Englishmen in the French Revolution/Chapter XIII

by John Goldworth Alger

XIII.

Napoleon's Captives.

⁠"I hope I am mistaken, but if I have well understood the French
nation there will be much bloodshed, and a despotism rougher than
that which they flatter themselves on having destroyed."—Washington
to G. Morris, October 1789.

XIII.

NAPOLEON'S CAPTIVES.

Elgin—Yarmouth—Liberations—Refugees—Escapes—Life at
Verdun—Release.

The detentions of 1803 were so much a second edition of those of 1793, that this alone would justify me in regarding the Revolution as lasting till the fall of Napoleon. The sufferers, moreover, were more numerous, though they did not exceed a thousand. The French Government pretended, indeed, that there were eight or ten times as many, but this was to conceal its disappointment at the smallness of the haul. Charles Sturt, ex-M.P. for Bridport, and brother-in-law to Lord Shaftesbury, who was probably well-informed, assures us that the detention of British visitors had been contemplated by Napoleon for six weeks, and that he had ordered returns of their numbers, which were estimated at 7000. Sturt adds that only 700 were entrapped, and that 400 of these were small tradesmen, with a sprinkling of Irish and English refugees. The embargo placed on French shipping in British ports a day prior to the declaration of war was a measure strictly in accordance with precedent—indeed, Napoleon himself ordered a like embargo in Dutch and Italian ports—and the alleged capture of two merchantmen at sea before the declaration was a pure invention, yet these were the pleas on which the French decree was grounded. The pretence of the prisoners being liable to militia duty was so hollow that clergymen, manifestly exempt from such duty, obtained no better treatment than laymen. It would be unprofitable to debate who was to blame for the rupture. Miot de Mélito, a member of Napoleon's Council of State, and assuredly devoid of bias in favour of England, throws the chief blame on his master, and speaks of the detention of British subjects as "a violent measure, unusual even in the bitterest wars." He heard Napoleon before the rupture, at a meeting of the Council to settle the new coinage bearing his effigy, wander off into a tirade against everything English—national character, political institutions, even Shakespere and Milton fell under his lash.^[1]

Napoleon himself, moreover, in conversation with Lord Ebrington at Elba, scarcely affected to defend the detentions. Ebrington urged that the embargo on shipping prior to the declaration of war was sanctioned by precedent, whereupon the Emperor replied—"Yes, you considered it right because it was to your advantage; other nations who lost by it thought it wrong. I am sure that in your hearts you in England approved me for showing force of character. Do you not see I am a bit of a pirate like yourselves?" But although the measure was justified by one at least of Bonaparte's victims, Lord Yarmouth, it was certainly impolitic as well as lawless. I have not, indeed, discovered in the newspapers of the time such an outburst of indignation as might have been expected, but according to the Duke of Buckingham, Napoleon, who till then had had admirers in England, became thoroughly execrated. Some of the captives were studying at universities, others copying at the Louvre, then full of foreign spoils, others in search of health in Southern France. The detention was especially hard for travellers in Switzerland, who could not be aware of the fluctuations of diplomacy. Sir William Coll took flight in time from Geneva, and Miss Berry and Mrs. Damer from Lausanne, thanks to a friendly warning from Lord John Campbell. The two ladies were blamed for not giving the signal to others less favoured. Madame de Stael's confidence that the rumour of arrests was unfounded was near proving calamitous to her English friends at Geneva. One hardly knows whether to regard as an extenuating or an aggravating circumstance the apparent impartiality with which the blow fell alike on friends and foes. Gallophobes and Gallophils.

