IV CAPTIVITY

The Rupture—Detentions—Flights and Narrow Escapes—Life at Verdun—Extortion—Napoleon’s Rigour—M.P.’s—The Argus—Escapes and Recaptures—Diplomatists—Liberations—Indulgences—Women and Children—Captures in War—Rumbold—Foreign Visitors—British Travellers—Deaths—The Last Stage—French Leave—Unpaid Debts.

It is not my purpose to discuss the causes of the renewal of the war. M. Martin Phippson, in the Revue Historique, March to June 1901, contends that though England, owing to Addington’s incapacity, was seemingly the aggressor, Napoleon was really so, albeit desirous at the last moment of postponing the rupture till his armaments were completed. Of all the explanations of the rupture the strangest, yet the most recent, is that of M. Albert Sorel, who, quoting some anonymous English writer, represents the renewal of the war as necessary to the English ruling classes in order to avert the establishment of a government like the French.[160] The truth is that all reflecting Englishmen perceived Napoleon to be a tyrant, and Paine, as we have seen, regarded Frenchmen as worse off than the slaves of Constantinople.

The treaty of Amiens, moreover, had never been more than a truce. Whitworth had never appeared to instal himself for a permanency, and English visitors consequently complained of his want of hospitality. On the 13th March 1803 Napoleon rudely apostrophised him at Joséphine’s reception. Whitworth’s own account of this has been published by Mr. Oscar Browning, but Napoleon’s version addressed to Andréossi, which seems to have been overlooked in England, is to be found in his correspondence. It reads thus:—

‘The First Consul being at the presentation of foreigners which took place to-day at Madame Bonaparte’s, and finding Lord Whitworth and M. de Markoff side by side, said to them, “We have been fighting fifteen years (sic). It seems that a storm is brewing at London, and that they want to fight another fifteen years. The King of England says in his message that France is preparing offensive armaments. He has been misled. There is no considerable armament in the French ports, all having started for St. Domingo. He says that differences exist between the two Cabinets; I know of none. It is true that England should evacuate Malta. His Majesty is pledged to this by treaty. The French nation may be destroyed but not intimidated.”

‘Going round and finding himself alone with M. de Markoff, he said in a low tone that the discussion related to Malta, that the British Ministry wanted to keep it seven years, and that you should not sign treaties when you would not execute them. At the end of the circle, the English minister being near the door, he said to him: “Madame Dorset has spent the bad season at Paris; I ardently hope that she may spend the fine one; but if it is true that we are to have war, the entire responsibility in the eyes of God and man will be on those who repudiate their own signature and refuse to execute treaties.”’

This storm blew over, and on the 30th March the young Duke of Dorset, the Harrow schoolboy, set off to spend Easter with his mother, his two little sisters, and his step-father at Paris. It was also stated that the Embassy was about to be newly furnished. But in April matters again looked threatening. Madame de Rémusat tells us that people collected outside the British Embassy, to judge by the preparations for departure whether there was to be peace or war. Whitworth[161] left Paris on the 12th May and landed at Dover on the 20th. His staff met with some obstacles. Talbot, on his way to Calais, was stopped at St. Denis because his passport had expired. He acknowledged that he ought to have renewed it, but the Prefect of Police, on being consulted, said he was exempt from the decree, and after a few hours’ delay Talbot, who admitted that he had been courteously treated, proceeded on his journey.[162] Mandeville not being allowed, probably for the same informality, to embark at Calais, returned temporarily to Paris. Hodgson, the chaplain, and Maclaurin, the physician to the Embassy, also encountered difficulties. On the 6th May it had been announced in the House of Commons that Andréossi had asked for his passports. On the 17th messages to both Houses and a notification in the London Gazette dated the 16th announced an embargo on all French and Dutch vessels in British ports, together with the issue of letters of marque. On the 19th two French vessels laden with timber and salt were captured off Brest. On the 23rd a decree was communicated to the French Chambers providing that all Englishmen enrolled in the militia or holding commissions in the army or navy should be detained as reprisals for this embargo and capture prior to the declaration of war on the 18th. The decree was even extended by being made applicable to all persons between eighteen and sixty, even if, like clergymen and others, not enrolled in the militia. Talbot before leaving wrote a letter of remonstrance to Talleyrand, who stated that Talbot having no longer any official status he could not reply.

The only precedents for this detention were the arrest in 1746, without any apparent reason, of all the English in Paris on the return of the Young Pretender, and that of all Englishmen in France in 1793 as hostages for Toulon. Thomas Moore heard Lord Holland in 1819 justify Napoleon, but Mackintosh maintained that the seizure of vessels was warranted by international law, and a French jurist, Miot de Mélito, describes the detention as a ‘violent measure unusual even in the bitterest wars,’ while Henri Martin, the French historian, charges both Governments with having violated international law. The truth is that Napoleon acted in a passion, and as in the case of the Duc d’Enghien was too proud ever to acknowledge a mistake. As to an embargo, he himself as early as the 13th May had despatched orders for the seizure of British vessels in Holland, Genoa, and Tuscany. If, moreover, we are to believe Madame Junot, Napoleon’s decree was due to his having been informed that Colonel James Green had in a café threatened in his cups to assassinate him, and though Junot, being acquainted with Green, vouched for his having left Paris prior to the date of the alleged threat, Napoleon refused to cancel the decree. So swiftly was it enforced that the Prince of Wales packet and the cutter Nancy, which had made their usual passage from Dover to Calais, were seized and their crews detained. When a few weeks afterwards Napoleon visited Calais, Captain Sutton, of the Prince of Wales, petitioned him for release, but he met with a peremptory refusal, and Napoleon, on the two vessels being pointed out to him in the harbour, said, ‘You have plenty of mud there; let them lie and rot.’

The aggregate number of the British captives, represented by the French as seven thousand five hundred, was really only seven hundred, four hundred of them, according to Sturt, being small tradesmen. Napoleon, according to Maclean, was much disappointed at the smallness of the haul. Everything indeed had been done to induce the visitors to stay. The Argus had on the 10th May remonstrated against any fear of detention as in 1793, France, it said, being no longer under a Robespierre, and provincial authorities had given assurances that expulsion with reasonable notice was the worst that could befall. It was unfair, however, to accuse Napoleon of having ‘enticed’ the English to remain. His assurances of safety were probably sincere at the time, but his moral sense did not impress upon him the sacredness of such a virtual pledge. He had no scruples as to suddenly changing his mind to the detriment of persons who had trusted him. Most of the visitors, however, had deemed it prudent to return home while the issue was still uncertain. As late indeed as May arrivals in Paris had continued. From May 10th to 19th there were 48, and from the 20th to the 29th there were 38, but in the next ten days the number fell to 17 and in the following ten days to 6. Most of these visitors, moreover, must have come up from the provinces on their way home, while others came to fetch relatives. There were some narrow escapes. Sir William Call was just in time to leave Geneva, and Miss Berry and Mrs. Damer, warned by Lord John Campbell, hurried away from that city, forgetting or possibly not thinking it safe to pass on the warning to others. The Duke of Bedford, the Duchess of Gordon and her daughter, and Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh left Paris four days after Whitworth. The son of Sir G. Burrell and a companion escaped by making their valet pass for an American and themselves for his servants. Young Edgeworth, on the other hand, received his father’s letter of warning just too late, and was detained till 1814, though his companions, Roget as a Swiss and the Philips boys as below the age, obtained exemption. Yet not only had men been detained when over sixty, but some youths of ten or twelve, and therefore well under the limit of sixteen, had been stopped on the plea of their producing no certificates of birth. Augustine Sayer, aged thirteen, whom his parents had apparently placed in a school, was not allowed to return home, but was forced to maintain himself by tuition. He was eventually physician to the Duke of Kent and to the Lock Hospital, dying in 1861. He may have been one of the English boys sent to Dubufe’s school, for Dubufe, a member of the London Society of Arts, contradicting a statement that Protestants were refused admission to French schools, mentioned that he had received such pupils. John Charles Tarver, the future educationist and teacher of French at Eton, might surely, however, have been sent to his parents in London between 1794 and 1802, even if this was impossible after 1803. Farel, the engineer, in whose care he had been left by them on their release from captivity at Dieppe after the Terror, had virtually adopted him. Born at Dieppe in 1790, he had practically been naturalised, and Farel in 1805 got him into the French civil service. He remained in it till March 1814, when, obtaining leave of absence, he went to London and found his mother, brothers, and sisters still living; but he returned to France during the Hundred Days, intending apparently to resume his official post. Disappointed in this hope, he recrossed the Channel and found a more distinguished career open to him.

Before entering into details respecting the captives, I should speak of the unusual bitterness given to the war by Napoleon. Anglophobia, indeed, had been displayed by him even during the peace. The publishers of the Almanach National were sharply rebuked for proposing to insert ‘Angleterre’ with its royal family at the head of the alphabetical list of foreign powers. They had to relegate it lower down as ‘Grande Bretagne,’ and curiously enough British representatives at international Congresses are to the present day seated according to this nomenclature. Napoleon, moreover, during his tour in Normandy scolded his minister Chaptal for speaking of ‘jardins anglais.’ ‘Why,’ he vehemently exclaimed, ‘do you call them English gardens? Do you not know that this style of gardening came to us from China, that it was brought to perfection in France, and that no good Frenchman can credit England with it? Bear in mind that “French gardens” is the only proper term for them, and never again grate on my ears with “English gardens.”’[163]

His animosity was naturally intensified on the resumption of hostilities. The theatres were forbidden to perform pieces containing allusions complimentary to England, while plays of an opposite character were ordered to be performed not only in Paris but at Boulogne, Bruges, and other ports where troops were being collected for the invasion. A corps of Irish interpreters was formed, and Chaptal was directed to get some invasion songs written and set to music. Pamphlets demonstrating the facility of the invasion or vilifying the English were likewise published. One of them was entitled, ‘The English people, swollen with pride, beer, and tea, tried by the tribunal of reason.’ This was a reprint of Montlosier’s articles, but issued without his consent. Caricatures were also multiplied. One of them represented George III. as dragged on the ground by his hair by a French soldier. His crown tumbles off, and the soldier, striking him with his fist, says, ‘Look to thy crown and defend thy coasts.’[164] The Bayeux tapestry was brought over to Paris to suggest the practicability or imminency of a landing in England, and the Joan of Arc celebration at Orleans, suspended since the Revolution, was revived. Even indeed in February, three months before the rupture, Napoleon had emphatically approved, if not suggested, the erection by the Orleans municipality of a statue of the heroine. This gave the Times a text for commenting on the anomaly of the glorification by a usurper of the maiden who restored the French crown to its rightful owner. Napoleon might, however, have rejoined that he had not usurped the crown, but had picked it out of the gutter of the Revolution. The teaching of English in schools, too, as Lamartine testifies, was forbidden. Yet it is but fair to say that French was discouraged, as Lord Malmesbury tells us, in English schools, and that the Times of January 4, 1803, contained the following curious article:—

The political ill-consequences of the spread of the French language throughout Europe are admitted; and we do not conceive that its bad effects upon the morals and character of other countries will be disputed. We have no hesitation to add, that a nation which adopts the language of a superior is prepared to admit its yoke. There is no better or quicker road to dominion, than by imposing the necessity, or compassing the mode, of making a language general. In this word are comprised the ideas, character, and love of the people whose idiom you prefer to your own.

