was born July 22 and baptised August 2nd, 1807,
following, by Charles Lewis de Salmon du Chattelier, formerly Vicar
General of the Diocese of Mans, and Canon of the Cathedral Church.
Sponsor, the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tour,
residing at Stilton in the said county, which I, the undersigned, hereby
certify from the original.
“W. HAYES.”
2nd. “1808.—William, son of Hugh and Margaret Drummond, was baptised by
the Bishop of Moulins at Stilton, Hunts., May 30th, 1808. Sponsors,
Edward Courier and Margaret Anderson, attested by Mr. Wm. Hayes.”
3rd. “1814.—Louis Stanilas Henry Paschal, son of John Andrew Delapoux
and of Sarah Mason (his lawful wife) of Yaxley, Huntingdonshire, on May
3rd, was baptised May 14th, 1814, by the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist
Lewis de Galois de la Tour, residing at Stilton. Sponsor, Mr. Paschal
Levisse of Oundle, Northamptonshire, which I, the undersigned, hereby
certify from the original act.
“W. HAYES.”
In the first entry, 1807, the officiating priest is “the late Vicar
General of the Diocese of Mans, and Canon of the Cathedral Church,” who
was possibly attending to the prisoners until the Sponsor, the Rt. Rev.
Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tours (the Bishop-designate of
Moulins), took up the work. John Andrew Delapoux, the father of the
child, was a clerk at Norman Cross—many of the officials had French
names, and were probably naturalised British subjects, or children of
naturalised Frenchmen and familiar with the French language. He had been
married to Miss Mason, in Stilton Parish Church, on 2nd September 1802,
and until the research undertaken for the purposes of this work revealed
his identity, these were supposed to be entries of the baptisms of
children of a French prisoner who had married an English wife. In the
second, 1808, the Bishop of Moulins is entered as the officiating priest.
In the 3rd the priest performing the ceremony is the Rt. Rev. Stephen
John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tour. The priest in whose mission the
Baptism took place and who made the entry, gave the Christian and family
names of the Bishop-designate of Moulins, but not the episcopal title, as
in the second entry. The prefix Right Reverend marks the ecclesiastical
rank claimed by the Bishop; but a letter from Lord Mulgrave {180a} states
that he was only Bishop-designate. He had never been consecrated, and he
would therefore not be always recognised by his brethren as Évêque de
Moulins.
It is unfortunate that it is the duty of the humblest historian to push
aside the glamour that tradition and the writers of romance weave around
a man and to show him as he is, and the traditional story of the Bishop
of Moulins is not the only illusion which has been dispelled in the
course of our investigations.
The Bishop of Moulins has been, by traditions authoritatively reproduced
in print, gradually elevated to the position of a saint who voluntarily
relinquished his high office in France, and sacrificed its emoluments _in
order that he might minister to his fellow countrymen in captivity_. In
his little romance, {180b} the late Rev. Arthur Brown says, p. 44:
“And the Chaplain was none other than the Bishop of Moulins. _He had
voluntarily come to England out of pure compassion for his imprisoned
countrymen_, _and with true missionary zeal was giving himself up to
their spiritual welfare_. He was a venerable-looking man, much
respected by the prisoners generally. _It was a noble act of
self-sacrifice_.”
In a romance it is quite legitimate to adopt a name for an imaginary
character, and to endow the fictitious individual with virtues which the
real owner of the name did not possess, but Mr. Brown emphatically
declares this passage to be _history_, and not fiction, by a footnote, of
which the first sentence is, “This is fact, not fiction.” The note
continues:
“It would be interesting to know the history of this good man after
the prisoners were discharged in 1814. One thing is certain, that he
must ever have enjoyed a feast of memory to his dying day, in having
been a shepherd and bishop of souls to these poor prisoners.”
The late Rev. G. N. Godwin, in the series of papers on “Norman Cross and
its French Prisoners,” published in the _Peterborough Advertiser_ in
February and March 1906, says:
“The Depot had a noble Chaplain in the Bishop of Moulins, who
voluntarily came over from France, and lived at his own charge and
upon remittances from France, in the High Street, Stilton, near the
Bell Inn. (The house which is now shored up. {181}) He walked up
every day to Norman Cross, and acted very charitably to the
prisoners, doing his utmost to stop their frequent duels. It is to
be hoped that _ere long more will be known of this worthy prelate_.”