Even if the detention itself had been justifiable, the trickery by which English visitors were lured into remaining would have been inexcusable. The Argus, a semi-official paper printed in English, commenting on the 10th May 1803 on the hurried departure of British subjects, assured them that they would be much better protected if they remained than they could have been by Lord Whitworth, for France was no longer ruled by a Robespierre or by a system of terror. The local authorities at Brussels, Nimes, and other places, had given assurances that even expulsion was unlikely, and that in any case ample time would be allowed for departure. Talleyrand, too, had told Lord Elgin (of marble celebrity) that he might safely stay in Paris. Elgin was simply passing through France on his way home from the Constantinople Embassy, and had in Italy obtained passports from the French consuls, yet he vainly pleaded diplomatic immunity. Even Lord Whitworth's staff suffered treatment on a parallel with Lord Gower's in 1792. James Talbot was twice stopped and detained some hours on his way to Calais. James Henry Mandeville,^[2] not allowed to embark at Boulogne, returned to Paris. The Embassy chaplain and doctor, Hodgson and Maclaurin, were also refused permission to embark. Talleyrand, who may safely be acquitted of these vexatious measures, had to be appealed to before the entire staff could get away, and Talleyrand himself could do nothing when Lord Hawkesbury expressed surprise and astonishment at so extraordinary and unprecedented a step as the detention of English visitors.^[3]

Lord Elgin, though in precarious health, was conveyed to Lourdes, not yet a resort for pilgrims, and for some time his family were ignorant of what had become of him. In October 1803 a London physician was allowed to see him at Barèges, the result being permission to pass the winter at Paris, where Lady Elgin joined him; but on an incorrect report that General Boyer was imprisoned in Scotland—he was really on parole at Chesterfield—Elgin was ordered to be arrested and sent back to Lourdes. There was an offer to exchange him for Boyer, but the English Government could not "sanction the principle of exchanging persons made prisoners according to the acknowledged laws of war against any of its own subjects who have been detained in France in violation of the law of nations and of the pledged faith of the French Government." Elgin was ultimately allowed to live at Paris, where a son, very short-lived, was born to him in 1805. He was released in 1806, simultaneously with Lord Yarmouth, M.P. for Lisburn, whose case was even harder. He went to fetch his family, inquired at Calais whether he might safely land, and was answered in the affirmative, yet no sooner had he landed than ship, passengers, and crew were declared prisoners. He was interned at Verdun and elsewhere, but as he had been a boon companion of the Prince of Wales, the latter induced Fox to make representations in his favour, and Talleyrand, imagining that he was a favourite with Fox himself, not only liberated him but made him the bearer of overtures for peace. Elgin, Yarmouth, and General Abercromby sailed together from Morlaix in May 1806. Yarmouth was promptly sent back with a response, and Lord Lauderdale followed him, but the negotiations came to nothing. It is said that Napoleon not only had Lauderdale's papers searched by surprise, but sent an order to stop his departure; Fouché, however, intentionally delayed its execution until the bird had flown. Yarmouth, afterwards Marquis of Hertford, is the Lord Monmouth of "Coningsby" and the Lord Steyne of "Vanity Fair." His wife, Maria Fagniani, whose paternity was disputed by George Selwyn and the Duke of Queensberry, left him, according to Lady Hester Stanhope, for a Frenchman, and lived in Paris, but occasionally obtained a passport for England to make arrangements for the children. One of these, Lord Henry Seymour, was not only born but chiefly lived in France, was one of the eighteen members of the English Jockey Club at Paris in 1830, and was very eccentric. At the Carnival of 1834 and 1835 he tried to introduce Italian customs by flinging comfits and coins.

