_Q._ Did the enemy ever chase or make any attempt to force me to action
on the 23rd of July?
_A._ No.
_Q._ Could I have forced the enemy to action on the 23rd of July, if
they had chosen to avoid it?
_A._ No.
_Q._ Did the enemy appear to you to have sustained any considerable
damage to their masts and yards?
_A._ None in their masts. They shifted a top-sailyard or two, and that,
I believe, was the utmost.
_Q._ Was the British fleet always kept between the enemy and Ferrol as
long as they continued in sight?
_A._ Till the afternoon of the 24th we were always nearer Ferrol, than
the enemy was.
_Q._ Could they then have fetched Ferrol?
_A._ Certainly not, the wind was then N.E. and by E.
_Q._ If I had gone towards the enemy on the 24th, could I have overtaken
them, if they had chosen to avoid me, without approaching so near the
shore between Ferrol and Cape Finisterre, as to have enabled them to
have communicated by land signals with Ferrol?
_A._ No.
Captain W. Cuming, of the _Prince of Wales_, was asked by Sir Robert
Calder:—
_Q._ As you were near my person during the whole time of the action of
the 22nd, was any part of my conduct to be attributed to fear, or a want
of zeal for his majesty’s service?
_A._ Most certainly not.
_Court._—Captain Cuming, what number of the British ships appeared to
you, on the morning of the 24th, incapable of sailing in line-of-battle
or order of sailing?
_A._ I imagine the whole, except the _Windsor Castle_, might have been
formed in line-of-battle.
_Q._ If the _Windsor Castle_ had been taken in tow, considering the
relative situation of the two fleets, could the British squadron have
renewed the action on the 24th, the enemy declining so to do?
_A._ Certainly not.
_Q._ Did the vice-admiral decline the action, either on the 23rd or
24th, if the enemy had been inclined to renew it?
_A._ He did not.
_Sir R. Calder._—Mr. President, I conceive Captain Cuming to be the only
person competent to speak to the question I put to him, or I should have
no difficulty in submitting the same to every captain in the fleet.
Notwithstanding this testimony, and to the surprise of most present and
the public generally, the court came to an adverse decision. Its
judgment was this:—
“The court is of opinion, that the charge of not having done his utmost
to renew the said engagement, and to take or destroy every ship of the
enemy, has been proved against the said Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Calder,
that it appears that his conduct has not been actuated either by
cowardice or disaffection, but has risen solely from error in judgment,
and is highly censurable, and doth adjudge him to be severely
reprimanded; and the said Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Calder is hereby
severely reprimanded accordingly.”
The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of the time thus records the effect of this
judgment upon Calder:
“Upon the sentence being pronounced, Sir Robert Calder appeared deeply
affected—he turned round, and retired without a word. He was accompanied
by a great number of friends, and, on descending from the deck of the
_Prince of Wales_ into his barge, scarcely lifted up his head, which was
apparently bowed down by the weight of the sentence upon him. He is in
his sixtieth year; forty-six of which he has passed in the service of
his country.”
This judgment of the court-martial has been since, by most naval
writers, looked on, if not as quite erroneous, at least as extremely
severe. One circumstance made people the more regret it. It was passed
at the very time when there lay, encircled by a halo of victory, in
Greenwich Hospital, awaiting a State ceremonial, the dead body of
Nelson, who before he himself annihilated at Trafalgar the very admirals
and some of the very vessels Calder encountered, had openly approved of
Calder’s conduct. The public soon veered in Sir Robert’s favour, and the
sentence did not prove popular. It was spoken against in Parliament, and
it was everywhere felt that a true and valuable British commander had
been hardly dealt with. Restitution was subsequently proferred to Calder
in the appointment, which he accepted, of admiral in command at
Plymouth. But the trial broke his spirit, and it was remarked that he
never was the same energetic man again. His amiability, social manners,
and sound good sense, however, lasted to his death, and during his final
retirement he continued to experience the greatest respect and attention
not only from the Admiralty, but from a host of friends and from persons
of all rank and station. He died at Holt, near Bishops-Waltham, Hants,
on the 31st Aug. 1816; and as he left no issue by his wife, Amelia,
daughter of John Mitchell, Esq., of Bayfield, Norfolk, his own baronetcy
became extinct. The baronetcy of his family, however, continues, and is
now held by his nephew, Sir Henry Roddam Calder, the fifth Bart. of
Muirtoune.
