Chapter X: Appendix: A. Members of Parliament, 316 (8)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The _Times_ of October 18, 1839, says:--

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

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

V

TWO RESTORATIONS

The Restoration--Aristocrats and Commoners--Unwelcome
Guests--Wellington in Danger--Misgivings--Napoleonic
Emblems--Spectacles--Visits to Elba--Egerton’s Siege--St.
Helena--Eyewitnesses and Survivors.

While the fall of Napoleon thus enabled numbers of Englishmen to return home, it allowed and tempted a smaller but yet considerable number to make or renew acquaintance with France. According to Wansey, there were four or five hundred of these,[273] scarcely any, however, staying more than a fortnight or three weeks. The through fare from London was now £5. The visitors had the interesting spectacle of the restoration of the Bourbons, while the very few who made a more lengthened stay witnessed also the Hundred Days’ reign of Napoleon, and his second and final fall. Never surely in Europe in modern times were more startling vicissitudes crowded into so brief a period. Even Spain with its _pronunciamientos_ was not destined to present such a kaleidoscope. For a parallel we must go forward to the Central American republics or backward to the time when the pretorians made and unmade Roman emperors.

These visitors, like those who hurried over in 1802, included all sorts and conditions of men. There were statesmen like Castlereagh, anxious to weigh the chances of stability of the reinstated dynasty. He paid two visits, the first in August 1814 on his way to the Vienna Congress, the second in February 1815. It was probably on the first visit that Ney, dining with him and with officers of the allied armies, had the bad taste or want of tact to argue that an invasion of England, which he said he had strenuously urged on Napoleon, would certainly have succeeded. There were subordinate officials like Wellesley Pole, Master of the Mint and brother to Wellington, and Croker who, as we learn from the police bulletins, preferred a complaint that American privateers were still being sheltered at Bordeaux. It was not at this visit but at a subsequent one in July 1815 that Croker inspected the memorable scenes of the Revolution, discovered in the possession of Marat’s old printer Colin a large collection of pamphlets, and was introduced by him to Marat’s sister, whom he found as repulsive-looking as her brother. ‘Colin,’ said Croker, ‘had in some small dark rooms up two or three flights of stairs an immense quantity of brochures of the earlier days of the Revolution. What he had least of were the works of Marat, even those which he himself printed, which he accounted for naturally enough by saying that there were times in which it might be somewhat hazardous to possess them.’ Croker induced the British Museum in 1817 to purchase the collection, and he afterwards formed a collection of his own which ultimately had the same destination. There were politicians like Grey, F. J. Robinson, Fazakerley, Grattan, Whitbread, and Brougham. Brougham attended the sittings of the Institute, of which he was afterwards to be an associate, saw Laplace, and had a long conversation with Carnot. This was his first visit to France, for his step-grandson Sir Edward Malet is mistaken in stating that he once heard Mirabeau speak. ‘I never,’ says Brougham, ‘spent any time by half so delightful. My fortnight passed like a day.’ Are we to attribute to this visit the birth of an infant afterwards known as Madame Blaze de Bury, who died in 1894 at the age of eighty, and who in spite of her alleged birth as a Stewart in Scotland was believed to be Brougham’s daughter by a French mother? She strongly resembled him both physically and mentally. Her husband had an English mother named Bury; her daughter, like herself a writer, died in December 1902.

There was Thelwall, the acquitted Radical of 1794, who had temporarily renounced politics and taken to the cure of stammering. There was Arthur Thistlewood, who, it is said, had visited Paris in 1794, and who soon entered into conspiracies, the last of which, named from Cato Street, resulted in his conviction and execution in 1820. He was decidedly an exception among the visitors, yet the Paris air may have helped to lead him astray, for it was an atmosphere of conspiracy.

There were philosophers and historians such as Sir James Mackintosh, who was anxious to explore the French archives, taking ten copyists with him; but these formidable preparations not unnaturally occasioned obstruction from a suspicious curator, Hauterive,[274] so that Wellington had to urge that no mischief could result from the disclosure of political secrets half a century old. Mackintosh’s son-in-law, Claudius James Rich, the traveller, accompanied him, and the transcripts then made are now in the British Museum. They are limited to the times of the Stuarts.

Archibald Alison, the future historian, accompanied by a fellow Scot and fellow historian, Patrick Fraser Tytler, also went in May 1814, returning by Flanders. It is not clear from their joint narrative whether both or Tytler alone went in the autumn to Aix, staying till the eve of Napoleon’s return.

There were three poets, Rogers, Moore, and Campbell, the last stopping at Rouen to see his brother Daniel, from whom he had parted at Hamburg in 1800. Mrs. Siddons took over her daughter Cecily, who did not continue her mother’s fame, but married a Scottish lawyer, George Combe. Kemble escorted her, with Mrs. Twiss, whose brother-in-law Richard had seen Paris in 1792. There was Mrs. Damer, the artist, of whom we have already heard and shall hear again. There was the more eminent sculptor Chantrey, who made the acquaintance of Canova. There was Curran, who had just resigned his judgeship, and Serjeant Best, not yet a judge. The Duke of Sussex had given Curran an introduction to the future Charles X. Everything he heard intensified his hatred of Napoleon.[275] There were military men like General Ramsay, Bruce, destined to assist in the escape of Lavalette, and Lord Cathcart, who had taken part in the expedition to Copenhagen and was subsequently Ambassador to St. Petersburg. Madame Junot, in whose house Cathcart was quartered, and who speaks highly of his courtesy, had also to receive Lord and Lady Cole, who sent for Eliza Bathurst. She was the handsome daughter of the diplomatist who so mysteriously disappeared. Another military visitor was Colonel William Carmichael Smyth, who had accompanied his father in 1802; but Count Nugent, though born in Ireland, was an Austrian officer. The Navy was represented by Sir Sidney Smith, who was bound for the Congress of Vienna to plead for the reinstatement of Gustavus IV. on the throne of Sweden. He also advocated an international expedition against the piratical Dey of Algiers, of which he would himself have taken the command. Nothing came of either scheme, but he got up a subscription dinner, attended by royal and other celebrities, the proceeds of which were devoted to the redemption of prisoners in Algiers. Science was represented by a Scottish professor, John (afterwards Sir John) Leslie, an Edinburgh Reviewer and eminent mathematician, who formed the habit of paying yearly visits to the Continent. There were philanthropists like Clarkson, who, as on his visit in 1789, was eager to obtain the consent of the new French Government to the abolition of the slave-trade, while Wilberforce and Zachary Macaulay, the historian’s father, were interesting themselves at home in the same cause, the latter sending over, or taking advantage of the presence of, his brother General Macaulay. Clarkson found sympathy from Lafayette, Bishop Grégoire, and Madame de Staël. The antiquary and connoisseur, James Millingen, passed through Paris on his way to or from Florence, as also William Stewart Rose, translator of Ariosto, friend of Ugo Foscolo, Walter Scott, and the Countess of Albany. He was destined to find a wife at Venice. There were painters like Stothard, Wilkie, and Haydon, to the last of whom we are indebted for the liveliest account of Paris, though this, like the rest of his journal, was not published till after his tragical death. He represents Wilkie as constantly exclaiming, ‘What a fool Napoleon was to lose such a country! dear, dear!’ Both Wilkie and Haydon sang ‘God save the King’ in the streets of Rouen, to the amazement or amusement of the townsmen, one of whom said they were English milords. In Paris Wilkie tried to sell his prints, and had frequent disputes at restaurants about change. Another note-taker was Thomas Raikes, brother of the founder of Sunday-schools, but unfortunately his diary does not begin till 1832. A third diarist was Henry Crabb Robinson, to whom street urchins at Dieppe shouted ‘Be off!’ and who in a Rouen theatre heard a line against England applauded. He spent five weeks in Paris without a moment’s _ennui_, yet left it without a moment’s regret, travelling to Boulogne in company with Copleston, ‘a very sensible, well-informed clergyman,’ just elected Provost of Oriel at Oxford, and destined to be Bishop of Llandaff. Stephen Weston and William Shepherd went doubtless with the intention of again reporting their adventures. William D. Fellowes found material for one of his books, and on another visit in 1817 he visited the old monastery of La Trappe. There were agriculturists like Morris Birkbeck of Wanborough. There were doctors like Hume, chief physician to the army, and Williams the oculist.

Among the aristocratic visitors were Viscount Ponsonby, afterwards Ambassador to Constantinople and Vienna, and the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, parents of the present Duke of Rutland, the Duke publishing his fortnight’s journal and receiving many attentions from Count Dillon. There were also the Earl of Charlemont, the Earl of Bradford, Lord Forbes, Lord Lucan, the Earl of Oxford, Lord Kinnaird, Lady Aldborough (who remained till after Waterloo), the Marquis and Marchioness of Lansdowne, the Marquis of Downshire, Lord Ilchester, Lord Hill, the Marquis and Marchioness of Bath, the Earl and Countess of Hardwicke, Lord and Lady Coventry, the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, Lord Binning (afterwards Earl of Haddington), Lord Compton, the Marquis of Exeter, Lord and Lady Ranelagh, the Duke of Portland, Lord Gosford, Lord Trimleston, the Earl and Countess Darnley, the Duke of Devonshire, his stepmother, Lord and Lady Morpeth, Lord Geo. Leveson-Gower, Sir John Sebright, M.P. for Hertfordshire, Lord Sunderland, grandson of the Duke of Marlborough, Sir John and Lady Stepney, Lady Augusta Cotton, Lord and Lady Holland, the Earl of Clare, Lord Carington, Lord Brownlow, Lady Bentinck, the notorious Lady Hamilton, the aged Duchess of Melfort with her son, the Marquis of Aylesbury, Lord Miltown, who, paralysed in his legs from childhood, went about in a chair, William Henry (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton, Lord Burghersh (as Earl of Westmorland he became a diplomatist), Lord Apsley, son and heir of Earl Bathurst, the Earl of Essex,[276] Sir John and Lady Knatchbull, Sir W. Clayton, Bagot (afterwards Sir Charles), and the Marquis of Clanricarde, who married Canning’s daughter, was famous for gymnastic feats, and was afterwards Ambassador to Russia, Postmaster-General, and Lord Privy Seal. Edward John Littleton, M.P. for Staffordshire, a classical scholar, was accompanied by his handsome wife, Hyacinth Mary, natural daughter of the Marquis Wellesley, but recognised by the Wellesley family. Lady Priscilla Wellesley, daughter of the Earl of Mornington, another but legitimate niece of Wellington, just of age and destined to be Lady Burghersh and Countess of Westmorland, was in time to see d’Artois enter Paris. She survived till 1879.[277] Lord Fitzroy Somerset, son of the Duke of Beaufort, in 1852 became Lord Raglan and was destined to die before Sebastapol. He married in August 1814 Wellington’s other favourite niece, Lady Emily Wellesley. The Earl of Harrowby was accompanied by Wellesley Pole and Gerald Wellesley, son of Sir Henry and afterwards Prebendary of Durham. Lord Aberdeen, Ambassador at Vienna, who had accompanied the Austrian army in its march into France, was one of the English diplomatists who signed the Treaty of Paris of May 1814. John William Ward, afterwards Viscount and Earl of Dudley, a contributor to the _Quarterly_ and M.P. for Ilchester, was also in Paris on his way to Italy. He rated Napoleon above Alexander and Cæsar. Ward’s travelling companion from Calais was General Montagu Mathew, M.P. for Tipperary, brother of the Earl of Landaff and a strenuous advocate of Catholic Emancipation. Thompson, M.P. for Midhurst--it is not clear whether he was the ex-M.P. for Evesham, a captive in 1803--was second on the 9th February 1815 in a bloodless duel between Colonels Quentin and Palmer, the latter firing in the air after his antagonist had fired and missed.

We should not omit among the visitors Anne Perry, the wife of James Perry of the _Morning Chronicle_. Perry himself had spent a year in Paris in 1792, sending of course letters to his paper, and he may be regarded as the earliest of Paris correspondents. He had, moreover, for the previous twelve months obtained the services of a French barrister named Sanchamau, the translator of several English works. Sanchamau at first found a seat on sufferance in the Assembly, in the gallery allotted to the _suppléants_, that is to say, the men destined to fill up vacancies from death or other causes; but he applied on the 22nd January 1792 for a permanent seat in the new journalists’ gallery.[278] To return to Perry’s wife, she was captured by Algerian pirates on her way home from Lisbon, and although soon released, captivity and seventeen weeks of a boisterous sea aggravated her already precarious health. She expired at Bordeaux in February 1815, at the age of thirty-eight. We do not hear whether her husband attended her deathbed.

Even London shopkeepers went over for a week. John Scott, editor of the _Champion_, encountered one full of anti-French prejudices, ignorant of the language, unprovided even with a passport, and equipped only with Bank of England notes.[279]

To accommodate the visitors, an Anglican service was held in a chapel of the Protestant Oratoire, probably the upper room which was hired from about 1860 to 1885 by the Church of Scotland, and _Galignani’s Messenger_ was started, an edition of which, after Waterloo and during the stay of the British garrison, was published at Cambrai.

‘The English at that time,’ says Madame de Chastenay, ‘almost did us the honours of Paris’; that is to say, they seemed hosts rather than guests, and after the first ball both sexes discarded their eccentric costumes. Yet they did not find themselves altogether welcome. The middle classes feared an English monopoly of trade, returned prisoners told stories of ill-treatment in England, and the populace resented the arrogance of conquerors. Miss Anne Carter must have been strangely mistaken in writing to her sister, ‘It is impossible to describe the enthusiasm with which we are everywhere received as English.’[280] Thomas Campbell, on the other hand, had been hooted at Dieppe, which he found incensed against the English, yet he does not speak of any incivility in Paris, where he danced attendance for nearly two months on Mrs. Siddons.[281]

A confidential police bulletin of the 17th October 1814 says:--

‘The attention of the police has been called to the multitude
of English who inundate Paris, and whose obscure station
occasions uneasiness as to their destination and intentions.
It is remembered on this point that after the Treaty of Amiens
the French Government made an official complaint that the
London police had vomited (_sic_) six or seven hundred
persons, the scum of England, who secretly influenced trade,
public opinion, and police. We see collected here a number
of disreputable people who appear to be without means of
subsistence, and whose arrival from England seems an enigma.’

Again on the 4th November:--

‘It is positively stated that on Saturday last Lord Wellington
complained to the King of the mortification and ill-treatment
which various Englishmen have experienced and are daily
experiencing in Paris, as well as of the lack of supervision
shown by the French authorities in putting an end to these
dangerous aggressions. It is a fact that at the Café Tortoni,
the Opera, the restaurants, and in other public places,
Englishmen are constantly affronted. These disorders are
attributed to a troop of half-pay officers or to some turbulent
men discharged from the Guard of Honour. It seems certain,
moreover, that Lord Wellington has expressly enjoined the
English who are in Paris to behave very circumspectly, and not
to notice provocations which might disturb the harmony necessary
between the two nations.’

And on 19th December:--

‘Every day there are fresh occasions of remarking the hatred of
the Parisians for the English. Yesterday at the Salon the most
violent language was used respecting them, and that to their
faces.’