We never heard it alleged as unwise in the Government of China, to intercept all communication between its subjects and foreigners.

Except as a first step and beginning of mischief, all apprehensions from the representation of a French Comedy are ridiculous. It is as the mali labes, the first spot and eruption, that we are induced to contend against anything so contemptible as the pic-nickery and nick-nackery—the pert affectation, and subaltern vanity of rehearsing to an audience that cannot understand, in a language one cannot pronounce!

Does any one advantage result to the community of Great Britain, from the practice of teaching French indiscriminately to every girl whose parents can send her to a boarding-school?

Does any advantage result from its being taught to shopkeepers’ sons, at a day-school, for fear foreigners should not pawn or buy, for want of understanding them?

Are not the great part of the female sex, and of the uninformed part of ours, exposed, by this practice, to the moral and political corruptions of another country? Is not the business of French Emissaries facilitated by the half-understanding of low and ignorant Englishmen?

Ought a girl to be able to read any book that her father cannot? Ought she to converse in a gibberish, which her mother cannot detect?

Ought the mass of a virtuous and happy people to be educated to form ideas different from the manners, habits, and institutions of their own country? Ought it to be in the power of an enemy to poison their minds, corrupt their principles, and seduce them from their allegiance and religion?

Napoleon’s letters show how jealously he watched over the detention of the English, and over everything relating to England. Thus in 1806 he ordered all Englishmen to be expelled from the Papal States, and this order perhaps accounts for Coleridge’s belief that he had a narrow escape from being seized on account of his articles in the Morning Post. It is extremely unlikely, however, that Napoleon ever heard of Coleridge. He likewise decreed that English civilians found in any country occupied by his troops should be prisoners, and all English property or merchandise confiscated. Even any neutral vessel which had entered an English port was also to be forfeited. Lord Oxford, Lord Mount Cashell, and General Morgan would have been arrested at Florence but for the refusal of the Queen Regent to act as Napoleon’s policeman. Again in 1806 Napoleon writes, ‘I do not know why English prisoners have been placed at Arras; no doubt to be near home so that they may escape.’ He writes eight months later from Posen: ‘Issue a circular and take measures that throughout the Empire all letters coming from England or written in English and by Englishmen shall be destroyed. All this is very important, for England must be completely isolated.’ In 1807 he complains that English prisoners still received letters. Two years later, on a report that the English at Arras and Valenciennes were meditating escape, he ordered their removal further inland. This measure was extended in 1811 to the prisoners at Brussels. The daily police report, which constantly spoke of the English prisoners, was evidently scanned by him, even when absent from Paris, with great attention; and seemingly anxious that no other eye should see these documents, he directed that during his absence in Russia they should be destroyed. There is consequently a gap of four months in 1812. Even to the last the prisoners were never forgotten by him, for on the 6th January 1814 he ordered their removal from Verdun to Orleans, manifestly to prevent their release by the allied armies. Only in one instance do I find his severity relenting. On the 12th November 1812 at Givet he remarked English prisoners (captured soldiers or sailors, of course, not détenus) who had been set to repair a swivel bridge. Eight or ten of them jumped with alacrity into a boat to help to make the mechanism work. He directed that these men should be picked out, presented with 100 francs each, and sent back to England. An English clergyman at Givet who had petitioned for a three months’ visit home was to escort them. A petition from another Englishman there was also to be favourably considered. It is pleasant to find Napoleon for once good-humoured and generous.[165] When, in 1812, he directed that the smuggling of coffee and sugar into Corsica by English vessels should be winked at, and that sugar and coffee seized in British bottoms should not, like British manufactured goods, be burnt, he was obviously inspired by more selfish considerations. French fishing-boats were forbidden to pass the night out at sea, lest they should smuggle English goods, yet they were authorised to smuggle (the French had adopted the word smogler) spirits into England. Fishing-boats on both sides were unmolested, unless indeed they had clandestine passengers on board; and the Times, running a light cutter in the Channel, procured from them Paris newspapers. Letters were probably conveyed occasionally in the same way. England had not retaliated against French products, for in 1807 the Monthly Review appealed to British patriots not to continue spending a million and a half a year on French brandies and other goods. But Cancale must have been unable to continue sending its oysters, one hundred and nineteen millions of which had been forwarded in the twenty months of peace. The export of oysters from Granville and St. Malo was, however, permitted by Napoleon in 1810.

The Irish refugees, whom Napoleon, as we have seen, had offered Cornwallis to expel, now became his cats-paws. In July 1803, while declining to see Arthur O’Connor, he deputed General Truguet to treat with him and Berthier to advance him small sums of money. He promised to send 25,000 troops to Ireland, and if 20,000 Irishmen would join them he pledged himself to make Irish independence a condition of peace. But he found that the Irish refugees or emissaries were split into two parties, not always on speaking terms, O’Connor accepting, the Emmets rejecting, the idea of a French protectorate. In July 1804, having read a memoir by the Emmets, Lewins, and other exiles, he decreed that all Irishmen accompanying the projected expedition should be considered Frenchmen, and if not treated when captured as prisoners of war reprisals would be exercised.[166] Robert Emmet had had an audience of Napoleon previously to the peace, and an Irish legion was formed in November 1803. MacSheehy organised it at Brest, and on the Emperor’s coronation it was presented, like the French regiments, with an eagle and colours. Irish dissensions, however, are proverbial, and a duel between MacSheehy and O’Mealy led to the former being transferred to a French regiment and to the latter resigning and apparently returning to Baltimore. In 1806 the legion was ordered to Landau and had to pass through Verdun.

The governor [says Myles Byrne] took upon himself to lodge the Irish legion in a suburb, lest its presence might not be agreeable to the British prisoners. At daybreak he had the drawbridge let down and the gates opened to let the legion march through before the English prisoners could have light to see and contemplate our green flag and its beatific inscription, so obnoxious to them, ‘the independence of Ireland.’ Our march, however, through the town at that early hour attracted great notice. As our band played up our national air of Patrick’s Day in the Morning we could see many windows opened and gentlemen in their shirts inquiring across the street in good English what was meant by this music at such an early hour.

Some months later the legion was ordered to Boulogne, to be ready for the invasion of England, and at Arras ‘the governor,’ says Byrne, ‘had the good sense to make the English sleep one night in the citadel until we marched out in the morning.’ The legion was eventually sent to Spain. The experiment of inviting English prisoners to join it did not succeed, and in 1810 Napoleon stopped it. ‘I do not want any English soldiers,’ he wrote; ‘I prefer their being prisoners to answer for my prisoners in England; moreover the majority desert.’ This had apparently happened in Spain. In 1811 Napoleon directed Clarke to send for O’Connor and his fellow-exiles in Paris and try to revive an insurrection. He was ready to send 30,000 troops if sure of a rising and if England continued to send forces to Portugal. O’Connor accordingly sent Napoleon a preliminary memoir, whereupon in September he commissioned Clarke to despatch agents to Ireland.

In spite of his ostentatious preparations Napoleon told Metternich in 1810 that he had never been mad enough to think of invading England unless in the wake of an insurrection, the Boulogne army being all along aimed at Austria. The latest and fullest French writer on the subject, Colonel Desbrières, from an examination of the confused orders and counterorders, so unlike the rest of Napoleon’s plans, comes to the same conclusion.[167] All that Napoleon could have intended was to disquiet England, and thus prevent her from despatching troops to the Continent. This was legitimate strategy, and he was obviously, moreover, as much entitled to use the Irish as pawns as England had been to use the Vendeans, but his manufacture of counterfeit notes is less excusable. A manufactory of forged notes in Paris, enshrouded in mystery, was superintended by Lale, a clerk in the engraving department of the War Office, Fouché, Savary, and Desmarest being the only confidants of the secret. A Hamburg Jew named Malchus and two Frenchmen, Blanc and Bernard, were sent to buy merchandise with the notes. They were instructed to go to Scotland and Ireland, so as to disappear before the fraud was discovered. They were ostensibly told to destroy what they bought, but they naturally preferred smuggling it into France, and this was winked at, so that they made large profits. The fraud was, however, soon discovered. Malchus was hanged. His confederates escaped in an English smuggling boat which was captured by a French revenue vessel. They were at first imprisoned at Boulogne, but Savary promptly ordered their release, together with funds to return to Paris for further employment. Napoleon, at a later date, practised the same trick on Russia and Austria. On the restoration of peace with the latter in 1810, he offered an excuse or rather defence of the act to Metternich. He had at that time just ordered Fouché to resume the forgery of English notes.[168]

Napoleon, it may be remarked, attributed the rupture of 1803 to his refusal to conclude a commercial treaty ‘which would necessarily have been detrimental to the manufactures and industry of his subjects,’[169] and he never relaxed stringency in excluding British merchandise. As late as 1810 such goods were seized and burned at Roscoff, Bâle, and Strasburg, though the prefect of Strasburg suggested that textiles should be utilised in hospitals and ambulances. The war thus gave a stimulus to French manufactures, except to those hampered by want of raw materials. The ports, however, suffered severely through the English blockade, especially Nantes and other towns which had had a large trade with the West Indies. During the short peace Nantes had sent out merchantmen, and sixty of these, unable to get back, were captured. Marseilles also suffered, but the blockade could not entirely stop its trade.