TRIAL OF GENERAL SIR ROBERT WILSON AND OTHERS FOR THE ESCAPE OF
LAVALLETTE.
One of the most wonderful historic events that occurred on the second
Restoration of the Bourbons, in 1815, was the escape from his condemned
cell of Marie Chamant, Count de Lavallette, through the means of his
devoted wife, Emile Louise, daughter of the Marquis of Beauharnais,
niece of the Empress Josephine, and cousin in blood of Napoleon III.
This escape was not without parallel, for, just one hundred years
before, by a similar act of heroism, a wife, the Countess Winifred, of
the noble and illustrious house of Herbert, daughter of William, Marquis
of Powis, freed her husband, William Maxwell, fifth Earl of Nithsdale,
from the Tower of London, where he lay under sentence of immediate death
for joining in the Rising of 1715. It is a curious fact that in either
case some suspicion has attached to the Sovereign then reigning of not
being altogether uncognisant of, or adverse to, the successful attempt
at issue. George I., satiated with Jacobite blood, and not so intent on
punishment as his Government and adherents, may not have secretly
connived, but certainly did evince satisfaction, at the happy result of
Lady Nithsdale’s daring act. “It is,” he exclaimed, “de very best ting a
woman can do for a man in his condition.” A still stronger notion
exists, to the honour of Louis XVIII., that a hint, if not actual help,
as to what Madame Lavallette was to do, came from him. The fury of the
supporters of the House of Bourbon at the second Restoration was without
control. Labédoyère had been executed; and that still worse piece of
cruelty, a deed never forgotten by the public, and eventually fatal to
the Bourbon dynasty, had been just consummated—the consignment to a
traitor’s death of Marshal Ney, “the bravest of the brave.” France
already murmured; and it is natural to suppose that Louis’s own good
sense and humanity revolted at continuing such slaughter. He dared not,
such was the violence of his party, openly interfere; but one cannot
carefully read the whole affair of Lavallette without being struck with
some circumstances in it. How was it, for example, that Louis XVIII.,
after refusing to see Mesdames Labédoyère and Ney, come to beg their
husbands’ lives, admitted Madame Lavallette on the same errand, to a
personal and private interview, where but little ever transpired of what
passed? How was it that the gaoler, without bribe, acted so glaringly in
Lavallette’s favour? How, too, did Lavallette live so long sheltered in
the Foreign Office? And how was it that the party who harboured him was
never brought to account? Then there were the lenient sentence passed on
Wilson and his associates, and finally, the ready pardon granted, in a
few years afterwards, by King Louis to Lavallette himself. This curious
question, however, admits of more discussion than can be accorded to it
here. I pass from it, and from the oft-told story, (and nowhere better
told than in “Chamber’s Miscellany” and Sir Bernard Burke’s “Romance of
the Aristocracy,”) of the evasion from prison of Lavallette, as effected
by his wife. I pass over, also, his wonderful concealment in the mansion
of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and I come to the actual cause of
the following trial, which is connected with our army in this, that two
of the accused were British officers, and their object was effected
through the facilities then afforded by the British military occupation
of France.
