IV CAPTIVITY (continued 2)

Englishwomen, sometimes accompanied by little children, having obtained leave from both Governments, mostly in order to rejoin captive husbands, continued to land at Morlaix up to 1813. Thus Mrs. Dorothy Silburn, who had liberally befriended French émigré priests in England, was authorised in 1807 to settle at Roscoff, where she spent the remainder of her life, her tomb being still prominent in the old churchyard. The Countess Bruce, separated wife of Puschkin—he made in 1810 curious experiments in galvanism, as it was then called—went from Venice to Paris in 1811 to solicit the pardon of a negro servant who had been condemned to death for the murder of a female servant, whereas the two domestics had agreed to die together because they could not legally marry. He accordingly shot her, and wounded, but failed to kill, himself. Among the arrivals was also the notorious Lady Craven, Margravine of Anspach. This fair but frail lady, who had sat to Reynolds and Romney, had visited the Austrian and Russian Courts, had immediately on becoming a widow married the Margrave, a nephew of Frederick II., and had lived with him at Hammersmith, but had been cold-shouldered by London society and even by her own daughters. She had paid a short visit to Paris in 1802, and she went again in 1807 to take possession of her second husband’s property. We hear little more of her till her death at Naples in 1828, where she had settled in 1805, being joined by one of her sons, Keppel Craven, of whom we have already heard.[233] Another restless woman, wife of Colonel Henry (brother of Viscount) Dillon, arrived in Paris in 1808, ostensibly to join her husband but really to bring over letters from royalist exiles, perhaps also to meet her lover, Latour du Pin. She was arrested, and her husband disowned her. In 1810 he notified the police that she had taken her children from Bordeaux and gone with them without his knowledge to England, where he feared she would divulge his offer to join the French army. Sir Robert Adair’s French wife in 1808 obtained leave to remove from Vienna to Rheims, in order to bring up her daughters by her former marriage.

The celebrated Pamela, widow of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, was allowed in 1810 to come to Paris, Napoleon directing Fouché to ‘pump’ her on English and Irish affairs,[234] as also probably on Count Stahremberg, Austrian Ambassador at London, her reputed lover, for she had quitted her second husband Pitcairn, American Consul at Hamburg. Her daughter by the latter, who survived till a few years ago, seems to have been left behind, either in Germany or in England.

Julia Sayers, who had been a visitor in 1802, was allowed in 1805 to come over and marry Pougens, the blind author,[235] natural son of the Prince de Conti, to whom she had been introduced in London in 1786. His fortune had disappeared in the Revolution, and he had turned bookseller. She was a niece of Admiral Boscawen and of the Duchess of Beaufort.

Wives were sometimes, however, refused permission to come over and join their captive husbands. Margaret Stuart, who in 1806 had married Hingston Tuckey, both having been captured at sea, on returning in 1810 from a visit to England was unceremoniously shipped back. Sir Thomas Lavie, stranded on the French coast in 1806, was refused his wife’s company, whereupon England forbade the wives of French prisoners to land in England. This retaliation apparently brought the French to reason, for as late as January 1813—so little was Napoleon’s fall foreseen—Englishwomen landed at Morlaix.[236]

Nor did women always escape imprisonment. A Mrs. Moore was arrested in 1810 on the charge of facilitating her husband’s escape from Bitche. She was, however, soon released. Again in 1812 an Englishwoman named Taylor, living at Rouen, returning to Morlaix after a visit to England, met at the inn three sailors who had just been liberated from British pontoons. ‘Ah,’ said she, ‘you only come from one prison to enter another. You will be forced to serve in the French navy, and will be no better off than in English prisons. You will never be better off till Bonaparte’—here she made a gesture indicating the guillotine. On being arrested for this imprudent speech she at first denied everything, but on being confronted with the sailors admitted all except the remark on Bonaparte. She was ordered to be sent back to England.[237]

The banker Coutts wrote in 1810 to Lafayette, asking him to obtain passports for the south of France for his invalid daughter, Lady Bute, her husband[238] and two children, a doctor and two servants. Lafayette, in endorsing the application, stated that Coutts was banker (he should have said son-in-law) to Burdett, who had rendered service to the French prisoners. Lady Bute and her sister had been educated in Paris previously to the Revolution by Madame Daubenton. Lord Bute died at Geneva in November 1814, and his remains were conveyed to England. Coutts also obtained permission for another son-in-law, Lord Guilford, to revisit France, but Guilford died before being able to profit by it. He had long suffered from injury to the spine, occasioned by a fall from his horse in the act of presenting a basket of fruit to his future wife. His brother, who succeeded to the title, established himself at Corfu during the Greek struggle for independence, and was attired like a Greek professor.

J. Cleaver Bankes was allowed, on the recommendation of Benjamin Constant, to come and examine Sanscrit manuscripts at the National Library. In 1813 Sir Humphry Davy and his wife, with his secretary young Faraday, passed through Paris on their way to Italy. They visited the laboratory of Chevreul (not the future centenarian) at the Jardin des Plantes, and at Malmaison were shown by Josephine books and extracts relating to Cromwell, marked in pencil by Napoleon. The institute had in 1809 awarded Davy the £60,000 prize for electrical improvements.