Mr. Godwin’s wish was soon fulfilled. Two years after this was written
there came to light, among the family archives at Milton, near
Peterborough, the correspondence which the author is able to print
verbatim in the appendix, through the kind permission of Mr. George
Wentworth Fitzwilliam, the greatgrandson of the fourth Earl Fitzwilliam,
to whom the Bishop’s letters are addressed, and who is the present owner
of the estates and head of the Northamptonshire branch of the family.
This correspondence, with other information gathered from scanty but
authentic sources, enables the writer to put before his readers a picture
of the one priest of whose work at Norman Cross the memory remained in
the neighbourhood for more than a generation after the Depot was
destroyed. The correspondence is of interest as throwing light on other
matters also.
The first part of this correspondence consists of letters from the Bishop
of Moulins begging for pecuniary assistance and for another favour from
Lord Fitzwilliam, with an accompanying document of great interest—viz. a
condensed autobiography of the Bishop, and the unfinished draft of the
Earl’s reply; these are all in French. The last mentioned is
interesting, as it shows incidentally that the great Whig Earl
sympathised with the Bishop in his loyalty to the Bourbons, to whom he
was devoted, and in his firm resolve never to acknowledge the government
of the Emperor Napoleon, whom he regarded as an usurper. It also gives
first-hand information as to an outside matter, the enormous cost of the
famous Yorkshire Election, in which the respective heads in the West
Riding of the contesting Whigs and Tories, Lord Fitzwilliam and Lord
Harewood, each represented by his own son, kept open house for the
fifteen days during which the Poll lasted, Lord Milton, the Whig,
beating, by a majority of 188, his Tory rival, the Hon. Henry Lascelles.
{182} The condensed autobiography sent by the Bishop to Lord Fitzwilliam
upsets much that has been written to accentuate the saintly character
which has been, not altogether without reason, attributed to him. The
remaining letters, one of which has been introduced in the text in
connection with the straw-plait trade, refer to the application made by
the Bishop for the release of another prisoner to take the place of his
servant Jean Baptiste David.
The autobiography is practically that of an émigré, although the
Bishop-designate was a “déporté.” Most of these aristocrats,
ecclesiastics, and others who fled from France at a time when, had they
possessed the courage to remain, they might have much altered the course
of events, took refuge in Austria, Italy, and other continental Catholic
countries. Comparatively few came to England. From the Bishop we learn
that in 1791, having been designated Bishop of Moulins, he was expelled
from France. He took refuge in Italy, where he had the good fortune to
become Chief Chaplain to the Bourbon Princess, Victoire of France, “to
whose bounty he owed his existence,” and at her death, in 1799, he was
left absolutely without any resources. Under these circumstances he came
to England, where he received the allowance granted to bishops at that
time, £10 a month. In his narrative the Bishop enters into further
details as to his misfortunes. He found his relatives in London in
distress; he advanced them moneys which he obtained from money-lenders,
who made the loans on the security of his expectations—expectations which
came to nothing. When the Bishop’s father died, leaving a goodly
inheritance, the whole was appropriated by his relatives, who took
advantage of the Bishop’s absence from France. His brother suggested to
him that if he would return to France and submit to the Government, they
might help him. This the Bishop would never do, his devotion and loyalty
to the Bourbons made it impossible, and in 1808 he is found at Stilton
writing a begging letter from the Bell Inn—not there “out of pure
compassion for his imprisoned countrymen,” but a “déporté” from France,
who, when he arrived in England, was without any resources beyond his
great expectations, on the strength of which the Bishop was able to
obtain money from usurers, to one of whom this unfortunate prelate was
paying 30 per cent. per annum for a loan of £200. He was not “living on
his own charges and upon remittances from France,” but upon £240 a year
paid to him by the British Government.
