Englishmen in the French Revolution/Appendix A
This letter, dated January 3, 1795, and received in London February 23, 1795, is confirmed, as to the noisomeness of the Conciergerie and the light-heartedness or apathy of the inmates, by Beugnot and other French prisoners:—
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité ou la Mort.
Paris, 14 Nivose, 3 année Républicaine.
You may. think, perhaps, that you have lived long enough to know how to date a letter, but I can show you that the wisest may learn.
You may also learn that I am all alive again; how that comes about I am at a loss to tell you, unless you have faith in predestination; and, after all, that is the best way of accounting for it, that my time was not come; otherwise I presume I should have accompanied many of my companions. However, all is well that ends well; but would it were ended! For though I have escaped one great storm, the weather still seems inclined to be squally. To finish a history of fifteen months would be rather a bore, and would carry me beyond the limits of my paper; therefore, if you please, we will abridge it as much as possible.
To begin, then, I was arrested because I was born in one kingdom instead of in another; and also it was taken much amiss that my countrymen should accept of a town that was very kindly offered to them.
As I was above two hundred leagues distant from the town in question, and that I had not been consulted whether the offer should have been accepted or refused, I thought they might as well have found some other person to have punished instead of me. However, I was conducted to a high tower upon the sea-shore built by William the Conqueror. I was there placed in a room where there was, sure enough, no glass to the windows, but that deficiency was made up by the number of bars. What added to the agreeableness of the séjour was, that it happened to be exactly at the equinox, so I could not complain for the want of air. After a few days' residence there, an officer came into my room and told me he was ordered to accompany me to my house (which was about a mile from the tower), in order for me to be present at the examination of my papers. I accordingly followed him, and when I got into the street I was surprised to find guards to escort me sufficient in number to have defended the castle had it been besieged by an enemy. In this stately manner I was conducted to my house and back again.
After a few days I was informed they had found nothing among my papers but family matters and an innocent correspondence. However, they were sent to the National Deputy, who was then at Rennes, who put a different construction upon my correspondence; and he ordered me to be conducted thither. I was then thrown into a prison more disagreeable in every respect than that which I had quitted. After a few days there arrived a person from St. Malo's with a petition in my favour, and signed also by the Municipality of St. Servan. The person who brought it got a reputable woman to present it to the Deputy. She had no sooner done it than he began abusing her in a most indecent manner, and threatened to send her to prison. She defended herself by saying she was not acquainted with the contents of the letter, and that it was left at her house by a person who did not leave his name. "I wish," says he, "I could find him out; I would commit him directly; and as for the Municipality, I will break them," says he, "as soon as I return thither, for he is a conspirator, and I have the proof in my hands," holding up a paper. When I found how the land lay, I desired to be heard, but that was refused me, and in a few days after I had a visit from a Commissary of War, together with a national one, who signified to me that I must prepare to set off for Paris, they having received orders to conduct me thither. At eleven o'clock at night there came a guard and conducted me to the Diligence, where I was chained like an assassin to two other unfortunate people, and after travelling night and day during four days and a half, we arrived at Paris, where the Commissary of War got out of the coach, thinking it beneath his dignity to be seen upon such an errand; and sure enough it was very unusual to send such a conductor upon such an occasion. But Carrier had swelled up my importance by calling me a milord, and ci-devant this and ci-devant t'other; and in order to keep up the ball he occasioned me to be accompanied in an extraordinary manner, that he might gain the more credit to himself.[1] Our two other conductors conveyed us to the fatal Conciergerie. The entrance therein (at that period) and death were nearly synonymous. From the compliments we met with upon the road, I never thought we should have got so far, or that we should have lived to have died honourable deaths. Our conductors never attempted to quell the populace except when they cried out, "Rascals and conspirators;" they then answered that there was but one.