Even some Englishmen long resident in France were declared prisoners and had to plead for exemption. Chalmers, a Bordeaux merchant, Scottish on the father’s side, French on the mother’s; James Macculloch, who had been in Brittany for thirty-five years; James Smith, Stone’s successor as printer; and James Milne, who taught cotton-spinning at the Arts et Métiers, were in this position. Chalmers found naturalisation the only resource. Smith and Milne, perhaps also Macculloch, were struck off the list of captives. As a rule rich residents as well as manufacturers and artisans were unmolested, for Napoleon was not insensible of the advantage thus accruing to Parisian tradesmen. Thus Francis Henry Egerton, brother and eventual successor of the Earl of Bridgewater, an eccentric clergyman or ex-clergyman of whom we shall hear anon, was not disquieted. According to a French writer he had created a scandal which necessitated expatriation, but this assertion I have not been able to verify. His chess parties in 1807 excited much notice. In 1813 he visited Italy. Quintin Craufurd was also unmolested, along with his quasi-wife Mrs. Sullivan, who, according to a French police register, was originally an Italian ballet-dancer, married John O’Sullivan, Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies, and eloped with Craufurd. Another version, however, states that she had been the mistress or morganatic wife of the King of Würtemberg, on whose legitimate marriage she withdrew with her daughter to Paris, subsequently marrying Sullivan. What is certain is that she had cohabited with Craufurd in Paris as long ago as 1787, for in that year she had had to fetch him home at 9 A.M. from the British Embassy after a whole night at the card-table. Nothing worse now befell Craufurd than a robbery. Madame de Genlis writes on the 23rd March 1811 to her adopted son, Casimir Becker:—

That poor Mr. Craufurd was robbed yesterday while he was playing whist at Madame de Talleyrand’s. All his superb jewels, caskets, rings, gold medals, 300 louis d’or, etc. The window was opened by means of a hole cut in the shutter, and the desk was forced. But it is believed from several indications that what was done to the window was merely a feint and that the thief belonged to the house.[170]

Even Craufurd, however, being uncle, as we have seen, of two British diplomatists, incurred the suspicions of Fouché’s spies, for their report of the 22nd May 1804 says:—

It may be supposed that this old man, now blasé, has no longer the activity which formerly rendered his house at Frankfort a centre of political movements very hostile to France, but he is still under the influence of Madame Sullivan, that foreigner of easy virtue who facilitated the departure of Louis XVI. and started the same day for Brussels.[171]

Talleyrand’s protection nevertheless ensured him against molestation, and he was even permitted to procure books from England. In 1816 he obtained the restitution of his papers,[172] seized, like his other effects, in 1793, and he claimed 2,230,000 francs compensation for his losses. A smaller sum was probably awarded him. He continued living in Paris till his death in November 1819. A painful episode disturbed his last months. Sir James Craufurd went over, and as far as can be judged endeavoured to extort from the sick uncle a will or a bequest of £48,000 in his favour. Though forbidden entrance, he flourished pistols in the faces of two servants and forced his way in. He next prosecuted Mrs. Craufurd and several of her fashionable friends for spreading reports of his conduct, and in court he indulged in such personalities that he had to be expelled. He also charged the servants with assaulting him, but this, like the other accusations, was dismissed, and he was eventually twice sentenced by default to six months’ imprisonment for libellous pamphlets, in one of which he accused Mrs Craufurd of bigamy.[173] Quintin Craufurd was very charitable to the poor of Paris. Though primarily a man of fashion, he ranks as an author by works on India, Mary Stuart, and Marie Antoinette, some of them in French. His widow, retaining to the age of eighty-four her vivacity and charm, died in Paris about 1832. Her daughter[174] married Count Albert d’Orsay, one of Napoleon’s generals, and thus became the mother of Count Alfred d’Orsay, the handsome fop, spendthrift, and amateur painter, who in 1827 married Lady Harriet Gardner, step-daughter of the famous Lady Blessington. Sir James (latterly Sir James Grogan) Craufurd died in 1839.

Fraser Frisell, who, except for a brief visit to his native Scotland in 1802, had lived in France since 1792, was likewise allowed full liberty.

Americans, it may be mentioned, were liable to be arrested as English, for the latter sometimes attempted to pass themselves off as Americans. George Matthew Paterson, a cousin of Madame Paterson-Bonaparte’s father, was detained as a British subject. He had, indeed, been born in Ireland. He was sent to Valenciennes, and then to Lille, whence he wrote letters to Madame Paterson-Bonaparte complimenting her on her marriage with Jerome and desiring to make her acquaintance.[175] William Russell was at least half American. He had got up the Bastille dinner at Birmingham in 1790, whereupon his house was burnt down by the mob. He had gone to America in 1795, but in 1802, being in France on his way to England, he was detained till 1814.

Junot, who as Governor of Paris had to carry out the order of detention, was, according to his wife’s memoirs, very reluctant to do so, and consented only under great pressure. He seems, indeed, by all accounts to have been inclined to leniency, and Forbes tells us that he suggested his obtaining exemption by pretending to be a sexagenarian. For a time some captives were allowed to remain in Paris, but this did not last long. Napoleon, in this as in other cases, interested himself in the smallest details. On the 3rd July he ordered a hundred of the English in Paris to be sent off. They were allowed to choose between Melun, Meaux, Fontainebleau, Nancy, and Geneva, only twenty-five, mostly Irishmen, being permitted to remain in Paris. He complained too of having found English at Boulogne and Calais. Accordingly forty-eight hours’ notice was given them—that is to those not of the age to be prisoners—to embark for England or to remove into the interior. On the 7th July Napoleon gave orders that the English officers should be sent to Fontainebleau or some other town: only forty were to remain in Paris; ‘the presence of so great a number of English in Paris cannot but cause and does cause great mischief.’[176] On the 23rd November he ordered that officers, old men, and men with wives and children should be interned at Verdun. The prisoners at Fontainebleau, Phalsbourg, and Marsal were accordingly transferred thither. Persons giving cause of complaint were to be confined at Bitche,[177] Sedan, or Sarrelouis, while privates and sailors were to be imprisoned at Charlemont and Valenciennes.

Verdun was obviously chosen because its distance from the sea rendered escape difficult. It was a town of ten thousand inhabitants, and the influx of English, mostly in affluent or at least easy circumstances, was a windfall for it. A French newspaper compared them in fact to sheep enclosed in a fold to manure the soil, and it suggested that other towns should share the advantage. The mayor of Metz, indeed, applied on behalf of that city, but ineffectually. Verdun retained a kind of monopoly, a regulated monopoly, for Napoleon in one of his letters (Nov. 24, 1804) warned the municipality that unless it kept down the price of lodgings, which had risen from 36 to 300 francs a month, the English would be sent elsewhere. Some of the army or navy officers and captains of merchantmen captured during the war were, of course, without means, and they had the option of gratuitous accommodation in the barracks. Another reason for the choice of Verdun may have been the absence of any upper class with whom the captives could mix, whereas at Nancy, the former capital of Lorraine and still a kind of provincial Paris, they had much more congenial surroundings. Austrian and Russian prisoners there joined them in 1804 in celebrating Carnival. The number of captives at Verdun from 1803 to 1814 varied from six to eleven hundred, but the highest number included captives made at sea or on battlefields. They procured remittances from England through Perregaux, the Paris banker, and some obtained permission for their families to join them. They had to give their parole not to escape as a condition of being allowed to hire their own lodgings, a breach of parole entailing incarceration. They had to answer to the roll-call morning and night. They beguiled their captivity as best they could. There were amateur theatricals, cock-fights, and horse-races. The prisoners were described by the Argus in January 1804 as ‘playing, dancing, singing, and drinking all day long.’

Two clubs were formed, one English at Concannon’s house,[178] the other Irish at Carron’s, but the latter was broken up on account of Hibernian quarrels in 1807. Lady Cadogan gave entertainments, and on the Prince of Wales’s birthday in 1804 Mrs. Concannon issued a hundred and twenty invitations to a ball and supper, when the costly toilettes of Mrs. Clive, wife of Colonel Robert Clive, and those of Mrs. Annesley, were much remarked. In 1807 the townspeople were invited by four captives to a masquerade ball.[179]

‘Young Englishmen,’ wrote George Call in his diary, after passing through Verdun in 1810, ‘are much the same whether prisoners or at home, playing, driving, and shooting each other (sic) ... One might fancy oneself in London.’ The richer prisoners gave monthly subscriptions for their poorer brethren or for schools, and the Birmingham Quakers in 1807 opened a subscription for them, an example followed in 1811 by London. The English Government, moreover, at the instance of Robson, sent £2000. Dr. Davis gave gratuitous medical services to the poorer prisoners. Maude and Jordan held Church of England services in the college hall, and solemnised marriages the validity of which was afterwards disputed. When fellow of Queen’s College, where he died in 1852, Maude used to relate his experiences.[180] Captivity reveals character, and there was not unbroken harmony or unalloyed respectability. Some speedily got into debt, and the authorities had to consider whether imprisonment for debt could be resorted to. This seems to have been at first settled in the negative. Lord Barrington, in June 1804, gave a Frenchman a draft on London which was dishonoured. The holder thereupon sued him and obtained judgment, but on appeal this was reversed, on the ground that being detained Barrington could not have arranged for an extension of time. Ultimately, however, we find arrests for debt made, and in 1807 Napoleon ordered that such judgments should be enforced. Waring Knox was in a debtors’ prison at Saargemünd when, on the intercession of the Grand Duke of Berg, he received permission to live at Melun, provided his creditors agreed to his exit. While in prison for debt at Valenciennes in 1811, he asked for 200 louis and a passport that he might go to England, where, having been brought up with the Prince Regent, he could procure a confidential post and could discover and reveal the secret projects of the British Government. General Clarke, whose Irish extraction and knowledge of England, where he had found his first wife,[181] made him a good judge of such applications, believed, however, that he simply wanted to escape from his numerous French creditors. Whether the offer was sincere or not it was almost equally contemptible. Yet we ultimately hear of his giving his poorer countrymen a daily meal at Valenciennes, where he died in a debtors’ prison in December 1813, just before release would have come. It is significantly stated that Sir William Cooper and Lady Cadogan, on being allowed to quit Verdun for Nancy, left no debts behind them, whereas half a dozen others had left half a million francs unpaid. Police reports of 1804–1805 mention one Wilson as behaving indecently with his French mistress at the theatre, and striking the officer who reprimanded him. He was deservedly sent to Bitche. Wilbraham was charged with forgery and with swindling his fellow-countrymen. We hear, too, of a duel between ‘Gold’ (Valentine Goold, or Francis Goold, a surgeon?) and Balbi, the keeper of the gaming-tables, in which the latter was wounded. ‘Gold’ was consequently confined in the fortress, but Napoleon (this proves that he looked into everything) ordered his liberation. ‘A prisoner of war,’ he said, ‘may fight a duel.’ One of the brothers Mellish, interned at Orleans, actually challenged the prefect to an encounter. A duel in 1806 between Captain Walpole and Lieutenant Miles, both of the navy, in which the latter was killed, probably arose out of a gaming quarrel. In the gaming-room figured the notice, ‘This bank is kept for the English; the French are forbidden to play at it.’[182]