Carnot, as President of the Institute, interceded for several scientists or scholars, and it was fortunate that Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, was not only in correspondence with him but was considered friendly to France. James Forbes, the Orientalist, Montalembert's grandfather, who had just become an F.R.S., thus obtained his liberty. Alexander Hamilton, though not an F.R.S. till 1808, was also released. He was regarded as the only man on the Continent acquainted with Sanscrit, into which he initiated Frederic Schlegel, who in 1802 was on a visit to Paris with his wife, daughter of Moses Mendelssohn. Hamilton catalogued the Sanscrit manuscripts in the Paris library, and to this service doubtless owed his liberation. It was perhaps also as F.R.S. that Lord Shaftesbury, the late philanthropist's uncle, was liberated, or this may have been due to his friendship with Fox, which had procured him permission to remain at Paris. Dr. Charles Maclean, who had gone to Paris to advocate an international institution at Constantinople for the study and treatment of the plague, was released after some demur on proving that he had been ten years out of England. He considered himself fortunate, for though the detention was ostensibly limited to males between sixteen and sixty years of age, passports were refused to women, and to boys of ten or twelve who had no written certificates of their age. John Pinkerton, the geographer, Horace Walpole's friend, had leave to stay in Paris, and in 1805 obtained a passport. During his detention his French publisher sued Maltebrun for plagiarism, but unsuccessfully, for Pinkerton had himself adopted Maltebrun's fifth division of the globe, Oceania. His "Recollections of Paris" are of scant interest, the fear of domiciliary visits having deterred him from keeping a diary. He went back to Paris after the Restoration, and died there in 1826. Robert Hendry, a Glasgow chemist, owed his release to Napoleon's visit in 1806 to the calico factory at Jouy where he was assisting Oberkampf. The latter introduced Hendry to the Emperor, who could not do less than grant him a passport.

Lord Duncannon, afterwards Earl of Bessborough, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1846–47, seems to have been released before November 1805, for he then married. General Sir Charles Shipley, Sir Thomas Hare, and a son of Lady Foster—probably the future diplomatist, Sir Augustus Foster—were likewise liberated. Greathead, the lifeboat inventor, and his wife, to whom Mrs. Siddons had been companion, were also released, and in December 1804 were at Berlin on their way home. Their son, Bertie Greathead, who had married a Frenchwoman, is said to have remained, and to have made such excellent copies of famous pictures that Bonaparte would not allow them to be sent out of France. On the young man's death, however, in 1804 they were forwarded to his father. "Formerly a famous democrat," Greathead, according to Sir George Jackson, had been "cured by his French treatment." Possibly the effect was the same on Stuart Kydd, one of the English radicals prosecuted in 1794, but discharged without trial after three years' detention. Ferguson, a mineralogist and F.R.S., was released in 1804. Sir Elijah Impey, the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, the Dowager Marchioness of Donegal, and Sir John Morshead, were also released. Mrs. Tuthill, a great beauty, managed to present a petition to Napoleon while out hunting, and gallantly obliged him to concede her husband's release. Sir James de Bathe is said to have secured the Pope's good offices by representing that his absence made his children in England in danger of becoming Protestants, and the papal mediation was effectual.

Others got back to England by less straightforward means. Some shammed illness, some broke their parole, the inevitable result being that the French authorities were obdurate towards persons really ill, and were more stringent towards those whose word was their bond. Astley, of circus fame, had leave to go to Piedmont to introduce equestrianism there, but he made his way to London, where his amphitheatre had been burnt down. He, like Pinkerton, was doomed to end his days in Paris, and whereas all biographical dictionaries represent him as a native of Newcastle-under-Lyme, his tomb at Père Lachaise, which ought not to lie, states that he was born at Manchester. A clergyman could not be logically detained as belonging to the militia, yet the Rev. W. H. Churchill, of Colliton, Dorset, was arrested while on a journey to Lyons, and brought back to Paris. Junot disdainfully tore up the certificate which he presented as a title to benefit of clergy, and the officials, Churchill tells us, were most uncivil and insulting to the English, though Frenchmen generally were quite the reverse, and even, as d'Allonville states, facilitated escapes, out of indignation at so unjust a detention. Some of the English in Paris were sent to Fontainebleau, and several who had expressed their feelings too warmly were kept under duress there. In December 1803 those still remaining in Paris were ordered to Verdun. Churchill, refused permission to accompany his invalid brother to England, was threatened with incarceration in the Temple if he did not start for Verdun, and he had to feign illness. A French doctor prescribed for an "ulcerated throat," and in January, not apparently without bribery, he was allowed to leave with his brother.^[4] His fellow-traveller, less fortunate, died a captive a year or two afterwards.

