Alexander Stewart: Prisoner of Napoleon and Preacher of the Gospel
Stewart, A. and Peel, R. (1948), The Life of Alexander Stewart: Prisoner of Napoleon and Great Preacher of the Gospel, Sir Halley Stewart Trust.
I’ve not long finished reading the memoir of Alexander Stewart, which nodbear very kindly gave me. I had already come across Stewart before in Michael Lewis’ comprehensive history of British naval prisoners during the Napoleonic wars, Napoleon and his British Captives, but this was the first time I’d had a chance to read his entire life story.
Stewart was born in Kirkcaldy in 1790 and he was just fourteen when the merchant ship he was serving aboard was captured by a French privateer in 1804, an event he had a vivid foretelling of in a dream. Thus began ten years of imprisonment during which Stewart was held in a bewildering number of prison depots and walked the length and breadth of France. Twice.
As a merchant seaman, and a boy at that, Stewart received none of the privileges or pay afforded to naval prisoners of war, but it seems he was not a boy to complain. After being marched from Calais to Verdun, where he spent three months, and benefitted from the boys school established by Captain Jahleel Brenton, Stewart was transferred to the Sarrelibre, a depot reserved for seamen and merchant sailors where the conditions were appalling and the food putrid. After enduring Sarrelibre for seven years Stewart finally escaped in until 1811 with three companions. Concealed by a blizzard, the four young men descended the ramparts with the aid of a rope, however Stewart had made the mistake of wrapping the rope around his hand and, unable to control his descent, the rope sliced through his hand to the bone. The alarm was raised that prisoners had absconded and Stewart and his companions had to flee across the frozen Mosel, with the ice cracking beneath them, in order to escape their pursuers. Despite Stewart’s terrible injuries and the appalling winter conditions, the four young men managed to flee as far as Luxembourg before they were captured and despatched in irons to the dreaded penal depot of Bitche. En route Stewart stopped for three months at the prison hospital of Metz, an institution for which he had nothing but the highest praise, where his injured hand was treated. After his recovery, Stewart was chained to a group of French deserters and marched the rest of the way to Bitche. He remained there for just over a year until the end of 1812 when, owing to overcrowding, an order was received to transfer 100 prisoners to Briancon. Stewart volunteered for the transfer despite knowing he would have to walk over 800 miles in chains over the alps to the new depot. This time the prisoners where chained together by the neck, a method of chaining that Stewart found
“…certainly much more trying than by the hands. When it rained the wet from the chains was very annoying, and it was but rarely those in charge of us would loosen any one even to attend to any of the calls of nature.”
At Briancon the mauvais sujet, the deserters and convicts, were held in separate barrack rooms and barred from speaking or associating with the regular prisoners of war. The regime at Braincon was brutal and indeed Stewart recorded that they were worse off than in Bitche itself. “Indeed I should prefer twelve months in Bitche to six here.” After several months, Stewart attempted to escape along with a young midshipman called Hare, by cutting a tunnel through their barrack wall. The attempt was discovered and the two where confined, with three others, in a cachot or cell measuring twelve feet by eight, which opened directly on to the guardroom. Improbably, Stewart and Hare launched a second escape attempt and succeeded in getting away by sawing through the door bolt with a blade that had been concealed in a loaf of bread. After getting the guards drunk they slipped out of the cell and escaped into the alps where they were tracked down again by a detachment from the garrison led by a mountaineer. Stewart and Hare were caught and returned to the cachot where they were confined for forty days. When they were eventually released Stewart recalls that
“Hare suffered much in his limbs, being long nearly powerless. One of the three who remained behind when Hare and I escaped nearly lost the sight of one of his eyes, though not held so long in the cachot as Hare and I, while I came out unscathed but very thin, dirty and emaciated.”
Not long after his release from the cachot, Stewart did manage to effect an escape of sorts when he exchanged identity with a regular prisoner and was transferred to Arras in the north of France. This time, due to his assumed identity, Stewart was allowed to walk unchained and he revelled in the joy of walking freely after “having travelled not less than fifteen hundred miles in chains.”
Journey of ALexander Stewart
Earlier stages in red, later in green
Despite the hardships he suffered, throughout his incarceration Stewart demonstrated an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. He went to enormous lengths to copy or acquire French grammars, literature and text-books which he carried with him during every forced march and failed escape attempt. By the time Stewart reached Arras he had been fluent in written and spoken French or many years and, after setting up classes for the other prisoners, he was recruited by the camp commandant, a popular officer of the Ancien Régime, to act as translator and to administer the men’s pay and allowances.
As the war finally drew to a close, the prison depots were broken up and Stewart was appointed to escort the Arras prisoner to the coast, arrange their transport and billets along the way and administer their finances. Stewart did his duty until they reached Rennes where he left his charges and set off for St. Malo and thence for England. On landing in Portsmouth, Stewart and his companion were sent to the guardship, however as they did not belong to the Kings service they were soon released and sent on their way with only a few francs between them. Their money soon ran out so, at the first town they came to, they applied to the mayor for assistance “after the French fashion”, however they were turned away. After being sent packing from several towns Stewart felt
“…so hurt that I said I would perish by the roadside rather than ask again. I already felt I could spit in the face of England and abandon it forever. We were not culprits. We did not occasion the war. Such treatment was insult added to injury.”
Stewart did eventually manage to make his way to London where, struggling to keep body and soul together, he was forced to sell the precious, hard won books that he had carried the length and breadth of France. “I would willingly have parted with some of my blood instead of them”, he remembered ruefully, many years later. Eventually Stewart managed to secure a berth on a merchant ship bound for St Petersburg, Cronstadt and Elsinore. On returning to England several months later, Stewart had the misfortune to be seized by a press gang and imprisoned in the guardship at South Shields. Luckily, his captain was able to plead for his release and Stewart was finally able to return to his home in Kirkaldy in early 1815, almost eleven years after he had left.
Later in life, Stewart made good use of the language skills and education he had worked so hard to gain during his long years of captivity in France. He built a successful career for himself, first as a teacher and later as a dissenting minister for the Parish of Barnet, just outside London. Stewart brought the same pugnacious determination that had helped him to survive in France, to his new ministry at Barnet where he transformed the fortunes of the dissenting church and established a successful school. He also married and had a large family. Stewart celebrated his golden wedding anniversary in January 1874 and ten months later, passed away at the ripe old age of 84.