The gaming-tables, Lord Blayney was told, cost the English prisoners £50,000 a year, but they were eventually closed. A Captain Cory, in one of his drunken fits, assaulted a French soldier. Colonel William Whaley, probably the brother of ‘Jerusalem’ Whaley, who indulged in quarrelling, duelling, and betting, was in 1808 sent to Moulins. He is described as ‘notorious for immorality and extravagant conduct, and capable of the most desperate enterprises.’ The English Government had refused him a passport for France, but he had managed to get there, and after six months’ incarceration in the Temple at Paris, where he excited a mutiny among the prisoners, had been sent to Verdun. There in 1811, to revenge himself for a refusal to receive him, he denounced Blayney as having clandestinely procured plans of French fortresses. The charge was investigated and declared unfounded. There were other men base enough falsely to denounce fellow-captives. Morshead and Estwicke in 1808 were fined 20,000 francs for calumny and swindling. Sir Thomas Wallace was denounced out of revenge by MacCarthy as being deep in debt and meditating escape or suicide.[183] In August 1813 there was a scuffle between prisoners and townsmen, which gendarmes had to repress. Hutchinson, a teacher of languages, was sent to Bitche for insulting a French officer. A Captain Hawker and a man named Raineford, who entered a jeweller’s shop on pretence of paying a bill, and seriously assaulted him, were sentenced in 1808 to twelve and six months’ imprisonment respectively. ‘Restless spirits,’ says Call, ‘do their best to compel the French to treat the prisoners harshly.’

Some captives, indeed, brought punishments on themselves. Thomas Devenish, having inveighed against Napoleon, was sent to Doullens fortress, but after a time was allowed to return, and Brodie, who had taught English at Blois, audaciously sent General Wirion, the commandant at Verdun, a letter of diatribes against Napoleon, for which he was relegated to Bitche. A surgeon named Simpson, who at the theatre hissed a bust of Napoleon and next day boasted of the act, pleaded inebriation, but was consigned to the fortress. On the other hand Neilson, captain of a merchantman, obviously tried to curry favour by naming his infant Napoleon, and Felix Ellice, a prisoner at Thionville, composed four sonnets and an ode on the birth of the King of Rome. Williams, imprisoned at Bitche, who had been employed by the Admiralty till 1799, but had apparently been dismissed, offered in 1804 and again in 1808 to detect the spies acting for England, but his overtures were refused, it being believed that the spies had been changed. Two navy lieutenants were imprisoned for fourteen days in 1805 for striking a French officer. A Captain Bannatyne and two officers got up theatricals on the plea of intending to pay debts, but in reality, it was said, to swindle their countrymen. Captain Nanney was sent to Arras for seducing a townsman’s wife, but escaped in August 1809. Gentlemen’s servants are not always of exemplary behaviour, and we hear of ten valets being packed off from Verdun.

These black sheep were of course exceptions, and we hear on the other hand of Colonel Reilly Cope indulging in botanising, of Forbes having his daughter taught to dance, and of Captain Molyneux Shuldham constructing a carriage propelled by sails at seven or eight miles an hour. Horses, however, being frightened by this monster, and a cart being overturned by it, it was hissed and stoned by the peasantry. Shuldham also invented a boat which, placed on a kind of skates, slid over the ice.[184] He and others likewise amused themselves with rowing, but anglers complained that they frightened away the fish, and the pastime was consequently forbidden.

General Wirion, the commandant of Verdun, had clearly no enviable position. Not only had he to keep the captives in order and prevent escapes, but he had to deal with a swarm of French adventurers of both sexes who sought to make money by facilitating escapes. It was accordingly ordered in July 1805 that all suspicious women should be expelled, and that no passports should be allowed to Verdun unless good reasons were shown. Frenchmen, like foreigners, could not then go freely from one town to another.[185] Women who had caused quarrels among the captives were expelled, but some of them then settled in the neighbouring villages. An honourable commandant would have found his post unpleasant and irksome, and Wirion, the son of a pork butcher, was not even an honourable man. He recognised Lord Barrington’s mistress, Madame St. Amand, who was at first passed off as his wife, by calling on her, and he took money for winking at illicit amours. He is said to have recommended housekeepers or mistresses who were his spies, and in one case an Englishman who had foolishly told his mistress his plans of escape was betrayed by her. Wirion may have thought this a legitimate stratagem, but he likewise unblushingly levied blackmail, and his subordinates followed suit. He would invite himself or be invited to dinner with the wealthier captives, and they would allow him to win from them at cards, in order to obtain small favours or to avoid being sent to Bitche, to which they were liable at his mere caprice. He inflicted a fine of 3 francs on men failing to present themselves at the roll-call morning and night, but not finding many able to pay 6 francs a day for late rising and an evening promenade he commuted this for 6 francs or 12 francs a month. In the winter of 1804, however, he made one roll-call a day suffice, and allowed exceptionally good prisoners to appear only every fifth day.[186] He received, according to Sturt, 600 francs or 1000 francs a month from the gaming-tables as the price of his protection, and he is said to have extorted no less than 136,000 francs from a prisoner named Garland.

Wirion’s gendarmes got up lotteries for articles which sometimes did not exist, and prisoners had to take tickets as the price of small favours. Complaints of his extortion were unavailing until the appointment as Minister of War of General Clarke. Wirion was thereupon summoned to Paris in 1810, and rather than face a court-martial he shot himself in the Bois de Boulogne. No French newspaper, indeed, records this, and though affirmed by Lord Blayney, who arrived at Verdun shortly afterwards, I should have felt doubts of its accuracy but for finding a passage in Letters from the Cape, a pamphlet dictated by Napoleon at St. Helena in 1817. It says:—

The English prisoners detained at Verdun were treated with great attention (sic), and a French officer who commanded that depôt having been guilty of some extortions upon them, an inquiry was in consequence ordered by the Emperor, and the culprit was so much afraid of his anger that he committed suicide.

I have, moreover, discovered in the police bulletin of April 8, 1810, the following record:—

General Wirion went yesterday morning at ten o’clock in a hackney coach to the Bois de Boulogne. Alighting a few steps from the Porte Maillot, he blew out his brains. Upon him was found a letter to his wife and another to the doctor, asking him to attend to her in these sad circumstances. It appears that impatience at the apparent tardiness of the commission deputed to investigate the complaints against him was the reason of the suicide.[187]

Wirion’s chief subordinate and successor, Colonel Courselles, though far from immaculate, was more cautious and moderate in his extortions. He confined himself to a monopoly of the wine supply, charging exorbitant rates, and to paying the allowance to the poorer prisoners in livres tournois in lieu of francs, thus clearing a profit. Courselles, in his turn, was called to account, but he threw the blame on his subordinates, one of whom, Lieutenant Massin, shot himself through apprehension of a court-martial. He had simply by Courselles’ orders destroyed incriminating documents, but thus thrown over by his chief he left a note stating that though innocent he could not face threatened dishonour. It is satisfactory to learn that Courselles was likewise removed, that his successor was so upright a man that on his death in 1813 all the English attended the funeral, and that the next commandant was still more indulgent, allowing captives to live not merely in the outskirts of Verdun but in neighbouring towns.

The captives were popular at Verdun. Some of the inhabitants were suspected of allowing letters under cover to be directed to them in order to evade their being opened and read. It is true that a boy five years old, on being jocularly asked by Eyre whether he would go with him to England, replied, ‘No, all Englishmen are bad’; but when in 1805 a hundred and seventy of them were transferred to Valenciennes, Givet, and Sarrelouis, two hundred inhabitants collected to see them off. Women shook hands, even gave kisses, and exclaimed, ‘Poor young fellows!’ a proof, says Wirion, that the prisoners had gained great influence and that their removal was urgent.[188]

Three M.P.’s being among the captives, it will naturally be asked whether they retained their seats. They could not or did not resign, but in those days a constituency did not suffer much from going without a representative. The next general election did not take place till 1806. Lord Yarmouth was then re-elected for the Irish pocket borough of Lisburn, and continued—we can hardly say to sit—for it. In 1822 he was called to the Upper House. Lord Lovaine, in like manner, remained member for Beeralston, Devonshire. He was even nominated in 1804 a Lord of the Treasury, and in 1807 an India Commissioner. Thomas Brooke was likewise again re-elected for Newton in 1806, but he, as we shall see, had escaped from Valenciennes. Green, who is described in the police register as a man of letters, and Sturt were not re-elected. Tufton, who with his brother Charles was detained at Fontainebleau, and Thompson, who at Orleans inveighed against Napoleon, had ceased to be M.P.’s.

One of the privations of detention was not merely the censorship exercised over correspondence but the total deprivation of English newspapers. Even before the rupture, indeed, only one paltry Sunday paper in the pay of Napoleon[189] was allowed to pass through the post-office, though the Embassy of course could be subject to no such restriction, and other journals could be clandestinely perused. Napoleon in August 1802 rebuked Talleyrand for allowing English newspapers to reach ‘a large number of persons’ by being addressed under cover to the Foreign Office,[190] and Galignani’s newly opened reading-room must have undergone unforeseen restrictions. When the war broke out Napoleon repeated his order that reading-rooms should be allowed only one particular English paper, which was supplied them gratuitously. Madame de Rémusat says he had, however, largely subsidised English journalists and writers, apparently to little purpose, but this may be considered an exaggeration. Galignani’s Monthly Repertory of English Literature, started in 1807, did not compensate for the absence of newspapers. Even the Morning Post, though siding with France, was not admitted.

As long as the Argus lasted the captives were fain to subscribe to it, for ‘infamous’ as Forbes styles it, it gave copious extracts from the London press, but in 1810 Napoleon suppressed it, and the prisoners became dependent on the meagre and carefully manipulated intelligence of the Paris papers. In 1804–1805 several prisoners had sent the Argus letters and verses in favour of peace, hoping thus, perhaps, to procure release.