Fanny Burney, albeit marriage with a French general had made her a French subject, cannot be passed over. Law de Lauriston, a collateral descendant of the famous financier, arranged, on his visit to London with the ratification of the treaty of Amiens, that his friend d'Arblay, after serving a year in St. Domingo, should retire from service, but an indiscreet letter to Bonaparte, signifying a resolution never to bear arms against his wife's country, resulted in his being cashiered. D'Arblay, however, resolved to stay a year in France in case Bonaparte's anger should cool down, and in April 1802 he sent for his wife and son to join him. When war broke out their return was impossible. Not till 1812, during the Emperor's absence in Russia, could a passport be procured for mother and child.

Sir Humphrey Davy, however, was not only awarded in 1809 the Institute prize of 60,000 francs for improvements in electricity, but was permitted to pass through France on his way to Italy, and several Englishmen were left unmolested. Sir Herbert Croft, who wrote the life of his friend Young for Dr. Johnson, and who was too late to succour two suicidal poets—Chatterton^[5] in London, and Grainville, Bernardin St. Pierre's cousin, whose "Dernier Homme" is a prose poem, at Amiens—was arrested at Valenciennes, but speedily released, and remained in France from choice till his death. He became acquainted just after his liberation with Lady Mary Hamilton, now a widow, and was her satellite and pensioner for the rest of his life, occupying when not in Paris a cottage near her mansion in the environs of Amiens, for his English vicarage yielded him little if anything. He fancied himself a commentator, and the lady imagined herself a novelist, not only in her native language but in French. Nodier was for two years literary factotum to both, and claims the lion's share in their ostensible productions, not including, perhaps, the verses on the death of the lady's bullfinch, with which Croft responded to the dedication of one of her books. Heedless of political changes, this singular pair died in the same year, 1816, he eighty-five years of age, she seventy-seven. Croft's brother Richard, who succeeded to the baronetcy, was physician to Princess Charlotte, and committed suicide owing to the blame thrown on him for her death.

Richard Chenevix, the chemist and mineralogist, whose uncle or father Malmesbury found at Paris in 1796, and whom he had probably accompanied, seems to have also remained from choice, for as an F.R.S. he could certainly have obtained a passport. He contributed from 1798 to 1808 to the Annales de Chimie, and in 1803 he was awarded the Copley-medal of the Royal Society. He married in 1812 the Comtesse de Ronault, and remained in France till his death in 1830. Anne Plumptre, daughter of a Huntingdonshire clergyman, and a friend of Mrs. Opie, protested that from 1801 to 1805 she was as free as in England, and when desirous of leaving obtained a passport with ease. Quintin Crauford, Talleyrand's whist player, Helen Williams, the printer Stone, and other permanent residents, were also undisturbed. Lewis Goldsmith, not yet acting as Thersites to the French Ajax, was in Paris till 1809, first as editor of the Argus and then as interpreter to the tribunals, though he represents himself as having been long anxious to obtain a passport. Goldsmith, however, was rather a refugee than a captive.

So also was Robert Watson, who had a singular history. Nephew of a Leith doctor, he was secretary to Lord George Gordon, is said to have been implicated in his riots, and became his biographer. In 1796 he was arrested for conspiracy, was two years in Newgate, and was then liberated. A reward of £400, however, was offered for his re-apprehension, and he escaped to France. In October 1798 the Moniteur announced the arrival at Nancy of "Lord Walson (sic), ecossais libre." He went on to Paris and issued an address to the British people, advocating a general rising and the reception of the French as deliverers. Lodging with Bonaparte's forest-keeper, he was introduced to the Consul, and gave him lessons in English, with what success is doubtful, for Napoleon's ability to read English newspapers and reviews at St. Helena is a disputed point. "Watson became president of the Scotch college. At Rome in 1812 he made acquaintance with persons possessing documents respecting the Stuarts and the relations of the Vatican with them. He wrote to Lord Castlereagh, who commissioned him to buy the papers, but the Vatican, having learned their existence, had seized them. Negotiations ended in the Vatican retaining the papers affecting itself and in its giving up the others. Again living in London and falling into poverty, Watson committed suicide at the age of eighty-eight.^[6]