Let us, therefore, take it that Lavallette, Postmaster General under
Napoleon, had, on news of the famous return from Elba, violently, and,
as far as the King’s Government was concerned, treasonably, resumed his
place at the head of the Post Office, and had stopped the Bourbon
proclamations and forwarded those of his Imperial master. For this
complicity, as it was termed, with Napoleon against the royal authority
and the safety of the state, Lavallette was, on the 20th November, 1815,
tried and condemned to die, and his appeal to the Court of Cassation was
rejected. His wife on the eve of his execution had got him out of
prison, and he lay precariously hidden in an apartment of the Foreign
Office. What followed cannot be better given than from Count
Lavallette’s own narrative:
“These,” he writes, “are the particulars. The Princess de Vaudemont,
uneasy at knowing me to be still in Paris, though she was not acquainted
with the place of my concealment, looked about for persons who might
help me away. She spoke of her anxiety to Madame de St. Aignan
Caulaincourt, one of the cleverest women born in France, whose kindness
is inexhaustible, and whose courage is unbounded: she proposed to the
Princess to sound a young Englishman, Mr. Bruce, who used to visit both
their houses. Bruce, delighted at the idea of saving an unfortunate man
who had escaped the scaffold in so wonderful a manner, accepted with
enthusiasm the proposal of the ladies, and went immediately to consult
Sir Robert Wilson on the subject.
“Sir Robert shared his young friend’s enthusiasm. He had failed in his
attempt to save Marshal Ney, but he hoped to take his revenge in my
case. He made quite a military expedition of the business; and, as Bruce
was not in the army, it became necessary to find one or two officers,
independent men, of liberal opinions, who might be disposed to play off
a good trick on the Government of the Bourbons. The road to Belgium, by
Valenciennes, was specially assigned to the English army, and it was
therefore chosen for my escape. They asked no more than two days to
finish their preparations. I received a very particular instruction
concerning my dress; no mustacchios, and English wig; my beard shaved
very clean, after the manner of the officers of that nation; a
great-coat, with buttons of the English Guards; the regimentals and hat
were to be given to me at the instant of our departure.
“We held a council, and, as it occurs in most cases, our first steps
were wrong. It was looked upon as very necessary to get my coat made by
the tailor of an English regiment, but he would want my measure; my
friend Stanislaus took it with fine white paper; and instead of the
notches that the tailors are accustomed to make, he wrote on it,
‘_Length of the forearm, breadth of the breast_,’ &c., in a fine neat
hand, and carried it boldly to the tailor of the regiment of the Guards.
He quickly made the coat, however—not without observing that the measure
had not been taken by a tailor. M. Bresson had been to buy me another
great-coat at an old clothes’ shop, and was naturally obliged to measure
it on himself. He was tall and thin, so that in less than forty-eight
hours I had two coats, neither of which could be of any service to me. I
had no boots, and all our speculations were useless in contriving to
procure me a pair. I was forced to put on a pair belonging to M.
Bresson: they were at least two inches longer than my foot; I could
scarcely walk in them, and we all laughed much at the awkward figure I
cut. On the 9th of January, 1816, at eight o’clock in the evening, I at
last took leave of my kind friends (at the Foreign Office).
“We stopped at the house, in the Rue de Helder, near the Boulevard:
there I took leave of my friend Chassenon. As I walked slowly up the
stairs, I was surprised at meeting Mademoiselle Dubourg. There would
have been too much danger in our appearing to know each other. I
afterwards learned that she was going to M. Dupuis, my Reporting Judge,
who lived on the second floor of the house; so that I was going to pass
the night under the same roof with the magistrate who had, during my
trial, examined me twice at length, and with great severity. This
circumstance, however, by no means troubled me. M. Dupuis was an
honourable man, to whom I had shown no reserve, who was convinced of my
innocence, and did not fear openly to declare it with an energy that
might be hurtful to his fortune.