For a time the captives were buoyed up by the expectation of being exchanged for French soldiers and sailors, the balance of numbers being always largely against France; but the British Government refused to exchange combatants for civilians, as this would have been a recognition of the validity of the detention. In the autumn of 1805 the prisoners petitioned the Electress (afterwards Queen) of Würtemberg, Princess Royal of England, to intercede for them, but she did not venture to comply, sending word that the matter was one for the two Governments.[191] There was again a gleam of hope in 1806, when, as we shall presently see, Lord Yarmouth went to Paris to negotiate, but the sky was soon overcast. The temptation to escape became stronger as time elapsed and as it became clear that the fall of Napoleon would alone bring liberation. Some broke their parole. Others thought they satisfied honour by sending word just before starting that they withdrew their parole. Sir James Craufurd, who had been allowed to go for two months to Aix-la-Chapelle to take the waters, did not return, but got round to England by Sweden, justifying himself on the ground that his wife was ill and that a lucrative post had been given to another man in his absence. The police bulletin scouted his alleged anxiety for his wife (a daughter of General Gage), stating that he had scandalously treated her, that she had consequently gone home, and that he had been living with a mistress.[192] Lord Yarmouth was informed by a correspondent that the King turned his back on Craufurd at a levée, telling him that prisoners ought to keep their parole; the letter added that Craufurd was universally despised in England.[193] A later report, however, represented him as receiving £1000 a year from the Government, and the Duke of York was reported to have said that in such arbitrary detention the parole was not binding. Colombine de Jersey, allowed a month in England, also did not return. Lord Archibald Hamilton escaped in January 1804. Sir Beaumont Dixie disappeared from Verdun in September 1804, leaving his clothes on the river bank as though he had been drowned; but he had falsified a passport and had been assisted by neighbouring villagers in his flight.[194] He was, however, recaptured and sent to Bitche, for attempts to escape or other misdemeanours entailed removal to that or some other fortress. ‘There,’ says the late Mr. Childers, ‘the younger members of this unlucky colony appear to have amused themselves more Britannico in cutting deeply their names and descriptions on the outer stone walls of the barrack which formed their prison, and I read more than one name belonging to well-known English, Scottish, or Irish families.’[195] Fox and Addison, doctors on board merchantmen, let themselves down by a rope from Verdun citadel, but being unable to get across the canal at the foot they had to give themselves up. Two other doctors, Thomas Clarke and Farrell Mulvey, were likewise recaptured and sent to the fortress of Metz, Mulvey, however, in 1806 being allowed to return on parole to Verdun. Three surgeons, Baird, Cameron, and Hawthorn, escaped. In 1807 a midshipman named Temple escaped by crouching at the extremity of a carriage, so as to be concealed by two women, his French mistress and her maidservant. The carriage got to Strasburg, where the mistress, being a native of the town, obtained a passport, and Temple was smuggled in the same manner to Austria, whence he wrote to Colonel Arthur Annesley expressing a hope that nobody had been molested as an accomplice. Unfortunately he was not equally solicitous or scrupulous with regard to his creditors, for he left so many debts behind him that some of the principal prisoners, revolted by his dishonesty, forwarded a memorial to the British Government, praying for his dismissal from the navy. Annesley himself, whose honeymoon had ended in captivity, got away in December 1811. A Dr. Alderson, married to a Frenchwoman, not obtaining an answer to an application for a visit to England to recover £400, took French leave, but his large farm near Lille was consequently confiscated. Leviscourt, a navy lieutenant, who after several years at large on parole had been confined in the fortress and was no longer on parole, endeavoured to escape, but being recaptured was dragged by gendarmes through Verdun, with a heavy cannon-ball fastened to his leg. Worsley, the schoolmaster, escaped from Mons to Holland. James Henry Lawrence, son of a Jamaica planter and himself a Knight of Malta, escaped in 1810 by pretending on the road to be a German. He had lived several years in Germany, and had published in German a Malabar story, which on his arrival in England he issued in English, as also a Picture of Verdun. He subsequently led a roving life, chiefly on the Continent, and died in 1840. His father remained a captive. Another foreign knight, of the Order of Maria Theresa, Baron Charles Blount, obtained permission to reside at Bonn, but went to Cleves and fled. He was, however, recaptured and sent to Coblentz fortress. From Valenciennes there were forty escapes, and Lawrence says, ‘Every morning those who came upon the promenade inquired who had decamped in the preceding night.’ Fortunately there was yet no electric telegraph to give the hue and cry. Colonel Hill, of the Shropshire militia, probably a brother of Lord Hill, escaped and rejoined his regiment. Brooke, M.P. for Newton, Lancashire, quitting a large dinner-party at Valenciennes in October 1804, audaciously drove through the town with his French valet, who had obtained a passport for two merchants, and safely reached Cologne. Francis and Thomas Jodrell waited in December 1803 on the commandant of Valenciennes, told him they withdrew their parole, and drove off. Colonel Smyth accompanied them. All three were recaptured in the duchy of Berg, albeit Bavarian soil, and Napoleon had ordered a court-martial, but they giving a sentry the slip got clear off. Francis was High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1813; Thomas was killed at Rosetta in 1807. Philip de Crespigny, who had been married at the Danish Embassy in 1809, escaped from St. Germain in 1811. Wright, a midshipman, brother of the unfortunate Captain John Wesley Wright, facilitated the escape of a friend by holding the rope with which he descended from the ramparts at Verdun, whereupon he was consigned to the fortress. So also was Knox, he having become surety for a Captain Brown, who escaped but was recaptured.

Wirion, by Napoleon’s orders, gave notice in 1805 after three escapes that the captives must be responsible for one another if they wished to be treated as men of honour, and that at the first escape all would be sent to fortresses. In 1806, moreover, a reward of 50 francs for the capture of any fugitive was offered at Valenciennes. It was very hard on the sureties to be shut up in a fortress if the men for whom they were answerable did not return on the expiration of their leave of absence, but this may in some cases have been preconcerted. When in 1807 the Arras and Valenciennes captives were removed to Verdun, Wirion gave warning that the first man attempting to escape would be shot, such being the legal punishment for breach of parole. This excited murmurs against terror and tyranny. Yet very shortly afterwards he reported escapes, and it does not appear that he ever enforced his threat, although Napoleon in January 1811 ordered that attempted escapes should be punished with death and that the sentences should be placarded.[196] It is obvious, indeed, that England would have threatened reprisals. Sentences of six years’ confinement in irons were, however, inflicted on private soldiers and sailors, for I find that in 1812 Thomas Hudson, who by means of a forged passport had attempted in 1808 to escape from Metz, had the remainder of the penalty remitted on the ground that he had been instigated by a fellow-prisoner.[197] Had such punishments been imposed on captives of higher status England would manifestly have retaliated. Alexander Don, heir to a Scottish baronetcy, escaped from Paris in 1810. In 1808 he had been required to leave that city for either Verdun or Melun, but must have obtained leave to return. An Italian lady, claiming to have been married to him in Paris, but suspected of being merely his mistress, was living at Florence in 1812. He became intimate with Sir Walter Scott, who speaks of his literary and artistic tastes, his lively manners, his love of sport, and his oratorical powers, while Lockhart describes him as courteous, elegant, accomplished, and the model of a cavalier. He was latterly M.P. for Roxburghshire, and died in 1826 at the age of forty-seven. His uncle, General Sir George Don, had been captured and detained at Lille in 1799, when he went with a flag of truce to General Daendels bearing a proclamation from the exiled Statthalter. The French Government threatened to shoot him in reprisals if Napper Tandy and his companions were executed. An exchange for Don with Tandy was declined by England, as also an exchange with a French general. England in 1800 claimed his unconditional release, on pain of imprisoning the French generals at liberty on parole. His wife, seeing no prospect of his release, applied for a passport to join him. He continued a captive till June 1800. John, afterwards General Sir John Broughton, a Staffordshire baronet’s heir, got off in the guise of a courier.

Two sailors named Henson and Butterfield escaped from Verdun, traversed all France, and reached the Mediterranean coast, but were there arrested and sent to Bitche. Philip Astley, the circus owner whose arrival in Paris has been mentioned, obtained a passport for Savoy on pretence of wishing to open a circus there, but he went on to Italy and thence escaped. He was destined to revisit and be buried in Paris in 1814. James Callender or Campbell of Ardinglas, endeavouring to escape, was sent to Ham, the fortress in store forty years later for Louis Napoleon. While there he became the successor to a cousin’s estates of £3000 a year, but it was several years before he heard of it. He offered to present his horse to Napoleon, thinking thus to be liberated, but Napoleon insisted on his fixing a price and then sent him double the sum. Campbell revisited Paris in 1815 and was sent by Napoleon to the Conciergerie. This was probably at the instigation of his alleged wife.[198] Captain Charles Cunliffe Owen, father of Sir Philip of South Kensington fame, seems in 1811 to have shammed lunacy and was consequently placed in an asylum at Valenciennes.[199] He had cut a vein, but not dangerously, and had denounced an imaginary plot for seizing Belleisle. He was transferred to a private asylum in Paris, whence in July 1812 he escaped. Captain Francis Tulloch, who in 1808 had been removed from Cambrai to Verdun, effected his escape in December 1810.

John Harvie Christie, who had gone to France to economise, after spending three weeks in Paris repaired to Bordeaux. Returning after two months to the capital, he found that arrests had just been ordered. He went to the Norman coast, hoping to embark as an American, but was apprehended at Fécamp, having unluckily in his possession a manuscript copy of satirical verses on Napoleon and Josephine.[200] He was tried on the charge of espionage, and though acquitted remained a prisoner. Henry Dillon and Lynch were arrested at Caen in 1809, and Poppleton, the teacher of English, who with three Frenchwomen had abetted their escape, was sent to prison for two months.[201] John Giffard, arrested in 1811 on the point of embarking at Honfleur, was consigned to a lunatic asylum. William Throckmorton, a friend of Miss Berry, was also recaptured at Honfleur in the same year. Another fugitive bore the appropriate name of Hurry, and Wirion being just then absent, his subordinate Courselles was suspected of having been bribed. Hurry was a freemason, and with a hundred of the captives had been admitted into the Verdun lodge. Wirion recommended that such admissions should be forbidden, for a French mason had confessed in private conversation that he should have felt bound, had Hurry applied to him, to facilitate his escape.[202] But non-masons also promoted escapes, for filthy lucre’s sake. Indeed this became a trade, and in 1811 two captains at Bruges were arrested for visiting the dépôts and offering passports.[203] In 1809 six inhabitants of Arras were prosecuted for facilitating the escape of an English lord, and at Verdun a breach was discovered in the walls just in time to prevent escapes. These had been so numerous among captains and officers of merchantmen that, with the exception of those above fifty years of age or those having their wives with them, they were ordered to sleep in the citadel. Permission to go outside the town within four miles was also revoked, but was afterwards renewed on condition of mutual suretyship. Augustus Bance, at Valenciennes, applied for French citizenship and for permission to open a soap factory at Antwerp. The latter application was refused, on the ground of Antwerp being too near the frontier, but while the naturalisation question was pending he escaped.

