some as a Scotchman, by others as an Irishman,[1] but there is no proof that he was ever on this side of the Channel. He may have been the son of a Captain Whyte of Clare's Irish-French Regiment, whose two daughters were on the pension list. He entered the Bastille in 1784, but had previously, probably for a quarter of a century, been at Vincennes, and at the time of this transfer was insane. In August 1788 he had refused to listen to two lawyers who called on him with papers to sign, and in the following February the governor, to whom papers in his writing had been handed, interrogated him and found him still insane. He is said when released to have styled himself "majeur de l'immensité," and to have inquired for Louis XV. The Duke of Dorset styles him Major Whyte, adding that he had been confined for more than thirty years, and that when released he was questioned by some English gentlemen who happened to be near, but the unhappy man seemed to have nearly lost the use of his intellect, and could express himself but very ill:—
"His beard was at least a yard long. What is very extraordinary, he did not know that the Bastille was the place of his confinement, but thought he had been shut up at St. Lazare; nor did he appear to be sensible of his good fortune in being released. He
- ↑ Charpentier's "Bastille Devoilée" gives this as a supposition, based on his speaking English well.
