Part 28
_M. Dupin_ moving the court that this declaration might be entered on the record, the Advocate-General expressed his astonishment at a claim in France, for an offence committed in France, of the privileges of a foreign legislature; and opposed entering the declaration. After some argument on the subject, the court pronounced the following decision: “Because every offence committed in a territory is an object of its peculiar jurisdiction, and because the exception demanded by the prisoners is not allowed by any construction of the criminal code of France, the court declares that there is no ground for recording, at the request of the English prisoners, the declaration now made by them; the court therefore orders the trial to proceed.”
The act of accusation drawn up by the Procureur-General was then read, which took up more than two hours. The Advocate-General briefly recapitulated the facts in the charge, distinguishing them as they applied to the different prisoners; and remarked that the Chamber of Accusation had already absolved the three Englishmen from the offence of having conspired against the legitimate government of France. After the interrogatories of some of the prisoners, the president addressed himself to Mr. Bruce. To the question of whether it was not to him that the first overture was made of transporting Lavallette out of France: he replied, “If possible I would have effected his escape alone; for I could not refuse a man who had put his life into my hands. I, however, obtained his consent to confide his secret to one of my friends. I spoke to one friend, who gave me a message to another. I will not name these friends.
Some of the interrogatories and answers that followed are curious:—
_President._—Bruce, have you been in Paris some time?
_Bruce._—Thirteen months.
_President._—You have had communication with the Duc de Vincennes?
_Bruce._—That is true, Monsieur le President; but I do not see what my friendship with the Duke has to do with the escape of M. de Lavallette.
_President._—You have manifested a great interest for Marshal Ney?
_Bruce._—That is also true, and I am far from blushing at it.
_President._—It is to you that the condemned Lavallette addressed himself for the means of leaving Paris and France?
_Bruce._—The 31st December, or the 1st January, I received an anonymous letter, in which the nobleness of my character was extolled, but I do not know whether I merited all the compliments that were paid to me. It went on to say: the confidence that I inspired determined the author of the letter to inform me that M. Lavallette was still in Paris, and that I could save him. I did not doubt the person who remitted that letter to me: I thought that in an affair of that nature one could not too much avoid indiscretion. The adventure of the escape of M. Lavallette appeared to me to have in it something of romance, and, indeed, something of the miraculous. I interested myself intensely about him, and I was easily determined to serve him. I know not if I were wrong, but I thought that honour and humanity would not permit me to do otherwise. I would not have placed any one in my confidence, but that I feared in acting alone to compromise him who confided his life to me. I informed a friend, whom I will not name, unless he thinks it proper for me to do so. We thought that it would be advisable to communicate to another friend. We arranged between the three the measures that we should take. On the evening of the 7th January M. de Lavallette went to the apartment of the second friend. I remained with him till twelve o’clock. I shook hands with him and quitted.
_President._—Tell us what passed in the apartment of Captain Hutchinson from the moment of the arrival of the condemned Lavallette.
_Bruce._—I have not mentioned Captain Hutchinson’s name.
_President._—But you have made it public by the inference and it is so from the interrogatories in which your two friends have made themselves known?
_Bruce._—We have made our interrogatories public because it was important for us to destroy the scandal that was spread regarding our conduct (at this moment Captain Hutchinson requested Mr. Bruce to mention his name). My friend, continued Mr. Bruce, has authorised me to mention his name; I can now admit that it was in Captain Hutchinson’s apartment that M. de Lavallette passed the night of the 7th to the 8th of January.
_President._—Did you not obtain a wig for the condemned Lavallette?
_Bruce._—I had nothing whatever to do with the wig of M. de Lavallette; the measure of the wig that was found in my house concerned a friend who was at Constantinople.
_President_, to Captain Hutchinson.—It was in your apartment that Lavallette was received on the 7th January?
_Hutchinson._—Yes, sir.
_President._—After Lavallette entered your lodging did not an unknown person present himself at your door to give to the condemned man two pistols that he had forgotten to take with him?
_Hutchinson._—My servant came to me and announced that somebody desired to speak to me. I went out to prevent the unknown person from entering. I perceived in his pocket a double-barrelled pistol.
The first idea that struck me was, that all was discovered, and I prepared to defend myself. I seized the pistol, the stranger did not resist, he only said to me, “You are, then, one of our friends;” I replied in the affirmative; but from precaution I would not permit him to enter my chamber.
_President._—When Lavallette left Paris you accompanied him to Compiègne?
_Hutchinson._—I did.
_President._—That which you did was only to oblige your friend?
_Hutchinson._—Not at all, sir. I was not moved by anything but a feeling of humanity.
_President_, to Wilson.—General Wilson, had you previously known Lavallette?
