Napoleon and his British Captives
Lewis, M., (1962), Napoleon and his British Captives, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London.
Michael Lewis’ Napoleon and his British Captives is the most comprehensive overview I’ve come across of the lives of British prisoners of war in France during the Napoleonic Wars. As one would expect of a late professor of History at the Royal Naval College it is impeccably researched though the writing is somewhat “idiosyncratic”. I found Lewis' presumption that all his readers are British very annoying, he refers continually to “we” rather than “the British”, though this is a minor irritation compared to his conviction that his readers are also male (e.g. “if the reader stops to consider...he will see that...”). However the subject matter is so compelling, and the research so thorough, that it is easy to tune out the author’s rather pompous tone.
The book is very precise in its scope, covering British prisoners in France between 1803 and 1814. Lewis briefly mentions the fate of French prisoners in Britain by way of comparison but makes it clear that any in depth discussion of their plight is out of scope. Lewis is at pains to stress how radically war changed for combatants and civilians alike in 1803. He argues that during previous centuries war had been fought between sovereigns and professional armed services and that there had been little enmity between the civilians of the warring nations. Napoleon changed all that by launching a policy of total war, placing the entire nation on a war footing and regarding all civilians as potential combatants. Tbh I am not sufficiently familiar with the political and military history of the Europe during this period to comment on Lewis hypothesis but it’s certainly an interesting theory.
This backdrop of “total war” provides the context for Napoleon’s entirely unexpected and unprecedented decree of 1803 authorising the detention of all male British subjects in France. This resulted in a whole new class of prisoners, the détenus, many of whom were wealthy well connected gentlemen, their families and retainers, who had been traveling in Europe and enjoying the pleasures of the continent. At the same time the privileges of parole were withdrawn in all but name and exchanges of POWs were halted. Prior to 1803 gentlemen and officer class POWs were routinely exchanged for equivalent ranking officers and, up until the period of their exchange, they could expect to be placed on parole which allowed them freedom of domicile and residence and, perhaps more importantly, freedom from physical restraint. Men, who were not deemed worthy of parole, had no such privileges and were exchanged on mass in cartels.
After 1803, service officers, merchant men, ratings and civilian détenus alike were rounded up and despatched to hastily established prison depots situated in conveniently disused citadels on what had once been the northern and eastern borders of France. Their destination depended on their rank and station. Détenus, officers and young gentlemen went to Verdun. Midshipmen were periodically sent to Valenciennes. Ratings and merchant men went to Givet, Arras, Besançon, Auxonne, Briançon and other smaller depots. And mauvais sujets, or “criminals” were sent to the penal depots of Sarrelibre, Sedan, Metz and the dreaded Bitche.
In 1803 Verdun was a small town of little note, however following the sudden influx of wealthy détenus with little do but fritter away their fortunes, it quickly took on the appearance of a fashionable resort with private clubs, balls, gambling houses, brothels and even a race course. Conditions were extremely liberal, particularly for those who could afford to line the pocket of the notoriously corrupt and paranoid Colonel Wirion, and many of the détenus lived in comfort if not luxury. Fortunes were made and lost in the gaming clubs and at the racetrack and one unfortunate midshipman committed suicide to escape mounting gambling debts. The senior naval officer at Verdun, Captain Jahleel Brenton, did his utmost to limit the excesses and protect the morals of his junior charges and established a school to encourage them to spend their time more profitably. All gentlemen prisoners at Verdun were placed on parole, though privileges varied considerably according to rank, and also the ability bribe Colonel Wirion and his guards. For the relatively impoverished midshipmen who, unlike the wealthy détenus, were required to attend appel or roll call twice daily, who lacked the means to pay the escalating bribes, and who were likely to be incarcerated for minor transgressions, the attractions of Verdun quickly paled and it was not long before they turned their attention to escape.
Lewis dwells at great length on the vexing issue of parole. Although the privileges of parole had been seriously eroded by Napoleon’s decree and it’s implementation by petty and corrupt depot commandants, it is clear that British service men still set great store by their honour. Midshipman Edward Boys, a prisoner at Verdun and Valenciennes, claimed that “the honour of British officers was more certain security than locks, bolts and fortresses” and he and many others set out to prove that this was indeed the case. Some of the ancien régime commandants realised the truth of this boast and Lewis cites several instances of midshipmen being placed on parole and ordered to march from one prison depot to another without chains or guards. This they unfailingly did.