For some years the British Government refused to entertain the idea of exchanging Frenchmen captured in legitimate warfare for the so-called hostages of 1803. In January 1805 there was some prospect of a cartel of exchange, not apparently to apply to this class, but it came to nothing. In April 1810 a British commissioner, Colin Alexander Mackenzie, arrived at Morlaix, and prolonged negotiations ensued. England had reluctantly agreed to an exchange of the hostages as well as of prisoners proper. The Earl of Beverley,^[7] grandfather of the present Duke of Northumberland—the father of fourteen children, one of whom became Bishop of Carlisle—was to be exchanged for a French general, privy councillors and peers' sons for colonels or navy-captains, baronets and knights for military or naval officers of lower rank, untitled gentlemen for captains of the line or navy lieutenants, tradesmen for subalterns, and servants or artisans for soldiers or sailors. It is easy to say that the concession made in 1810 might have been made seven years earlier, but in 1803 there were no French prisoners to be given up in exchange, and the length of the war could not be foreseen. The negotiations of 1810, however, broke down on the question of Hanoverians and Spaniards, and in November Mackenzie returned to England.

This must have been a cruel disappointment. All hope of release before the end of the war was at an end, and on both sides the temptation to breach of parole became very strong. In the autumn of 1812 the Transport Office issued a list of 590 attempted and 270 successful escapes by French officers. The Moniteur retaliated by a catalogue of 355 English escapes, which number, it argued, was proportionately much larger. First on the list stood Sir James Craufurd, consul at Rotterdam in 1788, and Secretary of Legation at Copenhagen in 1796. He might have left Calais in 1803, but chose to wait, and lost the chance. "The arrival of a lady from Paris next day," sarcastically wrote Talbot to Whitworth, "explains the motive of his refusal [to leave], and brings consolation, I trust, to the lovesick prisoner." Lady Craufurd, daughter of General Gage, seems to have been safe in England or Scotland. In October 1804 Craufurd had permission to go to Aix-la-chapelle for two months, but he made his way to England, pleading in excuse his wife's illness and the loss of promotion. Let us hope that his wife thought him sufficiently punished for his attentions to the lady from Paris, especially as gallantry ran in the family, for his cousin Quintin, as we have seen, had the same failing.^[8] Craufurd's fellow-diplomatist, Alexander Cockburn, was more scrupulous as to his parole. Consul at Hamburg, he was detained at Paris in May 1803, but his French Creole wife, Yolande de Vignier, obtained an introduction to Josephine, and thus procured his release. His son, the future Chief Justice, whom we all remember well, was then lying in his cradle. Cockburn became minister to Colombia, and died in 1852, thirteen years after Craufurd.

Brooke, M.P. for Newton, Lancashire, followed the example of escaping. His clever French valet having procured a passport for two merchants, Brooke left a large dinner party at Valenciennes, boldly drove through the town, and reached Cologne. Broughton, a Staffordshire baronet's son, escaped in the guise of a courier. Sir Beaumont Dixie escaped by pretending to be drowned while bathing, but was recaptured. Colonel Annesley, apparently the son and successor of Lord Annesley, who was on his honeymoon in May 1803, got away from Verdun in December 1811. Alexander Don, the future baronet, fled from Paris in February 1810. Philip Champion de Crespigny, brother of the first baronet—he was married at the Danish Embassy, Paris, in 1809, his bride having apparently gone over to share his detention—escaped from St. Germain in May 1811. He lived to be eighty-six, dying in 1851. Dr. Roget (nephew of Sir Samuel Romilly), the future author of the Bridgewater Treatise on Physiology, and of the Thesaurus of Synonyms, escaped in July 1803 from Geneva, his father's birthplace. He lived till 1869, and was just a nonogenarian.