_General Wilson._—I had never seen M. de Lavallette before this event, nor had I the least knowledge of him.
_President._—You are charged with having conducted him out of France?
_General Wilson._—Yes.
_President._—It was you who asked Captain Hutchinson to receive the condemned Lavallette?
_General Wilson._—My friend Captain Hutchinson has done nothing but under my influence.
_President._—In conducting Lavallette, you passed by Compiègne, and you arrived at the frontier—you took under false names for Lavallette and yourself two passports, that you had the caution to get examined by competent authorities.
_General Wilson._—That is true.
_President._—Do you know that Lavallette was condemned to capital punishment?
_General Wilson._—Without doubt.
_President._—Are you aware that Lavallette was condemned as an accomplice of Bonaparte, in having joined a rebellious faction that brought back the usurper?
_General Wilson._—I know the history of the return of Napoleon, but I did not look upon M. Lavallette as having taken part in a conspiracy, because I always was convinced that no previous plot had existed to induce Bonaparte to re-enter France. His coming was spontaneous. Moreover, where it was a matter between my two friends and myself of saving M. de Lavallette, humanity spoke only to our hearts, and we were not at all directed by any political bias.
This open confession rendered superfluous, with respect to them, the testimony of any witnesses; the appearance of _Madame Lavallette_ was, however, too interesting to be passed over. At her entrance, a general murmur of feeling or curiosity was heard, and the three gentlemen saluted her with a profound bow. Overpowered by her emotions, she was scarcely able to articulate; at length, being told by the President that she was summoned only on account of some of the accused, who had invoked her testimony, she said, “I declare that the persons who have called me contributed in no respect to the escape of M. Lavallette (meaning _from prison_); no one was in my confidence: I alone did the whole.” Being desired to say whether she had ever seen or known the English gentlemen, she looked at them for a moment, and declared that she had never known or seen them before.
At a subsequent audience, April 24th, 1816, M. Dupin spoke for the English gentlemen, and his defence was a splendid piece of oratory. The case he reduced to the two propositions:—1. There was no act of _complicity_ between the accused persons and the principal culprit. 2. The fact imputed to them cannot be considered as a crime, nor as an offence. Part of his peroration was as follows:—“In ancient Athens, where the people were remarkable for their frivolity, but where the Areopagus was noted for its justice, a young man was condemned to death for having killed a dove, which, pursued by a hawk, flew to him for safety. It was adjudged that he who was without pity, could never be a good citizen. And shall we, in the nineteenth century, see men condemned for saving the life of another who put his fate into their hands?... No, this cannot be under the government of a prince whose justice, clemency, and benevolence recommend him equally to the love and the fidelity of his people. Under the rule of a descendant of St. Louis, humanity is amalgamated with Christian charity. This is indeed so, for the ministers of our altars present to us as the triumph of charity the act of that, holy personage, St. Vincent de Paul, who did not think he offended the laws of his country when he effected the escape of a poor suffering wretch from the galleys, by himself taking his seat and his chains. These sublime feats of humanity do not fall beneath your jurisdiction. Courts of justice are instituted to punish the crimes, not to proceed against the virtues, of men.” He concluded with an earnest recommendation of the accused to the court as _foreigners_ and _Englishmen_.
The proceedings having closed, _Sir Robert Wilson_ rose, and with dignified confidence delivered an address in French. Having acknowledged that he had been interested in the fate of Lavallette, on political grounds, he declared that such considerations had a very inferior influence on his determination.
“The appeal” (said he) “made to our humanity, to our personal character, and to our national generosity; the responsibility thrown upon us of instantly deciding on the life or death of an unfortunate man, and, above all, of an unfortunate foreigner—this appeal was imperative and did not permit us to calculate his other claims to our good will. At this cry of humanity we should have done as much for an obscure, unknown individual, or even for an enemy who had fallen into misfortune. Perhaps we were imprudent, but we would rather incur that reproach, than the one we should have merited by basely abandoning him, who, full of confidence, threw himself into our arms: and these very men who have calumniated us, without knowing either the motives or the details of our conduct—these very men, I say, would have been the first to stigmatize us as heartless cowards, if, by our refusal to save M. Lavallette, we had abandoned him to certain death. We resign ourselves with security to the decision of the jury; and if you should condemn us for having contravened your positive laws, we shall not at least have to reproach ourselves for having violated the eternal laws of morality and humanity.”
_Mr. Bruce_ delivered, in French, a speech of the same general tenor; his language was animated, and his tone firm and manly.