Mogg and three companions escaped from Arras in 1810, concealing themselves in the day-time and guided at night by the moon towards the coast. In a wood near Boulogne, they cut down trees and made a small boat, which a layer of suet rendered watertight, and they had brought sails and rope with them. They were, however, discovered. The authorities ordered the boat to be launched as an experiment, and there was not the slightest leakage. The men’s ingenuity was admired, and they told the police inspector that if the Emperor was informed of their daring scheme he would certainly grant them their liberty. One of them was accordingly taken before Napoleon, who asked him whether his motive had not been a desire to rejoin a mistress. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘it was to see my aged mother.’ Thereupon Napoleon, remarking that she must be a good mother to have such a son, released him, giving him a small sum for his mother. We are not told whether his companions were also liberated. Equally venturesome was William Wright. He became interpreter to General Brabançon, and ultimately contrived to get on board an English flag-of-truce vessel. He crept into a trunk till the usual search before departure was over, and after passing an hour in this uneasy posture was safe. In his Narrative of the Situation and Treatment of the English arrested by order of the French Government, Wright states that at Valenciennes an English hotelkeeper, King, who had resided there for twenty years, was very kind to his captive countrymen. Prisoners without money, says Wright, were harshly treated, but the officials were open to bribes. William Hamilton, according to a Boulogne tradition, was assisted in an unsuccessful attempt to escape by his jailer’s daughter, whom he afterwards married. He had entered the navy in 1803, and was captured in 1805. In 1817 he was appointed Consul at Flushing, in 1818 at Ostend, in 1820 at Nieuport, and in 1822 at Boulogne. He was knighted on his retirement in 1873, and died in 1877, aged eighty-eight, being probably the last survivor of Napoleon’s prisoners.

Stewart Kyd, the ex-radical, and Dr. Barklimore escaped, but the two bankers, Boyd and Benfield, had to undergo the full time of detention. Benfield died in Paris, in straitened circumstances, in 1810. One of his daughters married Grantley Berkeley. According to a police bulletin Benfield was a nullity, whereas Boyd was acquiring a thorough knowledge of French institutions. He arbitrated on a claim against the French Government by Schweizer, Swan’s partner and antagonist, who pronounced him to be a man of great culture and acknowledged probity. He also wrote pamphlets on financial subjects. He was indemnified for French confiscation, and from 1828 to 1830 was M.P. for Lymington. He died in 1837. Another man who made good use of his time was Tuckey, who, captured in 1805, compiled a maritime geography in three volumes. He had previously published an account of a voyage to Botany Bay with a cargo of convicts. He died while exploring the River Congo in 1816.

In several instances besides those already mentioned detention was followed up by actual incarceration. James Smith, the filter-maker, was sent to the Temple in 1804 for talking against the French and extolling the defences of England, to which he had paid frequent visits.[204] Colonel Stack was charged in the same year with espionage. It is even alleged, but this cannot be verified, that he was condemned to be shot as an accomplice of the Due d’Enghien, but was reprieved. What is certain is that he spent three years in Bitche citadel, afterwards remaining a prisoner at Verdun till 1814. Colonel William Edwards, a Jamaica planter, brother I think of Bryan Edwards, M.P., was imprisoned seven years on suspicion of having facilitated escapes. The youngest of his twenty-nine children, born at Bruges in 1800, was Milne Edwards, the eminent French naturalist.

We now come to the liberations and permissions to visit or settle in various towns, for each of which Napoleon’s express sanction was necessary, and we may begin with Lord Yarmouth, since he owed his liberty to negotiations, albeit fruitless, for peace. He had become a prisoner under trying circumstances. He went over to fetch his wife and children just as the rupture had occurred, and he inquired at Calais whether he might safely land. He was answered in the affirmative, yet no sooner had he done so than he, with all his fellow-passengers, was declared a prisoner. Curiously enough, however, he professed to consider the detentions as justified by the embargo in England. He was sent to Verdun, but it was alleged in March 1804 that he had been seen in Paris. Wirion, reproached with laxity on this account, denied, however, that he had gone further afield than Clermont on an affair of gallantry. He had been exempted, indeed, from the twice-a-day roll-call till all exemptions had been abolished, and he had also been allowed to go out shooting; but Wirion urged that permission to go outside the town tended to prevent escapes by rendering them dishonourable, and if such permissions were to be refused the garrison should be strengthened, the walls being so dilapidated that egress was easy.[205] Yarmouth’s mother had been in favour with the Prince of Wales, and he himself had then, as a youth, been admitted to Carlton House. When, therefore, Fox in 1806, on the death of Pitt, became Foreign Secretary, the Prince asked him to intercede with Talleyrand for Yarmouth’s release. Napoleon is said to have imagined that Fox was himself interested in Yarmouth. He consequently not only gave Yarmouth unlimited leave of absence, but suggested that negotiations should be opened through this channel. In August 1805 Yarmouth had already been authorised to quit Verdun for six months and to live near, but not at, Paris. He announced that he chose Versailles, but nevertheless joined his wife in Paris. This contravention was reported by the police, but was winked at for a time.[206] In September, however, he was ordered to repair to Melun. In May 1806 he was allowed, together with Lord Elgin, General Abercromby, and Captain Leveson-Gower, to embark at Morlaix for England. He returned viâ Calais in June with credentials authorising him to negotiate. He was not a novice in diplomacy, for in 1793 he had been sent on a mission to Prussia, charging only his expenses. The police bulletins show how closely all his movements were now watched. They tell us how he went to the Opera, and how he wanted to buy French rentes to the amount of a million francs at one stroke, but could only purchase first 100,000 francs and then 500,000 francs. He called on Quintin Craufurd, Mrs. Sullivan being a friend of Lady Yarmouth, and he was said to be in love with her daughter, the so-called Mademoiselle de Dorset.[207] In case of the success of his mission he was said to intend buying up all the French brandy in the market and selling it at triple price. A man of pleasure and an art connoisseur, Yarmouth could scarcely be much of a diplomatist, and in August Lord Lauderdale was sent to join him. He was believed to feel annoyance at this. Lauderdale, as we have seen, was a follower of Fox and had always advocated peace. At the end of August Yarmouth was recalled, announcing, however, that he should return in January, and hoped then to conclude peace, but Lauderdale had really superseded him. Lauderdale nevertheless had committed a mistake at the outset. He had asked to be presented to Napoleon, and had had to be told that it was not customary for a plenipotentiary of a country still at war to be allowed an audience, yet it was evidently no fault of his if the negotiations proved abortive. According to a French writer who had studied the documents of the French Foreign Office,[208] Yarmouth on the 17th July submitted to Champagny a draft treaty by which England gave up Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte and recognised Napoleon’s conquests in Holland, Germany, and Italy; but Napoleon, instead of closing with so advantageous an offer, awaited the result of his negotiations with Russia. All August was consequently wasted in futile discussions of formalities, and when the Russian negative answer arrived Napoleon gave vent to his exasperation by breaking off the negotiations with England, so that Lauderdale at the beginning of October quitted Paris. The last police bulletin in which he is mentioned absurdly describes him as a spy, who had doubtless sent home information of military movements and of public feeling in Paris.

Both he and Yarmouth now disappear from the scene, but Lady Yarmouth remained in France, being allowed to pay occasional visits to England.[209] Lady Hester Stanhope alleges that she had a French lover. If this scandal has any foundation Yarmouth shared the fate of Lord Elgin, who, as we have seen, was liberated with him. His too was a hard case. Returning from the Constantinople Embassy, he had passports from French consuls in Italy, and though not reaching Paris till after Whitworth’s departure had been assured by Talleyrand that he might safely remain, and he doubtless hoped French waters might relieve his chronic rheumatism. Lord Hawkesbury (afterwards Lord Liverpool), who, according to Trotter’s Life of Fox, had in 1802 accepted a handsome Sèvres dinner-service from Napoleon, in his diplomatic circular of the 30th April 1804 made a pointed allusion to Elgin when he said:—

‘They (the French Government) promised their protection to such of the subjects of England as were resident in France who might be desirous of remaining there after the recall of His Majesty’s ambassador. They revoked this promise without any previous notice, and condemned these very persons to be prisoners of war, and still retain as such in defiance of their own engagements and of the universal usage of all civilised nations. They applied this new and barbarous rule even to individuals who had the protection and authority of French ambassadors and ministers at foreign courts to return in safety through France to their own country.’

Talleyrand, in his annotations to this circular in the Moniteur of the 5th November 1804, and in his counter-circular, was significantly silent on this passage, which indeed was obviously unanswerable. Elgin, at first detained with sixty fellow-captives at Orleans, was allowed to go to Barèges and to send to England in October 1803 for Dr. William Scott, on whose report he was permitted to repair to Paris. Owing, however, to an unfounded rumour that General Boyer was incarcerated in Scotland, whereas he was really on parole at Chesterfield, Elgin was ordered back to the Pyrenees. His wife remained in Paris, and he was not allowed to go thither to her confinement, which took place on the 4th March 1804; but the infant expired on the 20th April. He arranged, however, for daily tidings of her. When Thiébault delivered a message from him to her she showed no sign of affection, and General Sebastiani was then lolling on her sofa as though quite at home. She had, however, already made the acquaintance of Robert Ferguson of Raith, son of William Ferguson, who in 1793 had succeeded to the property of his uncle Robert Ferguson, a rich China merchant. Being also one of the British captives, Ferguson was frequently invited to the Elgins’ Paris house. He was released as an F.R.S. and a mineralogist in 1805. Lady Elgin, who had joined her husband at Barèges in June 1804, went over to England in 1806 to try and get her husband exchanged for General Boyer. Thence she wrote affectionate letters, and Ferguson also wrote as though interested in the exchange. But Elgin on his release in 1807 discovered letters addressed to her by Ferguson, which Garrow, Ferguson’s counsel at the crim. con. trial, described as ‘a most ridiculous medley of love and madness, or love run mad.’ ‘They would disgrace,’ he said, ‘the worst novel of the last century.’ £10,000 damages were awarded. Ferguson married the frail lady—Anne Nesbit was her maiden name[210]—got into Parliament for Fife in 1806, and died in 1841. He was cousin to the Miss Berrys, and had once been engaged to Agnes. Before leaving Elgin, it should be stated that Napoleon, styling him ‘one of the greatest enemies of the nation,’ had rebuked General Olivier for showing him attentions at Livourne. Napoleon had a grudge against Elgin, who, he imagined, sent the information which enabled Nelson to follow the French fleet and destroy it at Aboukir. Elgin married again in 1810, was the father of Dean Stanley’s wife, and died in Paris in 1841.