Mrs. Bathurst and her brother, George Call, were allowed to pass through France in 1810, on their search for her husband. Call on his way back solicited an audience of Napoleon,[239] whose portrait adorned his snuff-box, a request which shows that he had not the slightest idea of accusing Napoleon. His belief, indeed, and that of the widow, was that Bathurst had been wrecked in the Baltic.[240] Colonel Macleod of Colbeck, uncle of Lord Moira, after being liberated, actually in 1810 asked leave to settle in France. He was described by the police bulletin as honest but weak-minded, and as having incurred unpleasantness in Scotland by his liking for France and his advocacy of peace.

Shirley, a Jamaica planter, was also allowed in 1806 to settle in the south, and Colonel Vesey, on the recommendation of the King of Prussia, was permitted to go to Barèges on account of his wound. The British blockade of course barred the way by sea. The Marquis of Douglas in 1808 was allowed to pass through France on his way home from Russia, his health being unequal to a sea passage. Talleyrand had recommended him as favourable to France. Father Gordon in 1810 solicited leave to return to Paris to urge his reinstatement as head of the Scots College. He apparently did not know that that institution had been fused with the Irish College, where Walsh had, it seems, been reinstated, for in 1807 Walsh had asked permission for some students to come over from Ireland. Walsh himself, however, along with other Irish priests, was not allowed by the British Government to return in 1811 to Ireland, such journeys to and fro being considered suspicious. Five quasi-Britons—Admiral Alexis Greig, born in Russia of Scottish parents; Admiral Robert Elphinstone, a native of Plymouth; Captain Thomas Candler, of Dublin; Moffat, of Dalkeith; and William Crowe—all in the Russian navy, were authorised in 1808 to pass through France on their way back from Lisbon.

Turning to involuntary visitors, precedence is due to Lord Blayney, who, sent with troops to Malaga in 1810, imprudently allowed himself to be captured by the French immediately on landing. His book gives an interesting account of his journey across Spain and France to Verdun. He was treated with great respect, and in Spain could hunt and make excursions without restriction. He does not tell us much, however, of life at Verdun, where he passed three years. In 1812 England offered to exchange for him General Simon, who had been wounded and required mineral waters, but Napoleon apparently did not consider him equal in rank to Blayney, although assured by General Clarke that the latter had not held a high military post.[241] Another general captured in Spain was Sir Edward Paget, who had previously lost his right arm in battle, but was able, after about three years’ detention, to resume active service. He had in 1806 resigned his seat for Carnarvon. Lord John Murray seems likewise to have been captured in Spain. Sir Thomas Lavie, as already mentioned, who was wrecked on the French coast, was for some months confined in the citadel of Montmédy and debarred writing materials. He was very kind to his fellow-captives at Verdun, and was allowed to go to Melun. Governor of the Royal Naval Asylum, he died in 1821.

Roger Langton, captured at sea in 1808, made an unsuccessful attempt to escape, and remained at Verdun till 1814.[242] Aytoun, an Edinburgh man, captured in an Austrian vessel in 1806 and sent to Verdun, was probably a kinsman—perhaps Richard the father—of William Edmonstoune Aytoun, the champion of Mary Stuart.

Another involuntary visitor was Captain Donat Henchy O’Brien, of the Hussars, who was wrecked off Brest in February 1804, and was sent first to Bitche and ultimately to Verdun. Two unsuccessful attempts to escape—the first time he was recaptured at Étaples, and the second, after crouching among a drove of oxen to pass the Rhine, he was given up by the German authorities at Lindau—entailed incarceration in filthy and stifling casemates, but in a third attempt in 1808 he reached the Austrian frontier and was able to resume service. He published a full account of his adventures,[243] which was reprinted in 1902. Another sailor, Miller, captured in 1804 in the man-of-war Wolverine, escaped in 1811, and published an anonymous narrative. Moir, a naval surgeon captured at sea, was joined by his wife, who in 1808 gave birth to a son, destined to become the ‘father’ of the Royal College of Physicians, and to reach the age of ninety-one. That son, John Moir, a prominent Free Churchman, remembered being taken in his mother’s arms or by her hand when she waited on Napoleon to entreat her husband’s liberation, but we are not told whether she was successful. Moir on regaining his liberty settled in Edinburgh. Francis Milman, brother of the future Dean, was captured in Spain, and detained at Verdun till January 1814,[244] when Jenner obtained his release. Edward Boyse, midshipman of the Phœbe, was captured in July 1803 in a boat off Toulon, and conducted first to Verdun and then to Valenciennes; but with two comrades he escaped from the latter fortress.[245]

Clandestine visitors were naturally suspected of being spies.[246] Thus the son of Dickinson, the artist, ex-secretary to the Ottoman Embassy in London, entered France under the name of Lambert in 1805, apparently in order to join his father in Paris; but he had given up painting and had been in the employ of the British Government. He proved that he had come to see a Madame Gourbillon, of whom he had been enamoured in London, but the authorities suspected that he might occupy his leisure in sending reports to England, and he was consequently despatched to Verdun,[247] albeit his sister was companion to Madame Talleyrand. But he must have been liberated, for we hear of another visit in 1810.

Thomas Graham, arrested at Pepignan in 1810, had entered France from Spain, but having a mission to General Clarke and Arthur O’Connor he was released. William Hayne, lace-maker of Nottingham, and having an extensive continental trade, was arrested in Paris in 1807, having a stock of lace in his possession. What was done with this venturesome trader is not stated. Nathaniel Parker Forth, a diplomatic emissary, the satellite of the Duke of Orleans who procured Pamela for Madame de Genlis, was reported to be in Paris in 1805, and was ordered to be watched;[248] but if such ‘a consummate intriguer’ had really been there he would certainly have been arrested and expelled. James Mathews, another diplomatic interloper, who had been arrested in Paris in 1793, landed at Havre without a passport in 1807 and vainly tried to pass for an American. The notorious swindler, Lisle Semple, was also reported to have been seen in Paris in 1805, yet this too is unconfirmed. He had been expelled as a spy in 1802.

There was even a report in Paris in 1805 that six English officers had come over to witness the coronation, but this seems highly improbable.

Napoleon’s long arm reached not only to Hamburg but to Italy. In 1806 all Englishmen found there were ordered to be arrested, and Graham, consequently apprehended at Venice, was sent to Valenciennes. Edward Dodwell, living at Rome, had to apply for leave to visit England in order to publish a work on Greece. John Wilson, a native of Liverpool, residing in Italy, was authorised in 1810, on account of his health, to live at Geneva. He afterwards asked permission to become partner in a firm at Bordeaux.[249] The Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry, would probably have been arrested, as he had been in 1798, had he not died at Albano on the 8th July 1803, before Napoleon had had time to look so far afield for his prey.

Sir George Rumbold, British Minister at Hamburg and son of Warren Hastings’ opponent at Calcutta, was seized by order of Napoleon in 1804. It is believed by the Rumbold family that this was instigated by the famous Pamela, Lady Edward Fitzgerald, who was then at Hamburg and in league with the Irish exiles there, to whom Rumbold’s vigilant observation was very irksome.[250] If so, she was guilty of treachery, for she had been very intimate with him.

Rumbold lived in a neighbouring village, going twice a week into Hamburg on mail days. A hundred soldiers under Major Maison landed at night on the coast, and ten or twelve of them drove in two carriages to the spot to surround the house and prevent any alarm. A sentinel was placed in front of every door and window. On the arrival of the rest of the detachment, a German civilian knocked at the door and stated that he had brought despatches. A servant bade him deliver them at the window, but the door was forced open and Rumbold was arrested in his bed. He expected nothing less than to be shot, as the Duc d’Enghien had been six months before, but Maison assured him that his life was safe. All his papers were seized, and these were expected to implicate the British Government in plots to assassinate Napoleon, an expectation, however, which was not realised. The Prince Regent, moreover, according to a police bulletin of 1805, referring to such plots, had said, ‘Let us meet Bonaparte like men, not like assassins.’[251] Rumbold, on being taken to Paris, was induced on the promise of the restitution of his papers to sign an engagement never to approach on non-British territory within a hundred miles of any post occupied by French troops. In Paris, if we may credit a police report, his terror revived. He asked for time to pray and to write to his family, adding that for eighteen months he had been disgusted with politics, and but for his children’s interests would have thrown up his appointment. He passed ten days in the Temple, and here is the description given of him:—

‘5 ft. 11 in. Hair brownish grey. Eyebrows dark grey. Forehead ordinary. Eyes greyish brown. Nose short, slim above and rather thick below. Mouth medium. Lips thick. Chin round. Face oval and full. A small mark on the left cheek.’

The King of Prussia had remonstrated against such a violation of German territory, and had ordered his Ambassador to Paris to demand his passports unless Rumbold were released. Accordingly the preposterous intention of trying him for conspiracy, if ever entertained, was abandoned, and he was escorted to Cherbourg, where, not without renewed apprehensions of being shot, he was handed over to a British frigate. He had already repented of signing the engagement, an act of cowardice, he said, tantamount to resignation. The gendarme major told him he might keep the matter secret, but Rumbold replied that he should be bound to inform his Government. He also expressed regret at his family affairs being pried into in his papers.[252] Rumbold, if the French reports are to be trusted, certainly showed pusillanimity, but the recent fate of the Duc d’Enghien was in his mind. The promise of restoring his papers was not fulfilled, and being censured by the English Government for the engagement entered into by him, he offered to go back to France and revoke that engagement. This, of course, was not allowed. In the following spring he repaired to Berlin to thank the King of Prussia for his intervention, and he followed the royal family in their retreat to Memel. There, tended by Prince Augustus when attacked with fever, he expired in December 1807. His widow in 1810 married Sir Sidney Smith, who likewise had had experience of the Temple prison. Both she and Sir Sidney ended their days in Paris.

In 1876 Sir Horace Rumbold obtained permission to inspect his grandfather’s confiscated papers in the French Archives, but found the family matters in them very meagre, while he suspected that the political portions had been withheld from him.[253]

Talleyrand, in a diplomatic circular justifying such high-handed acts, charged England with prostituting the functions of ambassadors by making them instigate the assassination of the Emperor; but Lord Hawkesbury in reply, while indignantly denying the charge, insisted that a belligerent was entitled to have dealings with malcontents, and he twitted France with incitement of Irish rebellions. Napoleon’s evident maxim, however, was that all was fair on his own side, and it must be confessed that, whereas no Irishman proposed to assassinate George III., French malcontents looked for no success unless through Napoleon being kidnapped or murdered.

A Colonel Butler was also arrested at Hamburg in November 1806. In the French Dragoons until the Revolution, he had for eleven or twelve years, along with Dutheil, been an agent for the Bourbons and had paid secret visits to Paris. Two of his many children were there and were rich with their mother’s property. What became of him is not stated. Possibly he escaped.

James Smithson, natural son of the Duke of Northumberland, born in France in 1765, and future founder of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, was likewise arrested at Hamburg in 1809, but at the solicitation of Banks received a passport for England. He had visited Paris in 1791, when he wrote—‘The office of king is not yet abolished, but they daily feel the inability or rather the great inconvenience of continuing it. May other nations at the time of their reforms be wise enough to cast off at first the contemptible incumbrance!’ Smithson, who must by this time have been sadly disillusioned with the Revolution, died at Genoa in 1829, having mostly spent his later years in Paris.

George Sinclair, eldest son of Sir John, the great agriculturist, in 1806, at the age of sixteen, was arrested by the French as a spy, having been found between the French and German lines just before the battle of Jena. Sinclair, who became a general and lived till 1868, published in 1826 in the Representative an interesting account of his interview at Auma with Napoleon, before whom he was taken, together with his companion, a German named Rigel, by Count Frohberg. He found Napoleon in a dressing-gown and white night-cap, and he was required not only to show that he had been on purely private business, but to trace all his movements on a map and to answer questions as to the German troops through which he had passed. ‘All Napoleon’s questions,’ he says, ‘were remarkable by their perfect clearness. He omitted nothing that was necessary; he asked nothing superfluous.’ ‘What guarantee can I have,’ said Napoleon, ‘of the truth of your story? Englishmen do not usually travel on foot and without a servant and in such a dress.’ Sinclair was wearing a coarse brown overcoat. ‘It is true, sire,’ he replied, ‘that my conduct may seem a little odd, but imperative circumstances and the impossibility of procuring a horse forced me to do all that I have done.’ He produced some family letters, which Napoleon asked Frohberg to skim, and one of them was from Sir John Sinclair, commending his study of Greek and Latin and exhorting him to master German and French. Thereupon Napoleon, softening his tone, said, ‘So you have learned Latin and Greek. What authors have you read?’ Surprised at such a question, Sinclair named Homer, Thucydides, Cicero, and Horace. It was well he could not or did not name Tacitus, the object of Napoleon’s aversion. ‘Very good, very good,’ he rejoined, and turning to General Berthier, he said, ‘I do not think this young man is a spy, but the other is probably less innocent, and they must be kept together to avoid suspicion.’ A nod indicated that the interview was over, and Sinclair, bowing, withdrew. ‘When taken before him,’ he writes, ‘I had the strongest prejudice against him. I considered him the enemy of my country and the oppressor of the rest of Europe. On quitting him, the grace and fascination of his smile and that superior intelligence which illumined his face had entirely subjugated me.’ Napoleon directed Frohberg to tell the young man he was much pleased with the frankness of his answers. Rigel in like manner exonerated himself, and both, subjected to a few days’ honourable detention, were liberated after the battle of Jena, a place which Sinclair had passed on his route and had pointed out to Napoleon on the map.

Should we reckon among the British—she was at any rate among the notable—involuntary visitors the Countess of Albany, widow of the Young Pretender, quasi-widow of the poet Alfieri, and quasi-wife of Fabre of Montpellier? She started from Florence for Paris in 1806, with the view of publishing Alfieri’s works, but turned back at Turin on finding that François Xavier Fabre, as an émigré, would not be allowed to re-enter France. In the autumn of 1809, however, Napoleon required her to come to Paris to exculpate herself from a charge of intrigues with England. All that she had really done had been to refuse to receive Clarke when French Minister at Florence, and to apply to the English Government for an annuity to compensate the one lost by the death of her brother-in-law, Cardinal York, the titular Henry IX. She had accordingly been granted £1000 a year. She easily cleared herself, and Napoleon seems to have been a little ashamed of disturbing so inoffensive a woman. He jestingly told her that her influence on Florentine society hampered the fusion desired by him between Tuscans and French. This, he said, was why he had summoned her to live in Paris, where she would have more ample opportunity of gratifying her artistic tastes. The interview lasted only a quarter of an hour, Napoleon gave her his box at the theatre one night that she might see Talma. It was not till the end of 1810 that she was permitted to return to Florence.[254] A letter addressed to her in 1814 piquantly contrasted her husband’s expulsion from France in 1748 with her own enforced residence there, adding, ‘You have left many regrets in the great Babylon.’

Such of the English as were allowed to inhabit Paris, the permits for which, however, were, as we have seen, grudgingly granted and liable to be cancelled by wholesale, had the slender consolation of reflecting that they were in the ‘hub’ of the universe, for Paris in the height of Napoleon’s rule was more the centre of fashion and business than it has ever been since. It swarmed with Jews—bankers, jewellers, and merchants—to whom the war afforded many opportunities of enriching themselves. It also swarmed with adventurers of all nationalities, so that in February 1803 the regulations as to visitors, whether French or foreign, were made almost as stringent as those issued during the Revolution. A list of the inmates had not indeed, as then, to be placarded outside every house, but every householder was required to notify the police of the arrival of any visitor or lodger and to send in the passport. This had to be applied for within three days by such guest or lodger, to whom a permit to stay in or quit Paris was then granted. A foreigner’s permit was conditional on the certificate of his ambassador, or, in default of an ambassador, by a banker or two well-known citizens.[255]

On the other hand there was no lack of celebrities or of men who interest us on account of distinguished descendants. Let us begin with Pius VII., the first Pope who had touched French soil since the return to Rome from Avignon in 1408. Like the Doge of Genoa at Versailles, he must have thought himself the most surprising object in Paris. Manzoni, the Italian poet and novelist, Oersted, the Danish scientist, and Francis Arago, the future astronomer, whose family had sought at Perpignan a refuge from Spanish commotions, may next be noted. Spurzheim, the phrenologist, comes considerably lower down in eminence. The statesmen include Baron Hardenberg, destined to regenerate Prussia, and Count Nesselrode, the future author of the Holy Alliance and the Crimean War. The Poles include Prince Constantine Czartoryski, who, though a member of a great patriotic family, served in the Russian army, Count John Wielopolski, and Stanislas Wolowski, probably a collateral ancestor of the economist who sat in the French National Assembly of 1871. Marquis Emanuel del Campo, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, ex-ambassador at London and in 1795 at Paris, was the natural son of a Spanish grandee, an envoy also to London, by an Englishwoman named Field, a name which he had turned into Campo. He commenced life in an orphanage. James and Julius Beccaria were probably kinsmen of the Milanese philosopher. Count Tolstoi, the Russian ambassador, and Andrew Tolstoi, apparently his son, may have been ancestors of the great novelist. Ferdinand de Hérédia was probably the father of the French Minister of Public Works in 1887, and grandfather of the academician and poet. Dias and Emanuel Oliveira, the former a merchant at Oporto, the latter a doctor, were probably ancestors of the Benjamin Oliveira who in the House of Commons anticipated Cobden by advocating reduced tariffs on foreign wines. Joseph Samuda, a Barcelona merchant, was probably uncle of the great East London shipbuilder and M.P. Philip Gavazzi, an Italian merchant, may have been the father of the anti-papal ecclesiastic who joined Garibaldi in Naples and died in 1889.

Englishmen domiciled, if not naturalised, abroad were not subject to detention, which indeed was not prospective in the decree, but was limited to persons then on French soil. The Berlin decree of 1807 ordered, it is true, the capture of all British subjects irrespective of sex or age found in territories occupied by French or allied troops; but this does not seem to have been enforced. Hence the police registers[256] show visits to Paris between 1806 and 1813 by Englishmen settled on the Continent, but it is not always easy to distinguish these from men of English names, descendants of Jacobites or other emigrants, born abroad. In any case the registers are evidence that British subjects or men of British descent were sprinkled all over Europe, some as soldiers of fortune, others as manufacturers or artisans, and a few as land-owners. Thus the register of Spaniards gives us Colonel Peter Aylmer, Patrick MacMahon, a merchant at San Sebastian, Thomas Moore, a landowner born in Spain, William Mulvey, a native of Cadiz, O’Farrill, Ambassador to Berlin, William Stirling, a merchant born at Barcelona, Charles Willcox, a landowner also born there, and Colonel Charles Augustus Joseph Walsh de Serrant, one of whose family conveyed the Young Pretender to Scotland in 1745. The so-called Portuguese included Henry Gallwey and Joseph O’Moran, latter a commercial traveller.

The Dutchmen comprise General O’Connor, a native of Holland, Benjamin John Hopkinson, a domiciled landowner, and Robert Twiss, a merchant, apparently the father of Francis and Richard Twiss, and the grandfather of Horace Twiss. The Belgians were considered Frenchmen, or we should have heard of William Cockerill, one of the three sons of the man who founded the famous ironworks at Seraing. The Prussians and Poles, who are classed together, comprise William Flint and Augustus and John Simpson, merchants, Catherine and Richard Fitzgerald, land-owners, natives of Dublin, Samuel Turner, ‘president of canton,’ whatever that may mean, also from Dublin, and Baron Butler, a major captured in the field. Among Danes are Edmund de Bourke, Ambassador to Spain, and David Turnbull, a manufacturer at Altona. The Russians include Baron John Richard Bourke, Reuben Beasley, a merchant, Dr. William Birt, and William Lind, surgeon, both natives of St. Petersburg.

Among Swiss are John Archer and Walter and David Johnston, two sons of a wine merchant at Bordeaux who had not yet been naturalised in France, but was unmolested and allowed in 1812 to visit Paris. Last but not least is William Kirkpatrick, a son of the Scottish (Closeburn) baronet, who was a winemerchant at Malaga, and had married Françoise de Grévignée, daughter of a Walloon, also settled at Malaga. Kirkpatrick, who had been appointed Consul at Hamburg by the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, was in Paris in 1808 and was anxious to return to Malaga, but the French police suspected him of relations with England and had arrested his partner Turnbull. His daughter Maria Emanuele, born in 1796, was destined to be the mother of the Empress Eugénie, while her mother’s sister, wife of Mathieu de Lesseps, was destined to be the mother of Ferdinand de Lesseps.

There were of course in eleven years deaths, and even tragical deaths, among the captives. The Marquis and Marchioness of Tweeddale were allowed to visit Paris in November 1803, but were soon relegated to Verdun, and the gendarme who escorted them thither insisted, Lawrence tells us, on riding inside the carriage and even on dining with them. Lady Tweeddale, sister of Lord Lauderdale, died at Verdun in 1804, and her husband, while awaiting permission to have her buried in England, was also taken ill, and died two months afterwards.[257] Napoleon’s offer, ‘as a mark of respect for Fox,’ of twelve months’ leave, came too late. James Parry, ex-editor of the Courier, had been imprisoned in 1799 for six months for an article animadverting on the Tsar, whom the British Government then wished to court; he had sold his newspaper to Daniel Stuart, proprietor of the Morning Post, and in 1802 had settled at Arles. Though for three years a paralytic he was mercilessly ordered to Verdun and died there. His young son was adopted by Ginguené, the eminent literary critic.

James Payne, the bookseller, died in Paris in 1809 at the age of forty-three, leaving a young widow who went back to England in 1811. She was escorted by the Widmers, nephews of the calico-printer Oberkampf, who thus returned the long compulsory stay with their uncle of Robert Hendry. Hendry was a Glasgow dyer, whom Napoleon on a visit to Oberkampf’s calico-factory allowed to return home, nominally for a visit; but this was doubtless an euphemism for release. John Leatham, formerly of Madras, died at Nantes in 1811. Peter Colombine, of London, died in Paris in 1813. He was probably the brother of the Norwich alderman known to Mrs. Opie, who in 1802 was defrauded of his property and reduced to accepting an annuity of £100 from the Corporation of that city.

The Rev. J. Bentinck, an Oxonian who is said to have been promised a bishopric, died at Paris in June 1804. The Rev. John Dring, rector of Heathfield, Sussex, died at Orleans in 1806. Coulson Walhope, ex-M.P., was subjected to special surveillance, apparently on account of a report, doubtless calumnious, that he had visited France just after Napoleon’s return from Egypt with the design of shooting him. Walhope likewise ended his days at Verdun in 1807, shortly after giving a dinner-party. A doctor captured at sea committed suicide in 1805, leaving a bottle inscribed, ‘No more medicine after this.’ A third clergyman, White of Lancaster, died at Verdun in 1806, and a fourth, Annesley, at Geneva in 1807, his widow being then allowed a passport for England. He was probably a kinsman of the colonel already mentioned, but I cannot trace him in the Annesley pedigree. Thomas Talbot, aged twenty-eight, suffocated himself by charcoal at Paris in 1806, leaving a letter to his mother with a list of his debts (probably at cards) which he begged her to discharge.[258] Dr. Walter Kirby also died at Paris. A man named Burgh or Burke, on account of gambling debts, shot himself at Paris in August 1813.

A considerable number of incurable prisoners had been sent back by England, and in 1810 there were negotiations for an exchange. Colin Alexander Mackenzie[259] was sent to Morlaix for that purpose, with William Dickinson as his secretary. He went on to Paris, to witness Napoleon’s marriage festivities. France proposed an exchange en masse, with payment of a sum of money to cover the difference in numbers. On this being declined, she suggested an exchange, man for man, grade for grade, and offered to throw 20,000 Spaniards into the bargain. She wished 3000 Frenchmen to be exchanged for 1000 English and 2000 Spaniards. England offered to give 3000 French for 17,000 Hanoverians, but France insisted on 6000 of the former. As for the détenus, the British Government, reluctantly waiving the legality of their arrest, proposed that Lord Lovaine should be exchanged for a general, sons of peers or privy councillors for colonels or navy captains, baronets and knights for officers, untitled gentlemen for captains of the line or naval lieutenants, tradesmen for subalterns, servants and mechanics for privates or seamen. There was a difficulty, however, as to Hanoverians and Spaniards, and no agreement was arrived at. Mackenzie, who had arrived on the 24th April, accordingly left on the 6th November. During his stay at Morlaix his movements had been closely watched, and objection was taken to his wolf-hunting expeditions, as though these might screen confabulations with royalists or observations on privateers. There had been, however, and continued to be, individual liberations. England continued to send back prisoners incurably ill, and on the other hand a sailor who had become blind was released in 1809 by France. He took with him a book in which a number of Verdun captives had written messages to friends. Powell, vicar of Abergavenny, having shown much kindness to French prisoners there, Clarke recommended, let us hope successfully, the exchange of an English sailor in whom the vicar was interested.[260] Admiral Villeneuve in 1806 was exchanged at Morlaix, but unwilling to face Napoleon after his defeat, he committed suicide at Rennes on the way to Paris. There was also an offer to exchange Admiral Jurien de la Gravière for two colonels, but this was not accepted. The balance of prisoners was always largely against France, while the balance of escapes was—shall we say in favour?—of France. Thus in 1812 the British Government published a list of 270 escapes and 590 attempted escapes by French officers, whereupon the Moniteur gave a list of 355 English escapes, which it was urged was a much greater proportionate number. Sir James Craufurd figured at the head of the list. But the great majority of these English fugitives were officers or sailors of merchant vessels captured at sea after the resumption of hostilities. Some of the French escapes were effected through a noted English smuggler named Robinson; we do not hear of his assisting any of his own countrymen, as this would obviously have stopped his favourable reception in France.

Applications for release or for permission to visit England latterly became numerous. Release was besought in many instances on the plea of age and infirmity (and we may suppose that doctors were complaisant in granting such certificates) or for having rescued French citizens from fire or shipwreck. Two sailors who in a rescue from the waves had actually been captured had irresistible claims not so much to clemency as to gratitude. Poor Colonel Cope’s botanical studies, moreover, had not apparently warded off insanity, on which ground his sister in 1813 petitioned for his release. William Story, the chemist, had reached the age of sixty-three, and Napoleon’s decree had fixed sixty as the limit of detention. He applied for six months’ leave of absence to take possession of property bequeathed to him. Viscountess Kirkwall urged that unless her brother, whose father’s death had made him Lord De Blaquiere, was allowed to settle affairs in person, the family would be ruined. Lord Lovaine, with his sons Algernon and Percy, born in France, likewise petitioned for a business visit.[261] Sir Michael Cromie in 1811, pleading that he had been a friend of Fox, and had purchased property in France, asked leave to go to England to his daughter’s wedding.[262] Samuel Hayes, who in 1802 had come over with his children that they might learn French, was allowed in 1813, having become nearly blind, to return home. As late as the 18th March 1814, sixteen released prisoners embarked at Morlaix.

Curiously enough, an escaped prisoner was sent back by the English Government on the very eve of the termination of the war. It is the only case on record. A Lieutenant Sheehy, aged twenty-seven, of the 89th Infantry, had escaped from Verdun in October 1813, but the Prince Regent and the Commander-in-Chief, rebuking him for breach of parole, despatched him by flag of truce to Morlaix, where he arrived on the 5th March 1814. The Morlaix commissary reported that he denounced the Prince Regent as a sot, and that if he had talked like this in England it might account for his being returned, but that such talk might be a blind for some secret mission. Pending instructions from Paris, Sheehy was kept in custody, and we hear no more of him.[263]

The failure of the Mackenzie negotiations must have been a terrible disappointment for captives who had already waited nine years and a half. As late as 1812 there was so little prospect of deliverance that a prisoner at Briançon amused himself by scratching a sun-dial on a slate, appending to the motto ‘Rule Britannia’ imprecations against Napoleon.[264] In April 1813, twenty-five chests of Bibles and Testaments had been sent by a flag of truce, apparently by the Bible Society, to Morlaix for distribution among the captives. They were detained at the custom-house pending a decision, and we do not hear the result,[265] but in any case the books could scarcely have reached their intended recipients.

Yet although nobody foresaw the end of the war, Napoleon seems to have shown a little more leniency, while England in 1813 sent back 8000 invalided prisoners, and agreed, moreover, to occasional exchanges even of soldiers for civilians. Thus in 1812 she offered to exchange a French captain for the banker Boyd, but this offer must have been declined, for in 1814 Boyd pleaded the loss of the sight of one eye as ground for repeating it.[266] Release must soon have ensued without the necessity of an exchange. In December 1813, fourteen English doctors were exchanged for French prisoners, and we may hope that these included Moir, Armstrong, Watt, Campbell, Hogarth, and Jones, whose volunteer services to the French wounded had been notified to Napoleon by General Clarke, as a hint for their release.[267]

The allies having entered France on the north-east and Wellington on the south, the Verdun, Arras, and other captives were removed further inland. Napoleon, writing on the 11th January 1814 to Clarke, said, ‘I suppose you have removed the English from Verdun’; but it was not till the following day that the first detachment started for Blois. Prisoners with means provided their own vehicles or horses, but others, mostly captains and officers of merchantmen, seem to have been marched on foot. Most of them, Lord Blayney[268] says, were accompanied by French mistresses who had acquired a surprising mastery of English sailors’ oaths. A second detachment set out next day. This sudden removal had caused consternation, for though many had been captured during the war, many others had been at Verdun ever since 1803, and had got to feel at home there. Those, moreover, just under sixty when originally detained, were getting into years and disinclined to stir. Logically, of course, they should have been released on reaching that age, but logic was not to be looked for from Napoleon. Tradesmen and house-owners, moreover, had given numerous prisoners credit, yet the latter, if out of funds, had perforce to leave their creditors in the lurch. They could not wait for remittances, the order for departure in three days being imperative. Some, indeed, borrowed money of friends, but when the Verdun shopkeepers collected at the gate to make a last demand for their dues, some of the prisoners who could have paid coolly showed their purses to their creditors and then returned them to their pockets, sarcastically remarking that the Cossacks would discharge the debt. Five Arras captives made their way to the coast in lieu of going south, but finding no boat gave themselves up. Two others succeeded in their purpose. On the way to Blois, the younger child of Tuckey fell ill and died. On reaching their supposed destination, the prisoners were ordered on to Guéret. That town on the 11th of March 1814 had no less than 1064 English prisoners. Tidings of Wellington’s advance naturally created restlessness among them. Sixty-four escaped from the convent at Périgueux, to which they had been consigned, although the officers had some days before, lest they should head a rising, been transferred to Cahors. A hundred and one escaped in a body from Angoulême, and as many more, under a negro named Louis, conspired to follow suit, but were detected in time. The gendarmerie captain recommended their removal to spots more out of reach of the English army.[269] There had, moreover, been escapes on the way south. In February seven men, ordered from Arras to Tours, gave their convoy the slip, but were arrested in a barn near St. Valéry. Five other fugitives were apprehended near Montreuil. A Frenchman at Dunkirk was arrested for offering to facilitate escapes.

News soon arrived of Napoleon’s abdication. The Bitche prisoners, who had been sent to Chatellerault, would but for that event have been sent on to Rennes. A few of the English in Paris had obtained permission to remain, and were there witnesses of the short siege and the entrance of the allies. One of these was James Richard Underwood, for whom the dethroned Josephine had interceded. He published in the London Magazine an account of the siege and capitulation.

Article 3 of the treaty of peace of 1814 stipulated ‘that the respective prisoners of war shall be bound to pay before their departure from the place of their detention any private debts which they may have contracted there, or at least to give satisfactory security.’ This doubtless took effect in England, where prisoners could not leave without the knowledge or sanction of the authorities, but in France, occupied by foreign armies, there were obviously no means of enforcing it. Hence it is not surprising to find that at Verdun there were indignant creditors. We do not hear of complaints in any other town, but at Bitche and other fortresses the captives were lodged and victualled by the French Government, and though clothes must have worn out, the shopkeepers were probably chary of giving credit, while the captives on parole in Paris, Orleans, and other towns were men of means and doubtless of a high sense of honour. The eight or eleven hundred prisoners at Verdun, on the other hand, were of all sorts and conditions. Some could not, others would not, pay. When, therefore, Verdun learned that the sixty millions paid by France to England to satisfy claims for compensation for confiscation had left a balance of nine millions, it perceived an opportunity for sending in its bill. What could be more legitimately paid out of this balance than the three and a half million debts of the prisoners? Negotiations were carried on from 1837, and in October 1839, doubtless by the advice of the French Government, Routhier, a barrister, empowered to represent the creditors, went over to London. On a second visit he was accompanied by four townsmen, themselves apparently creditors. The memorial drawn up by them said:—

‘During twelve years’ residence in a town in which they were debarred the opportunity of procuring aid from their families and their country,[270] the English prisoners could not but contract debts and obligations, and they will doubtless acknowledge that the kindness and generosity of the inhabitants may have helped them to forget the disasters and misfortunes of war.... At the moment of the invasion the majority of the prisoners waited neither for official orders to depart nor for the conclusion of treaties. They quitted the country with all the facilities which circumstances naturally afforded. By depriving the creditors of their pledge, by sending the general officers, some to India, others to China, in the service of His Britannic Majesty, and thus rendering it impossible for the inhabitants of Verdun to sue their debtors, the English Government made itself responsible for the payment of the debts. The inhabitants put forward their claim from the outset, and from the outset notes on the subject were exchanged between the different Ministers.... If in that list there should prove to be a single usurious debt, one that cannot be verified by proper vouchers, let it be immediately rejected.... The number of prisoners always exceeded 1200, and frequently amounted to 2000.’[271]

The memorial asked for an instalment of 5000 francs ‘to relieve the most urgent cases of distress’ pending examination of the claims by a mixed commission.

The Times of October 18, 1839, says:—

‘A deputation from the inhabitants of Verdun in France has just arrived in London to claim the payment of £140,000, the amount of private debts incurred by English prisoners detained in that city during the war. The deputation, composed of MM. Routhier, Quentin, Leorat, Massé, and Trebout has, we are assured, been most kindly received by Lord Palmerston, who seems to have impressed the members of the deputation with the belief that no time will be lost in submitting the demand of the inhabitants of Verdun to a mixed commission charged with the liquidation of the debts. Marshal Soult,[272] we understand, has written personally to Lord Palmerston to suggest that a part of the nine million francs (the unappropriated balance of a sum of sixty millions paid by France in 1815 in liquidation of the claims of British subjects) ought to be applied in payment to the inhabitants of Verdun.’

But nothing came of this mission, and we hear of no further attempt by Verdun to obtain satisfaction. Thus ends the history of these involuntary guests.