There are remarkably few cases of officers escaping while on parole and those that did were treated with utter contempt and faced the stiffest penalties both in Britain and in France. The Transport Board investigated the cases of all prisoners who returned to Britain and if they believed parole had been transgressed it was not unheard of for the offending officer to be stripped of their rank, dismissed from the service in disgrace and sent back to prison in France. Such cases were few and far between though. For the greater majority the convention was to first contravene their parole by some minor misdemeanour, such as missing appel or roll call. Once under lock and key, and no longer bound to honour parole, they were free to escape, and escape they did, with the most extraordinary bravery and ingenuity. The midshipmen were the most daring and persistent of the escapers. Young, fit, determined and with lofty ideals they had little to hold them back. However Lewis also cites examples of lieutenants, military officers, merchant men, détenus, seamen, and even ships boys who escaped repeatedly and with equal bravado.
The penalties facing escapees if they were caught were severe; some were shot, others died attempting to flee. Those that were recaptured relinquished any privileges attending their rank and were force marched in chains to the penal depots; frequently under the most horrendous conditions. Of all the penal depots Bitche, known to the British officers as “The Mansion of Tears”, had the most sinister reputation, though it appears that conditions at the men’s penal depot of Sarrelibre were possibly even more barbaric and degrading. At Bitche the officers and men were held in souterrains hewn out of the rock on which the fortress perched, with the depth of the souterrain dependant on the seriousness of the “crime”, or rather the persistence of the escaper.
However even the deepest of the Bitche souterrains could not detain the determined midshipmen and the daring and ingenuity of their escapes frequently beggars belief. All the individual stories Lewis relates, many of which were written by the escapees themselves, are extraordinary and it is hard to choose examples.
Edward Boys, midshipman HMS Phoenix, was a determined and highly principled escaper. At one stage on route to Verdun, Boys and his shipmates marched alone ahead of their guards who were too drunk to accompany them. However Boys also had a streak of youthful irreverence and later on the same journey was thrown into prison for placing a plaster bust of Napoleon upside down in a chamber pot. Boys spent time in Verdun and escaped from Valenciennes with three comrades who eventually got away via Bruges through the heroic efforts of an courageous Anglophile Dutch woman, Madam Derikre.
George Vernon Jackson, lieutenant HMS Junon and Edward Lestrange, lieutenant, 71st Foot, have a special place in my heart as, after several failed escape attempts, they had the sheer brass neck to walk straight out of the front gate of Bitche disguised as French guards. After getting away from Bitche, Jackson and Lestrange, took the unique step of breaking into Verdun to obtain forged papers and passports. At this point Lestrange was advised by friends “among them a Lord and a Baronet” to abandon Jackson as his plans for escape were “too romantic”. Jackson finally obtained the necessary papers and escaped via Paris and Caen masquerading as a Swiss watchmaker.
Frederick Whitehurst, midshipman, was 6’2” tall, attractive, charming and spoke French like a native however he nearly scuppered several escape attempts on account of his unfortunate clumsiness. Indeed Jackson describes him as “naturally inclined to be awkward and moved about more like an elephant than a human being”. Whitehurst escaped with Boys from Valenciennes, but after returning to to the Royal Navy had the misfortune to be captured a second time later in the war. Undeterred, Whiehurst escaped en route to Verdun with Jackson but was eventually recaptured and remained a prisoner until the end of the war
Donat Henchy O’Brian was perhaps one of the toughest and most persistent escapers. He escaped, or in his own words “went on the tramp” three times and during his second failed solitary attempt survived a gruelling month on the run along the banks of the Rhine in the depth of winter. O’Brian finally got away with three companions after descending the ramparts of Bitche and walking half the length of Europe from Lorraine to Trieste where, in an extraordinary coincidence he was picked up by his own ship years after he was captured. That must rate as an “It’s the bloody Indy” moment if ever there was one!