However, after so long and fatiguing a journey I comforted myself with the hope of one good night's rest, but was sadly disappointed when the concierge told us there was no private room vacant, and that we must sleep in the straw-room; but, added he, "take care of your pocket-book and watches, for you will be among a den of thieves, who will rob you of all you have." With such consolation we entered into the prison court, where there were some hundreds of unfortunate people of all denominations. Being tired and hungry, we employed a commissary of the prison to get us something to eat. When it came we were obliged to make use of a low parapet wall for a table (as the straw-rooms are kept shut during the day, and those that inhabit them are obliged to stay in the open air all the day long, be the weather what it may). The people in the court took compassion upon us and lent us knives and forks, and informed us, also, that by applying to the superior turnkey in a prevailing manner we might possibly obtain a place in a room. That business was presently undertaken, and two of us procured the seventeenth part of a small apartment. The beds were placed so near together that one was obliged to get in at the feet; and though we paid for them apart, I was three weeks before I could get any sheets; and when at length I had them, I could with great facility have crept through them. But the room being very small, and the ceiling so very low, and so many persons stove in so narrow a compass, the air was so bad we could none of us sleep, at least not for more than an hour, often less, and sometimes not at all. As we were locked up every evening about five o'clock, and the door not opened till near ten the next morning, a tub was placed in the room. . . . We had in the room with us a tolerably good physician, who advised us to burn incense, &c., every night before we went to bed, in order to purify the air, and to take a mouthful of brandy every morning as soon as we got up, as a preventive against infection. We all of us rose in a morning with a great dryness in the throat or something of a soreness. At twelve o'clock every night we used to be visited by three or four turnkeys, with as many great dogs. With large staves they used to thump against the ceiling, open the windows, and with an iron hammer beat against the bars to see that all was safe and sound. Another visit we were also subject to that was still more unpleasant, though it came but seldom. When we used to hear the jingling of the keys upon our staircase in the evening, we were sure it was to summons some one of us to appear the next morning at the fatal tribunal. As soon as the door opened, each was apprehensive of the lot falling upon himself. The taking leave the next morning of the unfortunate person before he went to take his trial, with so little hopes of ever seeing him again, was another melancholy proceeding.
Four months I passed in this pleasing abode, having seen half my room companions quit me to take their final leave; and the half of that half have since shared the same fate. One day with another we used to reckon on five condemnations, and esteemed that sufficiently severe for those times, notwithstanding how much they had since increased upon that number.
Towards the latter part of my séjour we had thrown in amongst us upwards of a hundred prisoners from Nantes, most of them opulent people, and some among them of a great age. They had travelled in a severe season for forty days together, and had been most miserably fed and lodged on their journey; twenty-five died upon the road; as many were put into the infirmary of the prison upon their arrival; the rest were put in the straw-rooms; for there was then no other vacancy, our numbers amounting at that time to about 650. But notwithstanding the precaution of placing the most unhealthy of them apart, still the disorder they brought with them was so violent and so infectious that it began to spread in the prison. As I preferred the chance of a short death to a lingering one, I made what interest I could to bring on my trial, contrary indeed to the advice of my counsel, who would have had me wait for the chance of more lenient measures. I, however, succeeded in my attempt. But before one appears at the tribunal one's accusation and papers are laid before a council of judges, and they determine whether or no there are sufficient grounds for accusation; and luckily for me, they determined that there were not.[2] By that means I escaped the severity of that fatal court.
Though guiltless, still as a subject of Great Britain I was doomed to confinement; but by the assistance of some friends I got to be transferred to a Maison de Santé[3] instead of to another prison. A servant who waited upon us and my hairdresser were both taken ill of the Nantes fever the day I left the place, and died a few days after. I had begun to droop the few last days; but it was amazing the instantaneous effect that the change of air had upon me, like a fish that had been out of water for some time and thrown into it again. In less than two hours I felt quite a different person. I dined with some friend by the indulgence of my conductor, and ate with a very good appetite, which had quite failed me latterly. Awful as that abode was, you would scarcely believe, perhaps, that I have not been so cheerful since as I was there, nor have I since seen so many cheerful people. One would think that nature had formed one's nerves according to the different situations that they may be exposed to. On se fait à tout, and one may accustom oneself to bad fortune as one does to good.