To this payment by the British Government was added the extraordinary
privilege of the liberation of a lad from Norman Cross to act as his
servant. This was a further favour from the Government which was feeding
him and clothing him. The Bishop’s return for these acts of grace was to
allow the lad to join in the illegal straw-plait traffic, and then to
make the application which, reading between the lines of Sir Rupert
George’s letter, it was easy to see was regarded by the Transport Board
as a gross piece of effrontery. The sequel was more letters in the
effusive begging-letter style of a century ago to the tender-hearted,
influential nobleman whose acquaintance he had made, and the ultimate
granting of another servant.
In one of his letters the Bishop denies that there is any truth in the
accusation that his servant was an accomplice in the illicit trading in
straw plait, and there is no extant evidence that he was so; but it is
clear, from the correspondence between the Transport Board and the
Secretary to the Admiralty, and between the latter and Earl Fitzwilliam,
that the Transport Board had no doubt about the fact.
There is something pathetic in the fact that these letters, in his, the
Bishop’s, beautiful handwriting, which is like the finest engrossing, but
so small that it is scarcely legible without the aid of a
magnifying-glass, should have come to light exactly 100 years after they
were written, and only two years after the wish had been expressed by the
writers quoted above, that more could be learned of “this worthy prelate”
and “this good man,” for in them the Bishop himself rises up to cast off
the adornments of self-sacrifice, etc., with which he has been decorated
by his biographers.
Divers writers, one after another, have attributed to him the
qualifications of a saint, finding everything he did so good and
wonderful, that the last, the late Rev. M. C. Godwin, mentions as a merit
that the Bishop walked a mile to his duties at the prison.
Mr. Brown, in the footnote just quoted, says: “It would be interesting to
know the history of this good man after the prisoners were discharged in
1814.”
The Bishop’s association with Norman Cross entitles him to a prominent
place in this narrative, and such further particulars of his life as have
after much research been established add something to the little that is
known of the émigrés and the déportés who took refuge in England.
Without the halo of a saint, the Bishop is still revealed as a good
priest winning the hearts and the esteem of those among whom he
ministered, seeking to lighten the lot of the prisoners who were his
flock. What light is thrown on his character by the legend written
against the boys’ prison on the prisoner Foulley’s model of the Norman
Cross Depot, in the _Invalides_! {185} (_vide_ Plate XX, p. 251). The
Bishop was working when many another ecclesiastical emigrant was idle,
and there is every reason to believe that he was worthy of his hire, as
far as his work was concerned. Probably the advent of the Bishop to
Norman Cross did for the prisoners what Buonaparte’s reinstatement of
religion did for the population of France. The correspondence shows that
it was his strong political opinions, his stedfast loyalty to the House
of Bourbon, strengthened as it was by gratitude and affection, and his
determined refusal to accept office on the terms of the Concordat, and to
swear fealty to the Emperor, whom he regarded as a usurper, which kept
him in England as a mere Bishop-designate instead of a consecrated
endowed Bishop. So strong were his feelings on these points, that he was
one of the ecclesiastics who signed the Remonstrance against the
Concordat and thus incurred the Pope’s displeasure.
Outside his office there is good ground for believing that he was an
accomplished and learned man, with a fine presence and attractive,
courteous manners. {186} He was apparently _persona grata_ at Milton,
the residence of Earl Fitzwilliam, seven miles from Stilton. But the
correspondence reveals the Bishop as a normally imperfect man. In the
opinion of the authorities (with which the historian must agree) he
abused the extraordinary privileges granted to him by the British
Government, and on his own showing he was, to say the least of it,
injudicious in the management of his affairs. He incurred heavy debts to
money-lenders without any certain prospect of being able to repay them.
In extenuation of these financial errors, it may be said that misfortune
and over-generosity, not personal extravagance, led to his impecuniosity
and his dealings with usurers, and as to the Bishop’s connivance in the
matter of his servant taking up as his occupation illicit dealing in the
straw plait made in the prison, Earl Fitzwilliam clearly did not regard
it as a heinous offence, when it was brought before his notice by Lord
Mulgrave, but continued his pleading for the Bishop, and eventually
succeeded in obtaining for him the favour he craved.
The Bishop’s work at Norman Cross continued until he returned with the
Bourbons to France after the banishment of Buonaparte to Elba in 1814.