Joshua Done was a somewhat rash seventeen year old civilian détenu who had gone to Paris to study music in 1802. He tried to escape seven times from a bewildering variety of depots before successfully escaping from Verdun on his eighth attempt. Done’s crowning achievement at Verdun came when “allowed to play the cathedral organ, he gave a fortissimo rendering of God Save the King, and anticipating a speedy return to Bitche, slid over the town wall. He walked 480 miles in eleven days before being caught at St Malo and sent back whence he came.”
William Mansell was a young, slight “smooth cheeked” midshipman who spent months on the run with Boys and Whitehurst before disguising himself as a girl and escaping via Bruges with the help of a network of smugglers and anglophiles.
Captain Jahleel Brenton
The stories of those that did not escape are equally as remarkable as those that did. Among these are the humanitarians Captain Jahleel Brenton and the civilian detenu Rev Thomas Wolfe. Brenton used his own relatively privileged position as senior ranking officer at Verdun to improve the lot of junior officers and seamen alike at all the depots around Verdun and also assumed responsibility for administering the payments due to all naval prisoners from both the British and French governments. Rev Wolfe give up his own comfortable life at Verdrun to move to the men’s depot of Givet where he worked tirelessly to improve the lot of the seamen who had been detained there without officers to see to their welfare. Both men were eventually released but not before Brenton’s health had suffered considerably.
John Essel, sub-lieutenant, spent months on the run with O'Brien before being captured and sent to Bitche where he fell to his death descending the ramparts. There are conflicting accounts of how Essel came to meet his death, some suggest that too many prisoners were attempting to descend a single rope which snapped from their weight, other claim that the rope was cut by a guard who discovered the escape attempt.
And last, but by no means least, the indefatigable Alexander Stewart. Stewart was captured as a 14 year old ships boy in 1804, he did not escape despite two brave attempts, one of which involved racing across the frozen Moselle with the ice cracking beneath him. Ten years later in 1814 at the age of 24 he gained his freedom at the end of the war. Stewart has the distinction of having spent time in almost every French prison depot and during his years of imprisonment is estimated to have marched over 3000 miles on foot.
The bravery, ingenuity and determination of these men is as extraordinary as the extreme suffering they endured and their stories are all the more remarkable when one remembers that most of those that escaped were under the age of twenty five.
Illustrations from Ellison, S., (1883), Prison scenes; and narrative of escape from France, during the late war, Whittaker.
Michael Lewis’ Napoleon and his British Captives is the most comprehensive overview I’ve come across of the lives of British prisoners of war in France during the Napoleonic Wars. As one would expect of a late professor of History at the Royal Naval College it is impeccably researched though the writing is somewhat “idiosyncratic”. I found Lewis' presumption that all his readers are British very annoying, he refers continually to “we” rather than “the British”, though this is a minor irritation compared to his conviction that his readers are also male (e.g. “if the reader stops to consider...he will see that...”). However the subject matter is so compelling, and the research so thorough, that it is easy to tune out the author’s rather pompous tone.
The book is very precise in its scope, covering British prisoners in France between 1803 and 1814. Lewis briefly mentions the fate of French prisoners in Britain by way of comparison but makes it clear that any in depth discussion of their plight is out of scope. Lewis is at pains to stress how radically war changed for combatants and civilians alike in 1803. He argues that during previous centuries war had been fought between sovereigns and professional armed services and that there had been little enmity between the civilians of the warring nations. Napoleon changed all that by launching a policy of total war, placing the entire nation on a war footing and regarding all civilians as potential combatants. Tbh I am not sufficiently familiar with the political and military history of the Europe during this period to comment on Lewis hypothesis but it’s certainly an interesting theory.
This backdrop of “total war” provides the context for Napoleon’s entirely unexpected and unprecedented decree of 1803 authorising the detention of all male British subjects in France. This resulted in a whole new class of prisoners, the détenus, many of whom were wealthy well connected gentlemen, their families and retainers, who had been traveling in Europe and enjoying the pleasures of the continent. At the same time the privileges of parole were withdrawn in all but name and exchanges of POWs were halted. Prior to 1803 gentlemen and officer class POWs were routinely exchanged for equivalent ranking officers and, up until the period of their exchange, they could expect to be placed on parole which allowed them freedom of domicile and residence and, perhaps more importantly, freedom from physical restraint. Men, who were not deemed worthy of parole, had no such privileges and were exchanged on mass in cartels.