We used frequently to breakfast and dine at each other's room, which time generally passed in mirth. Most of us thought we had but a short time allotted to us, and that it was better to enjoy that little as much as we could. I do not recollect, among the hundreds that I both saw and spoke to after their condemnation, that one single one of them, except Madame du Barri, showed any softness upon the occasion; and several seemed as cheerful as if nothing had happened to them.
After I had remained a few months at my new abode, where we were comfortable enough, things took another turn, and without beat of drum we were all conveyed in a hurry to another prison,[4] where we had not been long before we were visited by a part of the Municipality of Paris, attended by a numerous guard, and all ordered to our rooms, with sentinels placed at our doors to prevent our going out. Each of us was visited by a municipal and his attendants, who as soon as they came into the room told us with a threat to deliver all our money, knives, forks, scissors, &c., &c., and that whoever hid the least matter demanded should immediately be sent to the Conciergerie. I was in a very small room and alone, and yet they passed above an hour with me, to the amazement of my neighbours. They examined my trunks and my drawers a second time, to see if there were not false bottoms to them; they were mean enough to stoop to take the buckles out of one's shoes. This visit was soon followed by another, to examine if our garden was not convenient to make a burying-ground of. Though no small one, they did not find it big enough. They afterwards went to another prison, a few doors from us, where they found a part of the garden would suit them, and where they occasioned to be dug a great hole, in which in a very few days they stove in two thousand two hundred corpses, and afterwards proceeded to make another hole of the kind, which they palisaded round, and was in a field opposite our prison. Having been tried by the council and acquitted, I concluded I had been out of harm's way; but from the above proceedings and unpleasant reports that went about, we concluded we were all of us destined for the other world. But very luckily for us, Robespierre and many of his party were overthrown on the 9th, and they had fixed on the 9th for a general massacre in the prisons.
"Thus! thus! and no nearer!" say the seamen. After that event there was a general cry in favour of the prisoners, and many were daily set at liberty; by which means my habitation became so thinned of its inhabitants that they transferred us to another prison; but they forgot me in the scramble, and I remained there alone for some time, having the whole house to range in, and thirty men, who used to mount guard night and day, to watch my person. At length they found they had left me by myself, and that it was not absolutely necessary to harass such a number of men to guard a single harmless prisoner. They ordered me to follow my companions to the Luxembourg,[5] where I found G. O'Hara and his suite, Temple Lutterill, and Swale. There were there many other English, but most of them of an inferior class.
As the decree for the arrest of the English had not been repealed, I saw but little chance of obtaining my liberty before a peace. However, it at length came by accident, and when I the least expected it. A friend of mine applied to a printer of his acquaintance to demand me as his journeyman. By that means, together with a little interest of friends, I slipped my neck out of the collar, after having remained near fifteen months in prison.[6]
I shall remain here during the winter, and perhaps for a longer term, as this place, all things considered, is the best to reside in as long as the war lasts.
I take the same opportunity of sending you this as the inhabitant of Davies Street took when she wrote to me in the beginning of last June, which I received but a few days since, the person to whom it was directed not daring to deliver it, or even to inquire after me, such was the severity of those times.
As this epistle, or rather narrative, is already too long, I shall not add to the length of it, especially as I think there is a degree of uncertainty of its ever reaching you. But that my packet may risk the less, I have confined my correspondence to females only, notwithstanding it is said that there never was a plot but that there was a woman in it. If such be their ideas in this country, I shall have taken some pains and have used much ink and paper for nothing, and had better have confined myself by merely saying, "If you are well, I am well, &c., &c. I am so, and hope you are so; so adieu!"—Affectionately yoursSalut et fraternité. Pray remember me to all the family.
- ↑ "Lord Codrington is in the prison of Rennes. Papers which I think very interesting have been seized upon him. I shall soon send him to the Revolutionary Tribunal." (Carrier's letter to the Convention, September 25, 1793.)
- ↑ January 18, 1794.
- ↑ Kept by Mahay, Rue du Chemin Vert. Removed thither February 2, 1794.
- ↑ Prison Coignard, May 3, 1794.
- ↑ November 25, 1794.
- ↑ December 2, 1794.