It is but fair to say that the bulk of the 355 defaulters belonged to the mercantile marine, and were not hostages, but regular prisoners. Breach of parole was a rare exception among the aristocratic and professional captives, most of whom were liberated only by death or by Napoleon's fall. Thus the Marquis of Tweeddale died at Verdun in 1804, two months after his wife. Lady Style, widow of Sir Charles Style, and sister of Lord Powerscourt, expired at St. Omer in 1803. Her former detention in 1793 does not seem to have taught her the necessity of hasty flight ten years later. Sir John Coghill died in 1827. James Parry, ex-editor of the Courier, was a confirmed paralytic at Orleans when the rupture occurred, yet though, according to Lewis Goldsmith, he had previously been in the pay of France, neither past services nor physical decay procured him any indulgence. He was ordered to Verdun, and died there in 1805, a victim to lack of proper medical advice, and of money or influence for obtaining permission to go to Paris. James Payne, brother of the Pall Mall bookseller, and an eminent bibliographer, had stayed in Paris to assist in arranging the National Library, was detained, and died in 1809. Benfield, the banker, of whom I have already spoken, died in poverty in Paris in 1810. His youngest daughter later on married Grantley Berkeley. Boyd, Benfield's partner, beguiled his captivity by writing pamphlets on finance, and by arbitrating in a dispute between the French Government and Schweizer, a Swiss kinsman of Lavater. Boyd, styled by Schweizer "a man of great culture and recognised probity," partially retrieved his losses, sat again in Parliament, and died in 1837.

Hingston Tuckey, the navigator, was equally industrious, for he compiled three volumes of a maritime geography. Destined to die two years after his release, while exploring the river Congo, he was not a hostage, but a prisoner legitimately captured in 1805. So also was William Hamilton, a navy lieutenant, who was vice-consul or consul at Boulogne from 1822 to 1873, was knighted on his retirement, and died at Boulogne in 1877, at the age of eighty-eight, probably the last survivor of Napoleon's captives. The tradition in his adopted town is that his jailer's daughter at Verdun assisted him in an unsuccessful attempt to escape, and that he afterwards married her. Henry Grey MacNab, physician to the Duke of Kent, and professor of rhetoric at Glasgow University, likewise made France his home. He obtained leave to reside at Montpellier, pursued his studies in medicine and political economy, was enchanted with Robert Owen's educational theories, and remained in France till his death in 1823. Fraser Frisell, who has been already mentioned, and whose son-in-law is now a municipal councillor for Paris, must have known Lady Webb, wife of Sir Thomas Webb and sister of Lord Dillon, for she, too, was in the Chateaubriand and Récamier "set." Interned with her husband at Lyons, Lady Webb befriended a little English girl named Marianne, who about 1813 was found performing in the streets with a troop of mountebanks. It was supposed that the child had been lost or left behind by her parents when the war recommenced. She was sent to school, apprenticed, and became a nun. Her protectress, Lady Webb, was handsome, rather flighty, and gave balls at Lyons.

Among other hostages seemingly detained till 1814 were Lord de Blaquiere's son, who in 1812 succeeded to the title; Gustavus Hamilton, afterwards Lord Boyne; Lord Boyle, son of the Earl of Glasgow; Henry, son of Sir William Wolseley of Staffordshire,^[9] Sir Thomas Lavie, and Colonel Phillips of the marines, who had accompanied Captain Cook round the world.

The rigour of the detention varied with the temper of the garrison commandants, and also, as must be owned, with the frequency or otherwise of attempts to escape. At Fontainebleau the captives were at first required simply to report themselves once a week and always to sleep in the town, a few days' absence, moreover, being winked at provided Paris was not visited. But subsequently they were forbidden to go more than a league, and had to answer the roll-call thrice a week. In December 1803 all the prisoners at Fontainebleau, Phalsbourg, and Marsal were transferred to Verdun and Charlemont. The presence of the wealthier class was so good for trade in the towns where they were quartered that an English newspaper compared them to a flock of sheep whose fold was occasionally changed in order that the whole field, that is to say France, might be fertilised. Verdun, however, from its inland position, was the town most favoured in this respect. The hundred wealthy hostages indulged in horse-racing, cock-fighting, and amateur theatricals, in which last a Mr. Concanon was the most active, until he obtained permission to live at Vienna. The divorced wife of Lord Cadogan gave entertainments, and there were marriages in an unconsecrated building, the validity of which was disputed by reversioners to property. Some of the hostages got into prison for debt.