After 1803, service officers, merchant men, ratings and civilian détenus alike were rounded up and despatched to hastily established prison depots situated in conveniently disused citadels on what had once been the northern and eastern borders of France. Their destination depended on their rank and station. Détenus, officers and young gentlemen went to Verdun. Midshipmen were periodically sent to Valenciennes. Ratings and merchant men went to Givet, Arras, Besançon, Auxonne, Briançon and other smaller depots. And mauvais sujets, or “criminals” were sent to the penal depots of Sarrelibre, Sedan, Metz and the dreaded Bitche.
In 1803 Verdun was a small town of little note, however following the sudden influx of wealthy détenus with little do but fritter away their fortunes, it quickly took on the appearance of a fashionable resort with private clubs, balls, gambling houses, brothels and even a race course. Conditions were extremely liberal, particularly for those who could afford to line the pocket of the notoriously corrupt and paranoid Colonel Wirion, and many of the détenus lived in comfort if not luxury. Fortunes were made and lost in the gaming clubs and at the racetrack and one unfortunate midshipman committed suicide to escape mounting gambling debts. The senior naval officer at Verdun, Captain Jahleel Brenton, did his utmost to limit the excesses and protect the morals of his junior charges and established a school to encourage them to spend their time more profitably. All gentlemen prisoners at Verdun were placed on parole, though privileges varied considerably according to rank, and also the ability bribe Colonel Wirion and his guards. For the relatively impoverished midshipmen who, unlike the wealthy détenus, were required to attend appel or roll call twice daily, who lacked the means to pay the escalating bribes, and who were likely to be incarcerated for minor transgressions, the attractions of Verdun quickly paled and it was not long before they turned their attention to escape.
Lewis dwells at great length on the vexing issue of parole. Although the privileges of parole had been seriously eroded by Napoleon’s decree and it’s implementation by petty and corrupt depot commandants, it is clear that British service men still set great store by their honour. Midshipman Edward Boys, a prisoner at Verdun and Valenciennes, claimed that “the honour of British officers was more certain security than locks, bolts and fortresses” and he and many others set out to prove that this was indeed the case. Some of the ancien régime commandants realised the truth of this boast and Lewis cites several instances of midshipmen being placed on parole and ordered to march from one prison depot to another without chains or guards. This they unfailingly did.
There are remarkably few cases of officers escaping while on parole and those that did were treated with utter contempt and faced the stiffest penalties both in Britain and in France. The Transport Board investigated the cases of all prisoners who returned to Britain and if they believed parole had been transgressed it was not unheard of for the offending officer to be stripped of their rank, dismissed from the service in disgrace and sent back to prison in France. Such cases were few and far between though. For the greater majority the convention was to first contravene their parole by some minor misdemeanour, such as missing appel or roll call. Once under lock and key, and no longer bound to honour parole, they were free to escape, and escape they did, with the most extraordinary bravery and ingenuity. The midshipmen were the most daring and persistent of the escapers. Young, fit, determined and with lofty ideals they had little to hold them back. However Lewis also cites examples of lieutenants, military officers, merchant men, détenus, seamen, and even ships boys who escaped repeatedly and with equal bravado.
The penalties facing escapees if they were caught were severe; some were shot, others died attempting to flee. Those that were recaptured relinquished any privileges attending their rank and were force marched in chains to the penal depots; frequently under the most horrendous conditions. Of all the penal depots Bitche, known to the British officers as “The Mansion of Tears”, had the most sinister reputation, though it appears that conditions at the men’s penal depot of Sarrelibre were possibly even more barbaric and degrading. At Bitche the officers and men were held in souterrains hewn out of the rock on which the fortress perched, with the depth of the souterrain dependant on the seriousness of the “crime”, or rather the persistence of the escaper.
However even the deepest of the Bitche souterrains could not detain the determined midshipmen and the daring and ingenuity of their escapes frequently beggars belief. All the individual stories Lewis relates, many of which were written by the escapees themselves, are extraordinary and it is hard to choose examples.
Edward Boys, midshipman HMS Phoenix, was a determined and highly principled escaper. At one stage on route to Verdun, Boys and his shipmates marched alone ahead of their guards who were too drunk to accompany them. However Boys also had a streak of youthful irreverence and later on the same journey was thrown into prison for placing a plaster bust of Napoleon upside down in a chamber pot. Boys spent time in Verdun and escaped from Valenciennes with three comrades who eventually got away via Bruges through the heroic efforts of an courageous Anglophile Dutch woman, Madam Derikre.
George Vernon Jackson, lieutenant HMS Junon and Edward Lestrange, lieutenant, 71st Foot, have a special place in my heart as, after several failed escape attempts, they had the sheer brass neck to walk straight out of the front gate of Bitche disguised as French guards. After getting away from Bitche, Jackson and Lestrange, took the unique step of breaking into Verdun to obtain forged papers and passports. At this point Lestrange was advised by friends “among them a Lord and a Baronet” to abandon Jackson as his plans for escape were “too romantic”. Jackson finally obtained the necessary papers and escaped via Paris and Caen masquerading as a Swiss watchmaker.
Frederick Whitehurst, midshipman, was 6’2” tall, attractive, charming and spoke French like a native however he nearly scuppered several escape attempts on account of his unfortunate clumsiness. Indeed Jackson describes him as “naturally inclined to be awkward and moved about more like an elephant than a human being”. Whitehurst escaped with Boys from Valenciennes, but after returning to to the Royal Navy had the misfortune to be captured a second time later in the war. Undeterred, Whiehurst escaped en route to Verdun with Jackson but was eventually recaptured and remained a prisoner until the end of the war
Donat Henchy O’Brian was perhaps one of the toughest and most persistent escapers. He escaped, or in his own words “went on the tramp” three times and during his second failed solitary attempt survived a gruelling month on the run along the banks of the Rhine in the depth of winter. O’Brian finally got away with three companions after descending the ramparts of Bitche and walking half the length of Europe from Lorraine to Trieste where, in an extraordinary coincidence he was picked up by his own ship years after he was captured. That must rate as an “It’s the bloody Indy” moment if ever there was one!
Joshua Done was a somewhat rash seventeen year old civilian détenu who had gone to Paris to study music in 1802. He tried to escape seven times from a bewildering variety of depots before successfully escaping from Verdun on his eighth attempt. Done’s crowning achievement at Verdun came when “allowed to play the cathedral organ, he gave a fortissimo rendering of God Save the King, and anticipating a speedy return to Bitche, slid over the town wall. He walked 480 miles in eleven days before being caught at St Malo and sent back whence he came.”
William Mansell was a young, slight “smooth cheeked” midshipman who spent months on the run with Boys and Whitehurst before disguising himself as a girl and escaping via Bruges with the help of a network of smugglers and anglophiles.
Captain Jahleel Brenton
The stories of those that did not escape are equally as remarkable as those that did. Among these are the humanitarians Captain Jahleel Brenton and the civilian detenu Rev Thomas Wolfe. Brenton used his own relatively privileged position as senior ranking officer at Verdun to improve the lot of junior officers and seamen alike at all the depots around Verdun and also assumed responsibility for administering the payments due to all naval prisoners from both the British and French governments. Rev Wolfe give up his own comfortable life at Verdrun to move to the men’s depot of Givet where he worked tirelessly to improve the lot of the seamen who had been detained there without officers to see to their welfare. Both men were eventually released but not before Brenton’s health had suffered considerably.
John Essel, sub-lieutenant, spent months on the run with O'Brien before being captured and sent to Bitche where he fell to his death descending the ramparts. There are conflicting accounts of how Essel came to meet his death, some suggest that too many prisoners were attempting to descend a single rope which snapped from their weight, other claim that the rope was cut by a guard who discovered the escape attempt.
And last, but by no means least, the indefatigable Alexander Stewart. Stewart was captured as a 14 year old ships boy in 1804, he did not escape despite two brave attempts, one of which involved racing across the frozen Moselle with the ice cracking beneath him. Ten years later in 1814 at the age of 24 he gained his freedom at the end of the war. Stewart has the distinction of having spent time in almost every French prison depot and during his years of imprisonment is estimated to have marched over 3000 miles on foot.
The bravery, ingenuity and determination of these men is as extraordinary as the extreme suffering they endured and their stories are all the more remarkable when one remembers that most of those that escaped were under the age of twenty five.
Illustrations from Ellison, S., (1883), Prison scenes; and narrative of escape from France, during the late war, Whittaker.