“When I reached the first floor, I saw before me a gentleman of tall
stature and noble features: it was Sir Robert Wilson. He introduced me
to two persons who were expecting me in the parlour; in one of whom I
recognized Mr. Bruce, whom I had met sometimes the preceding winter at
the Duchess of St. Leu’s, (Queen Hortense). Mr. Hutchinson, to whom the
apartments belonged, was a Captain in the English Guards. He received me
in a friendly manner. We seated ourselves round a bowl of punch. Our
conversation turned on public affairs, and we talked with as much ease
and freedom as if we had been together in London. These gentlemen did
not appear to entertain the least uneasiness in respect to our next
day’s journey; and at last, after sitting for about an hour, Sir Robert
and Mr. Bruce rose, and the former shaking hands with me, said: Be up
to-morrow by six o’clock, and be very careful about your dress. You will
find here the coat of a captain in the Guards, which you must put on. At
eight o’clock, precisely, I shall expect you at the door.” “As for me,”
said Bruce, “I am going to spend three days at the country seat of the
Princess de la Moskowa, for you will not want me any longer. My wishes
go along with you, and I shall receive accounts from you of my friends.”
When they were gone, Mr. Hutchinson offered me his bed; but I had no
desire to sleep, and I laid myself down on a sofa.
“At last, after having counted every hour of the night, I heard six
o’clock strike; I immediately set about my toilet, and at eight o’clock
precisely I found Sir Robert Wilson in the street, dressed in his full
regimentals, and seated in a pretty gig. Mr. Hutchinson soon appeared
also on horseback, and we set off. The weather was beautiful; all the
shops were open, everybody in the street, and, by a singular
coincidence, they were just, at that moment, putting up in the Place de
Grève the gibbet, which, according to custom, is used to execute in
effigy persons declared guilty in contumacy.
“We entered the Rue de Clichy, which leads to the barrier of the same
name. As I had on the regimentals and cap of the Guards, the English
soldiers we met saluted us in the military manner. Two officers we saw
on the road appeared very much surprised at seeing with Sir Robert one
of their comrades with whom they were unacquainted; but Mr. Hutchinson
went up to them and talked to them while we were approaching the
barrier. To the right and to the left were two guard-houses, the one
English and the other French. The soldiers drew up under arms.
Fortunately the French were National Guards, and it was not probable
they could know me, as they did not belong to my quarter of the town. We
crossed the barrier with a slow step; and when we were out, I thanked
Sir Robert with as much gratitude as if we had crossed the barriers of
the kingdom. We went on thus to the village of La Chapelle. There we
were obliged to take another horse, to be able to go to Compiègne. This
horse had been baited at a large inn. When we approached the house, we
perceived four gendarmes standing in front of the large door. Sir Robert
went up to them: they separated that we might pass; and, to prevent them
from paying attention to us, Mr. Hutchinson began a conversation with
them. His inquiries were chiefly directed to the number of stables and
the quantity of forage and lodgings that were to be found in the
village; from all which they concluded that English troops were
expected, and one of them invited the English captain to accompany me to
the Mayor. “Not at present,” he answered; “I am going forward to meet
the waggons, and in two hours I shall be back.” The conversation could
not last long with an Englishman who knew but little of our language.
But the horse was quickly changed, and we had the satisfaction, on going
away, to exchange salutes with the gendarmes. I then learned that the
man who had brought us thus far belonged to M. Auguste de St. Aignan. On
the road we met with several gendarmes in pursuit of malefactors, or
bearing military correspondence. They all fixed their eyes on us without
suspecting anything. I had accustomed myself on seeing them to shut my
eyes, but with the precaution of placing my hand on my pistol, fully
resolved, if I should be recognized and apprehended, to blow my brains
out, for it would have been too great a stupidity to suffer myself to be
brought back to Paris.
“We arrived at last at Compiègne. At the entrance of the suburb stood a
non-commissioned English officer, who, on seeing his general, turned to
the right and marched with gravity through several small streets, until
he stopped at a small house in a very lonely part of the town. There we
found an officer who received us very well, and we waited for Sir
Robert’s carriage, which Mr. Wallis was to bring from Paris with him.
That officer had ordered post horses for General Wallis, brother-in-law
to Sir Robert Wilson, who travelled under his name. Mr. Wallis arrived
about six o’clock, after having been followed a great part of the way by
the gendarmes. We had not an instant to lose: the carriage advanced
rapidly. We experienced a great delay at Condé, in getting through the
town, but it was during the night. At last, next morning, at seven
o’clock, we arrived at Valenciennes, the last French city on that
frontier. I was beginning to feel more easy, when the postmaster told us
to go and have our passports examined by the captain of the gendarmerie.
“You forgot, I suppose to read who we were,” said Sir Robert calmly,
“let the captain come here if he chooses to see us.” The postmaster felt
how wrong he had acted; and taking our passports, he went himself to get
them signed. As it was very long before he came back, I began to be
tormented by a most horrible anxiety. Was I going to be wrecked in the
harbour? Suppose the officer of gendarmes were to come himself to verify
the signatures and to apprehend me? Fortunately, the weather was very
cold, it was scarcely daylight, and the officer signed the passports
without rising from his bed. We got out of the gate. On the glacis an
officer of the preventive service wanted to see whether we were in
order; but having satisfied his curiosity, we went on and stopped no
more. We flew along the beautiful Brussels road. From time to time I
looked through the black window, to see whether we were not pursued. My
impatience augmented at every turn of the wheels. The postilions showed
us at a distance a large house that was the Belgium Custom House. I
fixed my eyes on that edifice, and it seemed to me as if it remained
always equally far off. I imagined that the postilion did not get on. I
was ashamed of my impatience, but it was impossible for me to curb it.
At last we reached the frontier: we were on the Belgian territories; I
was saved! I pressed the hands of Sir Robert, and expressed to him with
a deep emotion, the extent of my gratitude. But he, keeping up his
gravity, only smiled, without answering me. About half an hour
afterwards he turned to me, and said in the most serious tone possible,
“Now, pray tell me, my dear friend, why did you not like to be
guillotined?” I stared at him with astonishment, and made no reply.
“Yes,” he continued, “they say that you had solicited, as a favour, that
you might be shot?” “It is very true. When a man is guillotined, they
put him in a cart, with his hands bound behind his back; and when he is
on the scaffold, they tie him fast to a plank, which they lower to let
it slip thus under the knife.” “Ah, I understand; you did not like to
have _your throat cut like a calf_.”
“We arrived at Mons at about three o’clock in the afternoon, and we
stopped at the best inn. While dinner was preparing, I wrote a few
letters, of which Sir Robert was kind enough to take charge; and after
having gone with me to buy some things I wanted, and having given me two
letters, one for the King of Prussia and the other for Mr. Lamb, the
English resident in Munich, we separated,—he to return to Paris, and I
to go farther into Germany and try to reach Bavaria.”
M. Lavallette, once out of the French territory, crossed a part of
Germany, and entered Bavaria, the king of which country received him
with great cordiality, and protected him against the French ministry,
who insisted upon his being delivered up to them. The ever kind and
hospitable Queen Hortense, Duchess of St. Leu, the mother of Napoleon
III., offered him her house; and her brother, the famous Prince Eugène
de Beauharnais lavished on him all the consolations of friendship.
In 1822, letters of pardon, granted by Louis XVIII., restored Lavallette
to his native country; but, alas! when he arrived in Paris, in the midst
of the congratulations that poured on him from all sides, one voice was
wanting to thoroughly cheer him. From that momentous hour, when, with
such overpowering energy, she had arranged his escape, and remained an
hostage in his place, his wife had not seen him. And now, on his return,
she knew him not. The unfortunate lady had lost her reason from the
violent agitation consequent on saving him, and from her subsequent
lying in when her infant died. M. de Lavallette was overwhelmed at the
sight of her. He wrote to King Louis XVIII.:—“Your Majesty has restored
to me a country and a home I prized more than life; but all your royal
favour can never counter-balance this domestic misfortune.” Lavallette
retired from public life, and lived in complete seclusion, which he only
once left to go to London in 1826, and support Sir Robert Wilson’s
election to Parliament. He repaid his wife by his daily care of her, and
by unceasing and fond attention during the remainder of his existence.