Captain Myles Byrne, an Irish refugee in the French service, relates that his Irish legionaries, marching to Boulogne in 1806, should have halted for a night at Verdun, but the commandant of the garrison, apprehensive of a collision, lodged them outside the town, through which they passed next morning before it was light enough for their green flag, inscribed "The Independence of Ireland," to be seen. When, however, the band struck up "Patrick's Day in the Morning," many windows were opened and gentlemen in their night-shirts peeped out, bewildered at hearing a Hibernian air. "The prisoners," Byrne says, "could ramble freely all day, but had to answer the roll-call at sunset." When his regiment stopped a night at Arras, the commandant deemed it prudent to make the English captives sleep for once in the citadel.^[10] At Bitche some of them cut their names indelibly on the outer walls of the barrack, and a recent visitor has noticed well-known British patronymics.^[11] Verdun, it should be mentioned, contained in 1804 700 Englishmen, 400 of them hostages, the rest soldiers and sailors, but by the end of 1805 only 150 hostages remained. They had two clubs, and in 1807 invited the townspeople to a masked ball. Some of the captives, as well civilians as soldiers, were without means, and had to be assisted by their comrades. At Valenciennes, Lord Barrington gave a good meal once a day at his house to his poor countrymen, and Lord Elgin subscribed 100 guineas to a fund for their relief. In 1807 the Birmingham Quakers started a subscription, and in 1811 London followed suit, but this was mainly, if not exclusively, for the prisoners proper. General Lord Blayney, captured in an engagement in Spain, was also commissioned to watch over their interests, and he travelled about France for this purpose.^[12]

Sturt, at first confined in the Temple, escaped from Meaux in 1810, and published in London his "Real State of France," which exposed the rapacity of General Wirion, commandant of Verdun. This pork-butcher's son levied blackmail on all indulgences, pleasures, and even vices. James Henry Lawrence,^[13] a Knight of Malta, who also escaped, and in the same year published anonymously a "Picture of Verdun," gave full particulars of Wirion's shameless extortions. Permission even to walk out of the town was tariffed, much more permission to live in a villa outside. Wirion would coolly ask himself to dinner with his wealthy prisoners. A Dr. Madan also made a handsome profit by certifying to the indisposition of sluggards who shirked answering the early morning roll-call. The captives were a motley band. Some had gone to France to retrench, some to educate their children, a few to study the artistic plunder at the Louvre, others to avoid their creditors or engage in smuggling, others again to establish manufactories. There was no little gambling, on which Wirion levied his commission, but as a set-off there were subscription schools for young sailors and children, and other forms of beneficence. Lawrence speaks of the brutality of his gaolers. A navy lieutenant, Leviscourt, after being on parole in the town for several years, was confined in the citadel. Thus relieved from his parole, he attempted to escape, but was recaptured, threatened with death, and by sentence of court-martial was dragged by gendarmes through the streets, a heavy cannon-ball chained to his leg. Lawrence while in captivity wrote a drama entitled The Englishman at Verdun, or the Prisoner of Peace, and after his escape he published it. He acknowledges that at Nimes the captives were well treated.^[14]

