The tramp of feet was heard one afternoon late in the Autumn of 1808, on the road that leads from Peterborough to Yaxley. A body of men, four abreast, and for the most part in the garb and with the bearing of soldiers, was marching along. But the sight was not exhilarating. The swing and springy step of soldiers on the march is always a pleasant sight; but there was a downcast look on most of these men’s faces, and a general shabbiness of appearance that was not attractive. And no wonder: for they had come from the battlefield, All down the column and on each side of it marched a file of red-coated militia-men with guns loaded and bayonets fixed, not as a complimentary escort, but a stern necessity, a fact that had been proved not an hour before, when some desperate fellow had broken through the guard, and flung himself from the parapet of the bridge over the Nene at Peterborough, and was shot the moment he rose to the surface of the water. Alas! for him, poor fellow, they could aim well in those days with even the old “Brown Bess.” Many a sad procession of unfortunates like It was now, as we have said, the year 1808. The Peninsular war had begun, and the prisoners we are describing were some of those brave Frenchmen who had fought against us in one of the first engagements, the short but incisive battle of Vimiero. Those who heard him seemed amused, but Tournier did not deign to notice the raillery, though it was not meant ill-naturedly. An English officer, riding at the side a little in advance, and overheard what was said, looked round on Tournier, and, struck with his soldierly figure, said quietly, “Let us hope it will not be for long.” “Long, sir?” exclaimed the other; “long as the grave: we are marching there.” “Mercy on us!” cried the lively Frenchman, “that’s a pleasant idea! We are going to that ‘undiscovered country,’ as your Shakspeare And then the light-hearted fellow—for a light heart is often a kind one—seeing that open raillery was powerless, tried gentler means to cheer his companion up. “Look, Tournier,” he whispered, after a pause, “what a charming view is on the left there. We must be on high ground. What a panorama for poor flat England! If we are good boys, we shall be out on parole, and be able to stroll about the country, and chat with the cherry-lipped maidens at the farms, and drink the farm-house milk, and, what is better, their famous English beer. And look, there is a lake, I declare. It seems a good-sized one. We will go fishing.” So he ran on; and though the words pattered down in vain, like rain upon the pavement, yet the evident intention unconsciously pleased, as kind intentions often, if not always, do, And now, as the column passed a clump of trees at a bend in the road, the barracks and their surroundings suddenly came into view. All eyes were directed towards them; and if any of those unhappy sons of France had indulged in fancy on the way, and pictured their future place of confinement as some romantic fortress, with towering walls and gates of iron, they must have been greatly disappointed. Nothing could be less romantic than the appearance of these Norman Cross Barracks. They looked from outside exactly like a vast congeries of large, high, carpenters’ shops, with roofs of glaring red tiles, and surrounded by wooden palisades, very lofty and of prodigious strength. In fact, the place was like an entrenched camp of a rather more permanent type. But if there was no architectural beauty, there was the perfection of security. It looked like business. The prisoners were in no wise to escape:—
Another regiment of militia, besides the men who formed the prisoners’ escort, was quartered in what we call the soldiers’ barracks, to distinguish them from those occupied by the prisoners. Of these, a strong body were drawn up right and left of the principal entrance, which was in the Peterborough Road, and as the column passed between them the soldiers were ordered to salute the officers. Major Kelly, the commandant of the troops, and Captain Mortimer, Admiralty agent to the DepÔt, were there to receive them; and a large number of rustics from Yaxley and Stilton, and other villages, had collected as near as they could get to the entrance, and made their remarks in various sympathetic ways, for the country people, of all classes, were very friendly at all times with the prisoners. “Poor lad,” said one woman, as a very youthful prisoner passed by, “he does look tired. What would his mother say if she saw him now?” “No fear of supper, neighbour,” replied a man; “you should just see the quarters of beef that go in at t’other gate. It makes me real hungry to think of it.” A big lad, standing close to a gentleman on horseback, who was surveying the scene with evident interest, made an ugly face at one of the prisoners, and said, “Well, mounseer, how do you find yourself?” But a cut from the horseman’s whip across his shoulders taught him a sharp lesson of respect for his betters. A halt was made as soon as the column was well within the outer inclosure of the barracks. Then, in the first place, the officers were marched to one of the barrack-yards that was to be their quarters; and then, with the marvellous promptitude which military pre-arrangement secures, the rest of the prisoners, in batches, were quickly conducted to other barrack-yards appointed for them. Eager eyes had been watching, and though the palisades surrounding each separate yard were much too lofty for men to climb up and look over, yet the inmates, though bereft of their liberty, were not bereft of their wits, as we shall see in more striking ways as the story proceeds; and some of them, from the topmost berths on the sides of their immensely high dormitories, had taken off the tiles, and from thence saw all that was going on. We will not attempt to follow the prisoners generally to their quarters, but accompany the officers alone. Enthusiastic were the greetings of their companions in tribulation who had been before them, some as long as five years. The shaking of hands, and the embracing, and the kissing, and the crying, were as if a very large family had met after years of separation. Albeit, The hall of reception was an enormous wooden casern or barn, very long, and, as we have said, extraordinarily high, with berths or hammocks all up the walls. It served as dormitory, Soon after the new-comers had arrived, supper was served, and as the older prisoners had waited for their arrival, they all sat down together. We will not say the tables groaned under the profusion of viands, but there certainly was enough. Every man had half a pound of beef, together with salt and vegetables, and a pound and a half of bread. The cooks were appointed from among the prisoners, and were paid by the English Government, and so we may be sure they were Frenchmen, and that those two grand features of good cookery were manifested—the most was made of what they had, and all was savoury. Being officers, too, some well supplied with money, they had wine on the table, and any other luxury they could meet with. “To your health, my friends,” said a fine-looking At this, a little man from among the new arrivals, with nothing heroic about him, either in face, or mien, or stature, jumped on his legs, and with great volubility and much gesticulation, began as follows: “You are right, monsieur, that is just what we want. I will tell you now what I myself did. “Bravo, bravo!” echoed around. And then the little man added, in a much more subdued tone, “However, the English—I heard since there were two regiments of them—reformed higher up the hill, and poured a deadly volley into us, and after hard fighting got the guns back from us: and I was taken prisoner. So was also my brave general, and wounded too.” The young officer who had rallied Tournier on the march, rose and, shrugging his shoulders, remarked, “I have read that when the Athenians of old had won some great victory, it was proposed that every general who had had a share in it, should at a public meeting deposit one after the other in an urn the written name of the general who he thought had proved himself the most conspicuous for bravery; and that when the urn was examined, it was found that, lo! each general had put down his own name. We will not do so”—with a sly glance The curfew bell rang at nine o’clock; the lights were put out; and all had betaken themselves to their hammocks. The sentries (not a few,) passed backwards and forwards outside, or stood at ease in their boxes. The picquets went the rounds every half-hour. Each soldier on guard was on the alert, and had need to be. Silence and slumber fell on all but the many watchers in that large assemblage of unhappy men. There was, however, one prisoner who could not sleep that night. It was not the roughness He thought of his much-loved home, of the mother that was so dear to him, what agony of mind she must be undergoing; of his darling Elise, how her dear heart must be full of him. And then there pierced him, like the sting of an adder, the thought of separation, certainly for years, perhaps for ever, from all that happiness: the hopelessness of his condition as a prisoner “Cruel, cruel destiny! why did not an English bullet put an end to me at once, instead of my lingering on in this slow torture? Nothing to look forward to, nothing to be done to make one ray of hope possible! There is the horror, there is the cruelty! I would plunge with gaiety into dangers, and endure without a murmur the tortures of the Red Indian, if only there were hope at the end. But here I am—I, who looked forward greedily to a career of honour and distinction—caught like a rat in a trap, and not even dead! Oh, cursed was the day on which I was born!” |