He died in France in 1830: she survived him many years in a hopeless
mental state, and died not long ago. Their only child Josephine who
shared in the escape, was well married, and, I believe, still survives.
To return to the Count’s three rescuers. A letter giving an account of
the escape, written from Paris by Sir Robert Wilson to Earl Grey in
England, was intercepted by the French police, and led to the arrest of
all the three gentlemen, viz.: General Sir Robert Thomas Wilson himself,
Captain John Hely-Hutchinson of the Guards, a member of the family of
the Irish Earls of Donoughmore, and Michael Bruce, Esq., a Scotch
gentlemen, and a scion, I am inclined to think, of the Bruces of
Stenhouse, county Stirling. Their trial, which took place at the assize
court in Paris, on the 22nd April, 1816, created a great sensation and
attracted a very numerous auditory. It commenced at eleven o’clock. The
president was M. Desèze _fils_; and M. Hua, advocate-general, acted as
public prosecutor. The counsel for the British prisoners was the eminent
Dupin, whose death occurred on the 10th of Nov. 1865.
Sir Robert Wilson appeared in grand uniform, decorated with seven or
eight orders of different European states, one of which was the cordon
of the Russian order of St. Anne. Captain Hutchinson wore the uniform of
his military rank. When the accused were called upon to give their names
and qualities, Mr. Bruce said with energy, I am an English citizen. The
President observed, that though relying on their correct knowledge of
the French language, they did not ask for an interpreter, yet the law of
France willed that the accused should not be deprived of any means of
facilitating their justification, even when unclaimed; M. Robert was
accordingly named and sworn to that office. Four other prisoners were,
for aiding in the escape from prison, tried at the same time, viz.:
Eberle and Roquette, gaolers; Bonneville, Lavallette’s valet de chambre;
and a chair-porter, Guérin. The trial commenced by a curious attempt to
make the procedure of France accord with that of England.
_Mr. Bruce_, speaking in French, said, that although he and his
countrymen had submitted to the law of France, they had not lost the
privilege of invoking the law of nations. Its principle was reciprocity;
and as in England French culprits enjoyed the rights of demanding a jury
composed of half foreigners, it appeared to them that the same right, or
favour, could not be refused to them in France. The decision of several
eminent lawyers of their own nation had strengthened them in this
opinion; but the justice which had been already shown them by the
Chamber of Accusation, had determined them to renounce this right, and
they abandoned themselves without reserve to a jury entirely composed of
Frenchmen. That, however, no precedent might be drawn from their case
against such of their countrymen who might hereafter be in the same
situation, they had made special declaration of the purpose of their
renunciation.
_M. Dupin_ moving the court that this declaration might be entered on
the record, the Advocate-General expressed his astonishment at a claim
in France, for an offence committed in France, of the privileges of a
foreign legislature; and opposed entering the declaration. After some
argument on the subject, the court pronounced the following decision:
“Because every offence committed in a territory is an object of its
peculiar jurisdiction, and because the exception demanded by the
prisoners is not allowed by any construction of the criminal code of
France, the court declares that there is no ground for recording, at the
request of the English prisoners, the declaration now made by them; the
court therefore orders the trial to proceed.”
The act of accusation drawn up by the Procureur-General was then read,
which took up more than two hours. The Advocate-General briefly
recapitulated the facts in the charge, distinguishing them as they
applied to the different prisoners; and remarked that the Chamber of
Accusation had already absolved the three Englishmen from the offence of
having conspired against the legitimate government of France. After the
interrogatories of some of the prisoners, the president addressed
himself to Mr. Bruce. To the question of whether it was not to him that
the first overture was made of transporting Lavallette out of France: he
replied, “If possible I would have effected his escape alone; for I
could not refuse a man who had put his life into my hands. I, however,
obtained his consent to confide his secret to one of my friends. I spoke
to one friend, who gave me a message to another. I will not name these
friends.