Several articles in the Peterborough Museum are described in the
catalogue as presents from grateful prisoners to the Bishop. If they
were, it would be interesting to know why he left them behind instead of
taking them to France when he returned.
From other sources we gather that the Rt. Rev. Etienne Jean Baptist,
Louis de Galois de la Tour, who was fifty-four years of age at the date
of the correspondence, {187} was an ecclesiastic of great distinction.
He was the son of Charles Jean Baptist de Galois de la Tour, who was
French Administrator in 1788 at Moulins and first President of the
Department of Aix, where the future Archbishop was born in 1754. He
became Vicar-general of the See of Autun and doyen of the College of St.
Pierre at Moulins. He had been designated to the See of Moulins, when in
1791 the order for his arrest was issued, and he was “déporté” according
to the official list of émigrés published in Paris in 1793. In the
Bishop’s own narrative he says, “L’Évêque de Moulins, parti de France en
1791.” Of his life and fortunes from that year until 1808 we have his
own account. In 1814, after twenty-three years of exile, he returned
with the Bourbons to France, but he was not at once consecrated or even
appointed to the See of Moulins.
His attitude towards the Pope and the French Government during his
banishment can be seen in three rare pamphlets published in London in
1802 and 1803. {188a} The Pope (Pius VII.) was remonstrated with for
coming to terms with the French Government. To the first remonstrance,
dated 23rd December 1801, one archbishop and twelve bishops affix their
signatures, to which a cross is prefixed; Etienne de la Tour signs last,
as nominated Bishop of Moulins, without the cross. In April 1803 he
signs at the end of three archbishops and thirty-five bishops, this time
with a cross. {188b} The history of the quarrel between the parties and
final reconciliation can be seen in Thiers: _History of the French
Revolution_ (Shobul’s Trans.), 1895, vol. i., pp. 105–6, 145, 187.
After some correspondence and an acknowledgment of his error the
Bishop-designate was consecrated, and two years later he was elevated to
the archbishopric of Bourges.
The Archbishop did not live more than four years to occupy the lofty
position which he had won by his personal attributes, by his fidelity to
the House of Bourbon, by his services to the Church, by his twenty-three
years’ banishment from France involuntary and voluntary, by his
experiences at Norman Cross, {188c} among which the little incident of
his association, through Jean Baptiste David, with the straw-plait
smuggling business might, by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and even by the
Bourbon Government, not be reckoned as otherwise than meritorious.
The Archbishop, who had for so many years lived at Stilton on a pittance
allowed by the British Government, and had served his fellow countrymen
within the walls of the Norman Cross Prison, died in his palace at
Bourges on 20th March 1820.
No evidence has been procured, beyond the statement of the relative of
the Rev. T. Hinde (p. 176), that, at any time, a Protestant clergyman was
officially appointed as chaplain to the Depot. There is, however,
sufficient evidence that, during the first period of the war, between the
opening of the prison (1797) and its evacuation (1802), the services of
Roman Catholic priests were accepted, a record existing that two priests
were for a short time allowed to reside within the walls. After the
resumption of hostilities in 1803, notwithstanding the very strong
directions issued to Captain Pressland, on the reopening of the prison,
that “no priests were to be admitted except in extreme cases, etc.,” we
find the Bishop-designate of Moulins practically established as the
priest ministering to his countrymen in captivity, and living on the
income derived from the British Government.
The fact that the Vicar-general of Mans and the Bishop-designate of
Moulins differed in their politics from the bulk of the prisoners
probably led to their obtaining from the British Government the privilege
of thus exercising their office—a privilege not apparently without its
pecuniary advantages to themselves, for the Bishop in his autobiography
tells us that on coming to London he received from the British Government
the sum of £10 a month, the usual allowance to a man of his rank, while
at Stilton the sum paid to him is doubled, and he has £240 a year.
On the whole, the records of this chapter in the history of Norman Cross,
if painful to our national pride and self-respect in many details, would
probably not be regarded in the same light by those who, a century since,
were engaged in and suffering from this prolonged, sanguinary, bitter,
and costly war.