Lady Elgin was not the only faithless wife, for in 1808 Scott, formerly vice-consul at Naples, declined to take back his wife, who had been arrested while cohabiting with an Englishman at Saarlibre, and he recommended her being sent to England, as he had long disowned her and she was penniless.[211] Lady Webb, letting herself down from a window in Paris, is said, moreover, to have eloped with Fursy-Guesdon, a novelist, and grandson of the actor Préville.[212] She knew Madame Récamier and Chateaubriand.

Lord Beverley and Lord Lovaine, the eldest of his fourteen children, found more indulgence. Though not released, they were permitted in 1805 to reside at Moulins, which Lovaine liked so well that he remained with his young family after 1814, though no longer a captive. He was fond of hunting, lived in style, and was very charitable. At the age of eighty-seven he became Duke of Northumberland, but enjoyed the honour only two years. Just after the capitulation of Paris in 1814 he and two of his sons lunched with Josephine, who told him that the English were the only people generous enough to speak respectfully of the fallen Napoleon. In order to have done with peers, let me here note that Lord Duncannon must have been released before November 1805, when he married in England, and that the Duke of Newcastle, who came just within the age of Napoleon’s terrible decree, was released with his mother in 1807. The mother had pleaded ill-health and family affairs, had offered a profusion of compliments to Napoleon, and had adduced her succour to French prisoners previously to the peace. She had been allowed in 1804 to go to the Pyrenees and in 1806 to settle at Tours.

Some scientists, scholars, and physicians owed their release to Banks and Jenner on the one hand, and Carnot, Cuvier, and French doctors on the other. Lord Shaftesbury appears to have been liberated as an F.R.S., but possibly as a friend of Fox. James Forbes, another F.R.S., who with his wife and daughter arrived in Paris from Brussels the very day after the decree was issued, was liberated in June 1804 through Carnot. He had previously been allowed to visit at Tours his brother Major Charles Forbes, with his wife and five children.[213] Pinkerton, the geographer, was likewise released in 1805. Dr. Carmichael Smyth, having in early life travelled in France and kept up a correspondence with French physicians, profited by their intervention.[214] Dr. Maclean urged that he had not been in England for ten years, and this plea availed him. Jenner sent a letter to Napoleon in behalf of William Thomas Williams, which Napoleon at first cast aside, but Josephine picking it up told him it was from Jenner. ‘Ah,’ he then exclaimed, ‘I can refuse nothing to so great a man.’ Williams, who on watching Napoleon for a full hour at the Paris Opera had noticed that he never once smiled, thought his countenance, on seeing him again at Nancy in 1805, mild, though haughty. Jenner, a correspondent of the Institute in 1808 and a foreign associate of it on the death of Maskelyne in 1811, also secured the release of Dr. Wickham,[215] and through Corvisart, the Emperor’s physician, that of Nathaniel Garland and Valentine Goold. Corvisart likewise intervened for Dr. Burrell Davis, who after graduating in medicine at Montpellier had been relegated to Verdun, and who published a striking pamphlet against premature burial. This he forwarded to Corvisart, along with a petition to Napoleon. Doctors indeed, as was but right, were less harshly treated. They were permitted to make journeys to English patients, and in 1810 nine were granted passports for England. Alexander Hamilton, though not yet an F.R.S., doubtless owed his release to having catalogued the Sanscrit manuscripts in the Paris Library. Colclough became a member of a literary society at Nîmes, in order to procure release as a scholar, but whether this availed him is doubtful, for we do not hear of him as a resident Irish landlord till after Napoleon’s fall.

John Spencer Stanhope, of Cannon Hall, Yorkshire, treacherously delivered up in 1810 by a Gibraltar privateer, was liberated in March 1813, at the intercession of the Institute, in order to make an archæological visit to Greece: but literary or artistic accomplishments did not always secure release. Joseph Forsyth discovered this to his cost. An Elgin man, his father intimate with Isaac Watts, he had eagerly embraced the opportunity of visiting Italy. Starting as early as October 1801, he reached Nice on Christmas Day and spent seventeen months in Italy, but on re-entering France in May 1803 he found himself a prisoner and was confined at Nîmes. Attempting in the winter to escape, he was relegated to Bitche, where for two years he was in close confinement. He was then allowed to go on parole to Verdun. There he prepared and published in London an account of his artistic tour, and had copies sent to France in the hope that it would serve him a good turn. But from want of interest, perhaps too on account of his unlucky attempt to escape, he could obtain no greater favour than permission to live in Paris, and even this after four months was revoked. He had to repair to Valenciennes and wait till 1814. He died in the following year. Curiously enough, he regretted the publication of his book, albeit it possessed considerable merit.

Monroe, author of the famous ‘doctrine,’ then American Ambassador at London, was applied to by prisoners’ friends to solicit their liberty through his Paris colleague Livingston, whose dispatches to Washington were sent by flag of truce through Morlaix. Ferguson, Lady Elgin’s paramour, seems to have been thus released, and a Colonel Johnston was thus allowed to go to France to see a kinsman named Oliphant.

But while release came to some after a few months, it did not come to others till after long years. Robson, ex-M.P., confined at Nîmes, must have had influential friends to obtain permission to embark at Emden as early as November 1803. Sir Thomas Hare and young Augustus Foster were apparently indebted to friends in high quarters for release. A wife’s heroic efforts, which, however, are not particularised, also effected the liberation of General Sir Charles Shipley.

Chenevix, whose friendship with Berthollet stood him in good stead, in July 1803 read a paper before the Institute on ‘palladium,’ the metal discovered in platinum ore by Wollaston, and sent articles to a French chemical journal. He was one of the original contributors to the Edinburgh Review, in which, according to Thomas Moore, who met him at Paris in 1821, he wrote against France. He was able without hindrance to visit Germany and Spain, as well as the Black Sea. In 1812 he married a French countess, and remained in France until his death in 1830.

One of the likeliest ways of obtaining release was to petition Napoleon or Josephine in person. Mrs. Tuthill managed to present her petition to the Emperor while out hunting, and he could not deny a lady, especially a great beauty. Mrs. Cockburn obtained an introduction to her fellow-Creole Josephine, whereupon Napoleon[216] in July 1803 wrote, ‘Do what is proper for Coxburn’ (sic). It was not, however, till 1805 that he obtained permission to go to England for twelve months, doubtless a euphemism for release. Cockburn, like Yarmouth, had been allowed to go out hunting at Verdun. John Maunde, an old Bluecoat scholar, was released in 1807, whereupon he went to Oxford to study for the Church, became curate of Kenilworth, and formed an intimacy with Lucien Bonaparte, in his turn a captive, whose poem he was translating into English when he died in 1813.

Sir Grenville Temple was allowed in 1804 to go to Switzerland, and in 1810 to embark for America with his rich Bostonian wife and their four children. Sampson Eardley was released in March 1806. Captain Walter Stirling was liberated in time to testify at the Elgin trial to the conjugal harmony which had previously existed. Colonel Molesworth in 1804 had permission to visit England, which probably meant release. John Parry, more fortunate than his brother James, was struck off the list of captives. He alleged that he had been expelled from England for writing in favour of peace, and he solicited and obtained permission in 1809 to go and see after his brother’s property, intending to return and marry at Tours. Henry Seymour, the ex-M.P. and lover of Madame Dubarry, was allowed in 1809 to go to Switzerland. He had previously been permitted to reside at Melun and Paris. Richard Trench, who had been married at the British Embassy in March 1803 to Melesina, daughter of the Rev. Philip Chenevix and widow of Colonel St. George, was allowed in August 1803, on account of ill-health, to go to Orleans, his wife having managed through influence to save her husband from being sent to Verdun. From Orleans she made repeated visits to Paris to intercede for him. Her husband once in 1805 accompanied her, and in a secluded part of the Bois de Boulogne meeting the Emperor, told him which way the stag had gone. Napoleon, however, was angry at thus meeting alone a tall young Englishman who had come to Paris without leave, and after a night in prison Trench was ordered to Verdun. He was soon allowed to live in Paris, but it was not till 1807 that Mrs. Trench, by personally presenting her petition, secured her husband’s release.[217] Meanwhile she had given birth to Francis, a theological writer whom I remember as rector of Islip, but Richard, the archbishop, was not born till 1808, after her return to Dublin.

There is no record in the police bulletins of the release of Thomas Manning, who hastened to Paris from Angers on hearing of the rupture. The family tradition is that he owed his deliverance to Carnot and Talleyrand. Let us hope that he got back in time to be one of the Diss volunteers who in October 1803 received notice to be in readiness to march to London on the first notification of a French invasion—an invasion, however, which, argued a letter in the Times, should be welcomed as ensuring a grand haul of prisoners. In 1817, on his way back from Tibet, he stopped at St. Helena and presented the captive Emperor—their positions had been almost reversed—with tea, coffee, tobacco, two silk pocket-handkerchiefs, and two feather fans.[218] He had been strictly charged to address Napoleon as ‘general,’ but when asked by whom his passport in 1803 had been signed, he replied, ‘By yourself, by the Emperor.’ Napoleon’s face lit up at this recognition of his rank by an Englishman. Impey was released in July 1804, perhaps through Madame Talleyrand, whom he must have known at Calcutta. Sir James de Bathe is said to have procured the intercession of the Pope, to whom it was represented that his children in England might in his absence be made Protestants. His son and heir was then only a boy of ten. Sir James died in 1808. Greathead, the lifeboat inventor, was released in December 1804, quite cured of democracy, it was said, by his French treatment. Greatheed, with whom he must not be confused, was allowed with his son to go to Dresden and thence to Italy. The son died at Vicenza in 1804 at the age of twenty-three. Granby Sloper, who had settled at Paris in 1789 and had been imprisoned there in 1794, though struck off the list of captives in 1803 and allowed to live in Paris, had been arrested in 1806 as an accomplice of Wickham; but on proof that he had simply when at Berne asked the latter for a passport for England he was liberated.[219] William Stone, who, as already stated, had taken refuge in France after his acquittal of high treason in London in 1796, was unmolested, and became eventually steward to an Englishman named Parker at Villeneuve St. George.