Until 1810 the captives were posted up in home news by the Argus, the English newspaper in Paris started by Goldsmith and continued by Button. Its leading articles were virulently anti-British, but it reprinted military dispatches and parliamentary debates from the London journals, and it did not always satisfy Napoleon, who in 1807 sent orders to Fouché to have it better conducted. Its articles were attributed to Bodini, who in 1796 edited Bell's Messenger, was addicted to drink and extravagance, was expelled under the Alien Act, and going to France, was reader of English newspapers for Bonaparte. The Argus must have been a considerable expense to the French Government, and its original purpose of circulating in England had never been realised. Its disappearance must, however, have been felt as a privation by the captives, whose family correspondence underwent the scrutiny of a French official, Lenoir.^[15] Visits to England, at least by ladies, were occasionally allowed. Mrs. Mary Bishop, a widow with four daughters, obtained a passport to England and back in 1813, on the plea of securing an inheritance, and according to her petition to Louis XVIII. after the Restoration, she was entrusted with a mission by royalists who afterwards ignored her claims to gratitude. Such visits were made viâ Morlaix and Plymouth. Savary, Napoleon's Minister of Police, boasts in his Memoirs not only of procuring the escape of French prisoners from England and of keeping spies there, but of permitting occasional visits in order thereby to fathom Bourbon intrigues.

The retreat from Moscow gave the captives the first tangible prospect of deliverance, yet for a time it aggravated their position. In January 1814 those interned at Verdun were ordered to Blois, as also those in Paris, but very few of the latter obtaining exemption. At Blois they were ordered on to Guéret. There news arrived of Napoleon's abdication, and they were released. Some of them left debts behind them which they apparently regarded as "spoiling the Egyptians," for in 1839 a deputation from Verdun had an audience of Lord Palmerston to solicit repayment of £140,000 due by the former captives. The creditors, it seems, had waited till 1837, or had made representations to the individual debtors, but from that date the French Government had urged their claim to repayment by the British Treasury. The deputation stated that the number of prisoners at Verdun was never below 1200 and frequently rose to 2000, that many of them held high rank the army or in society, that credit and loans were given them from feelings of humanity, and that vouchers could be produced before a mixed commission. They suggested that the sum could be repaid out of the surplus of £9,000,000 remaining from the £60,000,000 paid by France to indemnify British sufferers, and they urged that French prisoners in England had been released conditionally on the discharge of their debts. The treaty of peace, indeed, required prisoners of war to pay their debts, but the English prisoners mostly quitted France without waiting for formal release or for the conclusion of peace. The deputation apparently effected nothing. It was obviously difficult for the English Government to create a precedent by liquidating private debts, and the Verdun creditors had to whistle for their money.

Paris was again flooded with English in the spring of 1815, but when Napoleon's arrival became imminent there was a perfect stampede. One of his first questions was whether there were many English. On being told that nearly all had left, he replied, " Ah, they recollect what I did before, but such things are not repeated." Their alarm, however, was very natural, and their flight the plainest dictate of prudence. He might not have laid hands on them before Waterloo, but had he returned a victor, who could have trusted to his moderation?

1. "Mémoires de Miot de Mélito," 1858.
2. Afterwards Minister to the Argentine Republic; born 1773, died 1861.
3. "England and Napoleon in 1803."
4. "Journal of Mary Frampton," 1884.
5. Croft sent Chatterton's sister £10 for the loan of the poet's MSS., but published them without her sanction. Southey held him up to odium for this breach of trust, and a handsome subscription was raised for the sister.
6. See inquest in the Times, November 22–23, 1838.
7. Returning from Italy with his wife and daughters, he had been detained.
8. Shortly before Quintin Craufurd's death at Paris in 1819 his wife was prosecuted for defamation by Sir James, for relating in drawing-rooms that he had forced Quintin, pistol in hand, to settle £48,000 a year on him. The suit was dismissed. Quintin's servants afterwards prosecuted Sir James for defamation, apparently at their mistress's instigation.
9. His brother Charles escaped from Spa; he was the "legislatorial attorney" of Birmingham in 1832.
10. "Memoirs of Myles Byrne," Paris, 1863.
11. Mr. Childers, in Nineteenth Century, May 1888.
12. "Narrative of a Forced Journey through France," 1810–14.
13. He had published books in German at Weimar and Berlin in 1793 and 1801, one of them a women's rights or rather anti-marriage novel, the "Empire of the Nairs," reprinted in London 1811.
14. See his "Picture of Verdun."
15. According to Sturt, 4000 letters were detained for years at the French post-office.