Chapter 11

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 inlivres tournoisin 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 1802rebuked 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’sMonthly Repertory of English Literature, started in 1807, did not compensate for the absence of newspapers. Even theMorning Post, though siding with France, was not admitted.

As long as theArguslasted 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 theArgusletters 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 universallydespised 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 themselvesmore Britannicoin 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 returnon 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 Malabarstory, which on his arrival in England he issued in English, as also aPicture 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 byholding 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 attemptedin 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 fromCambrai 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’ssake. Indeed this became a trade, and in 1811 two captains at Bruges were arrested for visiting thedépôtsand 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 theirliberty. 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 hisNarrative 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, hadto 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 returnedviâCalais 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 withher 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 Russiannegative 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’sLife 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 thispromise 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 theMoniteurof 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 wasfrequently 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 thecrim. 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 herecommended 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 theirrelease 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. Corvisartlikewise 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 wasthen 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 stoodhim 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 theEdinburgh 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 toSwitzerland, 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 personallypresenting 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 theTimes, 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 madeProtestants. 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 formerlyknown. 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 MissMount.[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 tovisit 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 thedétenuspermitted 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 theTimesstyled 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 aliaisonwith 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 offCalais, 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 EnglandviâHolland 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 theClassical 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 LouisXVIII.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. Occasionallythe 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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