One of the most singular cases of lenity is the permission given in 1808, on the recommendation of a Paris professor, to the two brothers Lambert to leave Givet and exhibit themselves all over France. For several generations their family had had a scaly or horny epidermis.[220]

There is a solitary case of refusal to accept release. Richard Oliver, ex-M.P. for the county of Limerick, though in ill-health and anxious to leave with his mother and sister, declined without consulting them on learning that the passport had been granted at the instance of Arthur O’Connor, whom he had formerly known. He disdained to be under obligation to a conspirator.

It would have been strange if money as well as influence had not sometimes secured release. The Rev. W. H. Churchill, of Colliton, Devon, was on his way to Lyons in May 1803 when he was stopped and ordered to return to Paris. There he was dismayed to learn that all the English had been consigned to Verdun. He pleaded for leave to escort an invalid brother home, but was told by Junot that unless he repaired to Verdun he would be sent to the Temple prison. He nevertheless resolved to wait and see what would happen. A gendarme duly appeared with an order to take him to the Temple, but the name was misspelt, and the gendarme for a consideration withdrew, promising to say that he had not found the man. Churchill then feigned illness, and a French doctor prescribed for an ulcerated throat. In January 1804 Churchill, through bribery, as is believed, was permitted to escort his invalid brother.[221]

Next to freedom the greatest favour was leave to visit or reside where the prisoners chose. Ill-health was naturally one of the commonest grounds for such applications, and naturally these were viewed with some scepticism. Lawrence states that Dr. Madan at Verdun made money by giving certificates of indisposition for exemption from morning roll-call. Two ex-M.P.’s, Nicholl and Waller, obtained permission to repair respectively to Lyons and Nîmes. Nicholl’s son was also allowed to go to a neighbouring town to marry a Miss Mount.[222] He was ultimately released. The bookseller Payne was authorised to go to Plombières and Barèges. We thus see that watering-places profited, as well as Verdun, by the detentions.

Sir Thomas and Lady Webb were in 1809 allowed to go to Savoy. Lady Webb, a convert to Catholicism, adopted in 1813 a little English girl seemingly lost by her parents and found among a troop of jugglers at Lyons.[223] The waif, after being educated and apprenticed, became a nun. Macnab was permitted to study medicine at Montpellier. James Heath, the engraver, was allowed in 1810 two months at Paris to copy architectural designs. In that year also visits to the capital were permitted to two clergymen, Maude and Lancelot Lee, as well as to Lord Shaftesbury, Captain Lovelace, Colonel de Blaquiere, and the brothers Tichborne, Henry being in ill-health. In June 1810, however, all or nearly all permissions for Paris were revoked. But in 1813 Halpin was allowed to return to Paris to complete his art studies. Colonel Phillips, who had accompanied Cook round the world, was permitted to visit England in the summer of 1804, and General Scott was allowed to visit his family at Versailles; but on refusing to name a man who had extorted money from him by pretending to have obtained such permission he was ordered back to Verdun.[224] Sir Thomas Clavering, whose father had been one of Warren Hastings’ opponents at Calcutta, had married a Frenchwoman, the daughter of an Angers dressmaker, and was consequently allowed to remain at Orleans. There he drove his own carriage and had fine English horses. He was friendly with his neighbour, the actress Raucourt, and once took young Bonneval (afterwards Marquis and General) to her house, where there was much card-playing and the youth lost all his pocket-money. In 1808 he was permitted to live at St. Germain. In 1810 he sent his wife to England to try and effect an exchange. Meanwhile he was at Paris, living with a Vaudeville actress, Arsène. She treacherously sent the police an anonymous letter warning them that he talked against Napoleon and intended to escape. Cuthbert Sharpe, through Regnier, Minister of Justice, was in 1804 struck off the list of captives, allowed to live in Paris, and ultimately liberated. Cramer, a man of a good Irish Protestant family, though originally detained at Verdun, had leave, on its being known that he was against the war, to travel freely about France. Settling at Tours, he married a Mademoiselle Fereau and made the acquaintance of Courier, the future pamphleteer. He died at Florence in 1827. Edward Dillon, a naval cadet, being related to General Clarke, was permitted to complete his education in Paris. Sir John Morshead had permission to go to Versailles to undergo an operation, and was ultimately released. As near the end of the war as January 1814, Colonel William Cox, ex-governor of Almeida, solicited permission to visit Paris.

Among the détenus permitted to visit or reside in Paris between 1806 and 1811[225] were Colonel Arthur Annesley, Charles Jerningham, Lovell Edgeworth, Charlotte, Elizabeth, and Henry (sisters and son of Sir William) Wolseley, John Daniel, ex-president of Douai College, Thomas William Atkinson, Theobald, Henry, and William Dillon, the Rev. Robert Bland, Count Daniel O’Connell, and George Woodyatt, a student from Westphalia, afterwards a doctor at Worcester, and grandfather of George Woodyatt Hastings, president of the Social Science Association, the M.P. who misappropriated his ward’s money, making the usual plea that he intended to refund it. They also included General Lord John Murray, General Sir Edward Paget, Sir Herbert Croft, Archdall Cope and his brother, students in Paris since their childhood, Blount, another student, Atkinson, a medical student, John Jervis, the engraver, Terence M’Mahon, Christopher Potter, Smith, an engraver, Laurence Stoddart, a paralytic Scotsman, Edward Hayes, the miniature painter, and his father, Sir John Coghill, and Benfield, the banker.

Although women and children were not included in the decree they could not always leave without difficulty. In July 1803 some girls, who had been imprudently sent to school at Rouen, had got to Calais on their way home when an order came to detain them as hostages for a young nephew and niece of Madame Bonaparte who had apparently been captured on their voyage from Martinique. There may have been some delay in the passage to France of this ‘Master and Miss la Pagerie,’ as the Times styled them; but assuredly England had no thought of detaining children, and it may be presumed that the exchange was promptly effected. As for women, Anne Plumptre, as free in her movements as at home, easily procured a passport in 1805; but her Francomania was in her favour. The divorced wife of Comte de Melfort (she was sister of the Earl of Barrymore, and her husband a descendant of the Scottish Drummonds) was allowed in 1810 to go to England with her two daughters to look after property, leaving behind her two sons, one page to the Emperor, and the other at St. Cyr military college. She is said to have had a liaison with the Prince Regent, and Melfort alleged that his marriage at the British Embassy had been invalid on account of the difference of religion; but he was himself a debauchee. Arrested in London for debt, he found a titled lady to pay the amount and elope with him to France. Lady Donegal[226] and her sisters, Mary and Philippa Godfrey, got back to England as early as October 1803. Lady Maynard and Lady Ancram also obtained passports. A woman named Thompson, ninety-two years of age, captured in 1809 on board a merchantman which stranded off Calais, was at once, in consideration of her age, sent back to England.

Sometimes women who had gone home on business did not find return an altogether easy matter. Thus Mrs. Clarke, who had obtained a passport for England viâ Holland in April 1807, was arrested by the English authorities on attempting to return, was sent in custody to London, and was interrogated on suspicion of being a spy in the French service. She easily cleared herself, but then waited to see her elder daughter Eleanor married to Frewen-Turner, M.P. for Athlone, and in 1808 she landed in France from Jersey. She was arrested, however, at St. Lô, and had to give an account of herself. She stated that in 1791 she visited Toulouse with her daughter and her mother, Mrs. Hay,[227] and that in 1801 she took her mother and a younger daughter Mary to Toulouse; that they removed to Paris two days before Whitworth’s departure, that her visit to England had been purely on business, and that had she not got a passage from Jersey she should have tried going round by America. She was allowed, on her story being verified, to rejoin her mother and daughter.[228] The latter as Madame Mohl, ultimately famous for her receptions in Paris, coquettishly concealed her age, not liking to confess to seniority to her German husband. At her death in 1883 she was ninety years of age. Miss Lemprière, probably sister of the author of the Classical Dictionary, was permitted to return. Mary Masquerier, a governess, sister, doubtless, of the artist already named, was allowed in 1812 to embark at Morlaix for London. A Mrs. Cornuel in the same year obtained permission to go to England to fetch her two daughters, one of whom had for ten years been in the charge of an uncle in London, and all three returned on board a smuggling vessel.[229] A girl named Warren, eleven years of age, on board a vessel captured by a privateer in 1805, was restored to her father, quartermaster at Malta. Three children named Crane, aged from ten to sixteen, who had been sent to school in Paris in 1802, but whose father could no longer afford to pay for their education, were permitted in 1805 to embark at Rotterdam.[230] Mrs. Story and her four little children, also captured by a privateer, were liberated in December 1813, as likewise ‘Madame Kirkpatrick’ with her four children and two nieces, who had all been residing in Paris. We shall hear presently of her husband. Catherine Russell, a young woman captured in 1812 by a privateer and landed at Amsterdam, showed such despair at being parted from her friends that she was allowed to return to England.[231] Mrs. Mary Bishop in 1813 had leave with her four daughters to pay a visit to England, ostensibly to obtain possession of property, but really, so she alleged after the Restoration when appealing to Louis XVIII. for recompense, on a mission from royalists. Lady Boyle had like permission in July 1813, but her husband, the future Earl of Glasgow, could merely obtain leave to visit Paris. Occasionally the English authorities objected to the landing of such passengers. Thus a Mrs. Borel, wife of a London merchant, was refused permission to land at Dartmouth in 1813 for want of a formal permit; she took passage on another vessel for Portsmouth in the hope of there finding less difficulty.[232] The English Government apparently suspected that some of these arrivals might be spies in French pay.