“Gentlemen (he concluded) I have confessed to you, with all frankness and honour, the whole truth with regard to the part which I took in the escape of M. Lavallette; and notwithstanding the respect which I entertain for the majesty of the laws, notwithstanding the respect I owe to this tribunal, I cannot be wanting in the respect I owe to myself so far as to affirm, that I feel not the least compunction for what I have done. I leave you, gentlemen, to decide upon my fate and I implore nothing but justice.”
The President concisely summed up the evidence, and gave his charge with great impartiality and much eloquence. The jury retired to deliberate, and in about two hours returned with a verdict of guilty against Messrs. Wilson, Bruce, and Hutchinson, and not guilty as to the other prisoners, except Eberle the gaoler, whom they convicted of the minor offence of negligence.
The President then read the article of the penal code applicable to the charge proved against the three British subjects, in which the punishment prescribed was imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, nor less than three months; and without hesitation he pronounced for the shortest allowable term.
Each of the three British subjects was accordingly sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and the costs of the trial. Eberle, the gaoler, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, and after that, to be ten years under the surveillance of the police. The President announced to the convicted that they had three days allowed to appeal to the Court of Cassation. Bruce, Hutchinson, and Wilson, would make no appeal against the judgment and passed their three months of imprisonment at the Conciergerie. It was intimated that Louis XVIII. would willingly have respited them, had they asked his pardon, but this they respectfully declined to do. On their return to England, all parties, Tory, Whig and Radical, received them with enthusiasm. The nobility and fashionable world fêted them, and the public lavished praises on them. The Prince Regent, wishing to act with official strictness, deprived Hutchinson of his appointment as Captain in the Guards, but on his fellow officers exclaiming against such harshness, he restored him to his regiment and rank.
Mr. Bruce was entertained by the Countess of Bessborough at a _déjeuner_ where he met the Duke of Wellington, and received his Grace’s congratulations. The electors of Southwark, to mark their sense of Sir Robert Wilson’s noble conduct, returned him as their representative to Parliament. Sir Robert, who was a clever writer, as well as a good soldier and an active politician, died in 1849, after a chequered but honourable public career. Captain Hutchinson, who for many years after the trial was known by the _sobriquet_ of “Lavallette Hutchinson,” died in 1851, third Earl of Donoughmore, which title he inherited from his uncle, the eminent General Lord Hutchinson, second Earl of Donoughmore, who took the command at the close of the victory of Alexandria, after Sir Ralph Abercromby had been borne, mortally wounded, from the field.
The Lavalette name is at this day of important note in France, the Marquis of Lavalette being the present able and popular Minister of the Interior there. It appears, however, that he is no relative of the Count of the escape, and has had naught in common with him but the name, and hardly even that, for it would seem, the count spelt its second syllable with the double _ll_, where the Marquis has but one. In here acknowledging the communication I have had the honour to receive from M. le Marquis, whose obliging amiability fully tallies with that ready and cordial attention one is ever sure to receive from high officials in France, as well as in England,—I must add that I should be very glad indeed, if I, or rather some one more competent than myself, could take advantage of the Marquis’s courtesy, and, by thoroughly searching all French archives relating to the subject, bring out the full details and the whole truth of this most mysterious and most interesting affair—the escape of Lavallette.
LEWIS AND SON, Printers, Swan Buildings, Moorgate Street.
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Footnote 1:
Dibdin uses his name freely: here is a specimen from his “Peter Pullhauls Medley.”
“When grown a man I soon began To quit each boyish notion; With old Benbow I swore to go, And tempt the waving ocean.
“Ten years I served with him, or nigh, And saw the gallant hero die; Yet ’scaped each shot myself, for why?
“‘There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, To keep watch for the life of poor Jack.’”
Footnote 2:
In Owen and Blakeway’s History of Shrewsbury, the ancient descent and parentage of the admiral, as above given, are, on very good argument, altogether denied. They (and what T. Phillips says in his History of Shrewsbury bears them out) state the admiral to have been the son of William Benbow, of Cotton Hill, tanner and burgess of Shrewsbury, and to have had no uncle, Colonel Thomas Benbow, and only an uncle, Captain John Benbow, who was actually (and no doubt pursuant to the sentence recorded in the State Trials) shot in the Bowling Green of Shrewsbury on the 15th of October, 1651, and was buried the following day in St. Chad’s churchyard in that town; and a stone erected over him, which was renewed in 1740, and which gave his name and the date of his interment. St. Chad’s register has further this entry: “1651, October 16; John Benbowe, captain, who was shott at the Castle. B.” All this being so, what becomes of the story of the Colonel Benbow of the Tower? It may be true, but must refer to some other member of the family.
