IVCAPTIVITY

The Rupture—Detentions—Flights and Narrow Escapes—Life at Verdun—Extortion—Napoleon’s Rigour—M.P.’s—TheArgus—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 theRevue 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 beon those who repudiate their own signature and refuse to execute treaties.”’

‘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 beon 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 theLondon Gazettedated the 16th announcedan 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 seizureof 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 thePrince of Walespacket and the cutterNancy, 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 thePrince 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. TheArgushad 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 wereprobably 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. AugustineSayer, 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 theAlmanach Nationalwere sharply rebuked for proposingto 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 GeorgeIII.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 theTimesa 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 theTimesof 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 thisword are comprised the ideas, character, and love of the people whose idiom you prefer to your own.We never heard it alleged asunwisein the Government ofChina, to intercept all communication between its subjects and foreigners.Except as afirst stepand beginning of mischief, all apprehensions from the representation of a French Comedy are ridiculous. It is as themali 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?

We never heard it alleged asunwisein the Government ofChina, to intercept all communication between its subjects and foreigners.

Except as afirst stepand beginning of mischief, all apprehensions from the representation of a French Comedy are ridiculous. It is as themali 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 everythingrelating 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 theMorning 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 thesedocuments, 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, notdétenus) 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 hadadopted the wordsmogler) spirits into England. Fishing-boats on both sides were unmolested, unless indeed they had clandestine passengers on board; and theTimes, 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 theMonthly Reviewappealed 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 prisonersof 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.’ Thelegion 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 pawnsas 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 successorof 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 hisquasi-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 9A.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 haveseen, 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, nowblasé, 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 LouisXVI.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 tosix 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 Birminghamin 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 beinterned 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 ofcaptives 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 theArgusin 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 Valenciennesin 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 ofthe 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 therewas 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 1805for 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, andhe 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 inLetters from the Cape, a pamphlet dictated by Napoleon at St. Helena in 1817. It says:—

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