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, 300not 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’?le 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. 301one 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, 302when 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.
303the 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’entra?nait 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 h?tel 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 304in 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’?il 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 305an 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 306unapproachable, 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 c?ur 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 307will 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, 308aged 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, fran?ois 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; fran?ois 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 309paid 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 310as 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 311by 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.
312longing 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 313his claiming the difference, ‘me répondit fort insolemment que le papier anglais valait autant que l’or fran?ais, 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 fran?ais 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 blamant 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 314veiland, 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 315a 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.