Footnote 3:
Admiral Benbow was born at Cotton Hill, near Shrewsbury, in 1650. In a bedroom belonging to the house of his birth appear the following lines, written with a diamond on the window:—
“Then only breathe one prayer for me, That far away, where’er I go, The heart that would have bled for thee May feel through life no other woe.
“I shall look back, when on the main, Back to my native isle; And almost think I hear again That voice, and view that smile.”
Underneath has been added the following:—
“You go, and round that head, like banners in the air, Shall float full many a loving hope and many a tender prayer.”
Footnote 4:
This story of the Moors’ heads derives considerable countenance from the following circumstance related in Owen and Blakeway’s “History of Shrewsbury.” It appears that a Mr. Richard Ridley married Elizabeth Benbow, a sister of the admiral. Their daughter, Sarah Ridley, married Richard Briscoe, and Helen Briscoe, great granddaughter of this marriage, married John Powell, of the Castle Foregate, Shrewsbury; and in his possession might be seen a curious kind of cup or punch-bowl edged with silver, on which was engraved “The First Adventure of Captain John Benbo, and Gift to Richard Ridley, 1687.” On close inspection this cup was found to consist of cane very closely matted together, and coated on both sides with varnish. The vessel was evidently such a covering for the head as is in use among the Moors, so that it might have been worn by one of the thirteen pirates who boarded the _Benbow_ frigate.
Footnote 5:
My friend, Albert W. Woods, Esq., Lancaster Herald, informs me that no registry or entry of these augmented arms is to be found in the Heralds’ College. The only Benbow arms there are those of the Benbows of Newport, viz., “Sa. two string-bows endorsed in pale or garnished gu., between two bundles of arrows in fesse, three in each bundle, gold, barbed and headed arg., and tied up proper. _Crest_—A harpy close, or, face proper, wreathed round the head with a chaplet of roses gu.” Mr. Woods also kindly furnishes me with a pedigree of the Benbows of Newport from Vincent’s “Collection for the County of Salop,” which nowhere shows connection with the family of the admiral, but in it I find a “Thomas Benbow, ætatis 20, 1623.” May not this have been (though no uncle of the admiral) the Colonel Thomas Benbow of the Civil War, who, as nothing proves that he was shot after the Battle of Worcester, may have lived to be the old cavalier whom Charles II. discovered in poverty in the Tower?
Footnote 6:
The following is the exact list of Benbow’s naval force:—
The Breda, Admiral Benbow and Captain Fogg 70 guns. The Defiance, Captain Richard Kirby 64 „ The Greenwich, Captain Cooper Wade 54 „ The Ruby, Captain George Walton 48 „ The Pendennis, Captain Thomas Hudson 48 „ The Windsor, Captain John Constable 48 „ The Falmouth, Captain Samuel Vincent 48 „
Footnote 7:
Like most of the admiral’s domestic history, this destruction of his tomb is doubtful; unless, indeed, his body was afterwards removed within the church; for a recent correspondent of that useful and able periodical, “Notes and Queries,” gives the following epitaph of Admiral Benbow, from an article in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” on Monumental Inscriptions in the West Indies:—
“Here lyeth interred the body of JOHN BENBOW, Esq., Admiral of the White. A true pattern of English courage. Who lost his life in defence of his Queen and Country, November ye 4th, 1702, in the 62nd year of his age, by a wound in his leg received in an engagement with Monsr. Du Casse. Being much lamented.”
[A slab on the pavement.]
The correspondent of “Notes and Queries” goes on to state that “the admiral lies interred on the right as you approach the altar, and within the railing, of the parish church of Kingston, Jamaica.”
Footnote 8:
There was no evidence to show that to be so. Kidd was, in fact, taken when landing from a sloop at Boston.
Footnote 9:
The 19 George III., _v._ 17, sec. 3, amended very properly the above article by adding to the end of it “or such other punishment as the offence may deserve.”
Footnote 10:
This lady, the only daughter to survive him, of George, first Viscount Torrington, was Sarah, wife of John Osborn, Esq., and mother of Sir Danvers Osborn, third Baronet of Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire, the direct ancestor of the present Sir George Robert Osborn, Bart.
Footnote 11:
The prisoner interrupted and said, “I do not look for it, my lord.”
Footnote 12:
When his lordship mentioned the word “painful,” the prisoner said “joyful.”
Footnote 13:
Dr. Dodd.
Footnote 14:
Queen Anne had stood for this peer, in person, as his godmother, and hence his second Christian name of Anne.
Footnote 15:
It should be here in fairness mentioned, that Mr. Yonge somewhat errs as to the Duke of Chartres, who, bad as he was in other respects, (he was the citizen Egalité of the Revolution), had not the character of a coward: he, at any rate, behaved with marked courage on this occasion.
Footnote 16: