by Roy Adkins
They hid in a nearby wood and at sunset took the main road to Blankenberge, a village on the Belgian coast to the east of Ostend, where they expected to get hold of a boat to cross the Channel. Late at night they passed a solitary public house, as Boys related:We observed through the window, an old man, two women, and a boy, sitting round a comfortable fire at supper. Hunter and I entered for the purpose of purchasing provisions to take on board any vessel we might be enabled to seize, being then about four miles from the sea. We asked for gin - the woman of the house rose and stared at us, apparently alarmed at our appearance; we repeated the demand without obtaining a reply; still gazing for a few seconds, regardless of our request, she rapturously exclaimed, ‘Mon Dieu, ces sont des anglais!’ [My God! They are English!]43
The woman who ran the public house, the Raie de Chat (Mark of the Cat), was Madame Derikre, and despite their insistence that they were conscripts on their way to Blankenberge, she refused to believe them, having once worked for an English gentleman. She insisted they sit down and eat supper, all the while talking ‘of nothing but her dear English’.44 They left Madame Derikre, still declaring that they were conscripts, and made their way to the village, where ‘finding a footpath leading over the sandbank, we ran down to the sea, forgetting our wounds, and exulting as though the summit of our wishes were attained, and we were on the point of embarkation. Indeed, so exquisite was the delight, that, regardless of consequences, we dashed into the water, drank of it, and splashed about like playful schoolboys, without being in the least disconcerted that the few vessels which could be seen were high and dry, close under the battery.’45
After their initial euphoria they realised that there were virtually no boats to take and that the tides were wrong. Then they heard footsteps running behind them and the clash of muskets, but managed to give their pursuers the slip. At dawn the following day they decided to seek the help of Madame Derikre, and while they tried to explain the truth, she exclaimed, ‘Hold your tongues, I knew that you were English gentlemen the moment I saw you.’46 Congratulating themselves on their good fortune, Boys confessed that they ‘were so overpowered, so choked with joy, that we could scarcely articulate; the tear of gratitude trickled down the cheek, whilst the hand of friendship simultaneously met that of its neighbour; even the old woman (notwithstanding her vivacity) could not refrain from participating in our feelings’.47
In true Resistance style, Madame Derikre sheltered them secretly in the loft of the ‘Cat’ for the next few months, while a family friend by the name of Winderkins tried to find a fisherman to take them to England, but the patrols along the Channel coast were now very rigorous. One evening in mid-December, Boys related, ‘Winderkins sent word that the vessels were all preparing for sea; but the next morning our expectations were again disappointed, by the information that the Government had laid an embargo on all the Blankenberg craft, until they furnished five seamen for the navy. The vessels were again hauled up above high-water mark, and the fishermen fled in all directions.’48
The four men remained in their loft but were constantly fearful of being discovered, as gendarmes and custom-house officers frequently used the public house, as well as soldiers looking for fugitive seamen. Hunter and Boys therefore decided to venture into the woods to see where they could hide, but they had only gone a mile along the road when two gendarmes on horseback noticed them. They rushed into a ploughed field and reached a thicket on the other side just as the gendarmes entered the wood, then plunged into a wide ditch which was flooding that part of the wood. They remained hidden in a dense part of the wood until dark, and on their return Boys was surprised to learn from Madame Derikre ‘that she had heard of our adventure from the gendarmes, who, halting to bait [for refreshment], told her, they were very nearly catching two of the Blankenberg sailors, “but the rogues swam like ducks”’.49
After numerous setbacks and being forced to live in the woods because Madame Derikre was now under suspicion, Mansell went into Bruges disguised as a girl. At the very end of the year, with the help of a lawyer acquaintance of Madame Derikre by the name of Moitier, Mansell finally returned to England from Flushing in a small open boat belonging to a man known as Peter the Smuggler. The boat never returned for the rest of them, and in the end Moitier was persuaded to go to Verdun to obtain more money from a friend of Boys, Thomas George Wills, who had been a prisoner-of-war since 1804. Boys knew that Wills ‘would risk his all to serve me’.50 Before he left, Moitier introduced Boys to a businessman, Auguste Crens Neirinks, who secretly lodged the three escaped prisoners in an uninhabited house in Bruges.
Once Moitier knew for certain he would be paid well, he was spurred into action and next left for Flushing to make arrangements with Peter the Smuggler. On 28 April Neirinks gave word that a guide would be ready the following evening to lead them to Flushing, but on Moitier’s return Boys related that ‘he declared that Peter, from the imminent risk he had run in his late trip, would not undertake to carry us across the Channel under 80l. [£80]; that he, Moitier, had calculated on paying him only 40l.; Peter was to receive one-half on landing in England, and a note of hand was to be left with Moitier for the other. The 80l. were paid; but, I have since learned from Neirinks, that this story was a fabrication of Moitier’s, who pocketed the additional 40l.’51
Having expressed their gratitude to Madame Derikre and the family of Neirinks for their immense kindness, Boys, Whitehurst and Hunter disguised themselves as Flemings and left Bruges by mingling with the crowd, accompanied by Neirinks and the guide. Boys described what happened next:On arriving near the coast, we met Peter’s wife, who ordered us to lie down on the ground, whilst this Amazonian chief reconnoitred the strand. She had scarcely proceeded a hundred yards, when she was hailed, and saluted with a shot; like a skilful general, she instantly made good her retreat, and bivouac’d with the main body. In this position we remained for about two hours, whilst Peter and his chief were occasionally watching the motions of the enemy, and looking out for the private signal from the boat. Our anxiety was now at its utmost stretch, and every passing moment appeared an age. The look-out, every now and then, was obliged to retreat, to avoid the patroles . . .The boat not coming, when day dawned we retreated to Peter’s hut, for concealment.52
Finally, on 8 May 1809, Boys learned that all would be ready at ten o’clock that night:Accordingly, at that hour, the weather fine, and the night dark, we marched down to the beach, and as soon as the patrole had passed, the private signal was made and answered. The boat gliding silently in shore with muffled oars, we rushed in with the rapidity of thought, and in an instant were all safe afloat; each seized an oar, and vigorously applying his utmost strength, we soon reached beyond the range of shot . . . It were in vain to attempt a faithful description of our feelings at this momentous crisis . . . nor, indeed, could we relinquish the oar, but continued at this laborious, though now delightful, occupation, almost without intermission the whole night. When day dawned the breeze freshened from the eastward, and as the sun began to diffuse his cheering rays, the wide expanse of liberty opened around us, and in the distant rear, the afflicted land of misery and bondage was beheld.53
With Neirinks and Peter the Smuggler, they continued rowing from Flushing until the white cliffs of Dover were spotted at three in the afternoon, and the harbour was reached five hours later. They landed at daylight on 10 May. The family of Boys lived only a few miles away, at Betteshanger, and he now found out that when Mansell had returned to England over four months earlier, he had gone to his family and tactlessly ‘assured a younger sister, whom he happened to find alone, that “we should be either dead or in England in three weeks, as we had vowed not to be taken alive.” Many months having elapsed since any letters from France had reached home, my parents received this information with mingled feelings of joy and fear, and immediately set on foot every method ingenuity and affection could devise, to render assistance through the smugglers’54 - nearby Deal was a notorious haunt of smugglers,
who themselves had strong connections with Flushing, but it had become increasingly difficult to operate because Napoleon was using that port and Antwerp, further up the River Scheldt from Flushing, as a naval base. By now, Boys’s parents were in complete despair.
At Dover he hired a carriage, later remarking that ‘at a moment when my attention was directed towards a neighbouring village, in search of the roof under which I had received the first impressions of discipline, Neirinks, whom I had taken with me, and who was admiring everything he saw, as “magnifique,” suddenly exclaimed— “Regardez ce vénérable dans cette belle voiture.”’55 This ‘venerable gentleman in the fine carriage’ was Boys’s father, and Boys simply related that they ‘speedily drove to Betshanger, where a scene awaited me that I had little anticipated’.56
After a week Neirinks and Peter the Smuggler returned to Flushing with the aid of a naval vessel, and Boys was well pleased that ‘with the money they received, and which they considered amply sufficient to recompense them for their services, they had previously purchased a quantity of indigo and coffee, which yielded them a profit of about 600 per cent. We had, therefore, not only the satisfaction of knowing that they were content with the result of their present trip, but that it would be an inducement for them to afford every assistance in their power to any of our countrymen, who might at a future period, escape from confinement, and reach that part of the coast.’57
Of the others who had escaped, Boys recounted that ‘Hunter was soon afterwards employed, and promoted in 1811. Whitehurst was sent to the Halifax Station [Canada], where he had not been long before he was again made prisoner in the Junon, and detained in France during the remainder of the war. Mansell, a short time after, died at sea.’58 Many more British seamen were to be taken prisoner during the remainder of the war, but to be taken prisoner twice like Frederick Whitehurst was very unlucky. He was serving in the frigate Junon off Guadeloupe and was captured by the French in mid-December 1809, only seven months after returning to England. One of those captured with him was Lieutenant George Vernon Jackson, who had taken such a dislike to tobacco on Diamond Rock. Boys himself was given special dispensation to take his lieutenant’s examination almost immediately, and only a month after returning to England he was appointed as lieutenant of the recently launched brig-sloop Arachne. A few weeks later, in July 1809, Britain would launch a massive expedition against Flushing and the surrounding area, from where the prisoners had just escaped, in order to destroy what had become the second-largest French naval arsenal after Toulon.With Cochrane’s raids against the French on the southern coast of Spain and Sir John Moore (brother of Graham Moore) leading a British army into northern Spain after Sir Arthur Wellesley had defeated General Junot at Vimiero in August, the autumn of 1808 gave a false promise that the tide of war was turning against the French in Europe. Napoleon was impelled to take charge himself, marching into Spain at the head of his troops, and Moore boldly struck at his rear, but was forced to retreat in the depths of winter. An evacuation of the British troops looked inevitable, and warships and transport ships began to arrive at Spain’s Atlantic port of Vigo for that purpose, many of them sailing from Corunna. In the south, Gerona was lost: the Spanish surrendered on 11 December, freeing the besieging French troops to be deployed elsewhere and opening up the possibility of supplying Barcelona overland by road from France. As the year 1808 drew to a close, Napoleon’s grip on Spain tightened to a stranglehold.
On the last day of the year the British rearguard reached Astorga, and by now Moore’s sole object was to save as many of his men as possible, destroying stores and ammunition and abandoning the sick in order to maintain the speed of the main body of troops. At Astorga the two light brigades were sent almost due west to the port of Vigo, while the remaining troops continued north-west towards Corunna. Thomas Howell, a soldier with the 71st Highlanders, vividly recalled the start of the journey:From Villa Franca we set out on the 2 January, 1809. What a New-year’s day had we passed! Drenched with rain, famished with cold and hunger, ignorant when our misery was to cease. This was the most dreadful period of my life. How differently did we pass our hogmonay, from the manner our friends were passing theirs, at home? Not a voice said, ‘I wish you a happy new year;’ each seemed to look upon his neighbour as an abridgement to his own comforts. His looks seemed to say, ‘One or other of the articles you wear would be of great use to me; your shoes are better than those I possess: if you were dead, they would be mine!’ . . . Dreadful as our former march had been, it was from Villa Franca that the march of death may be said to have begun.59
Without supplies and having worn out their boots with marching, they now had the French hard on their heels, and another Scottish soldier of the 71st, who no longer had boots, recalled:Many of the officers were in the same state; some of them attempted to defend their feet by wrapping pieces of blanket round them. MY sufferings were now dreadful; every thing in the shape of stockings being long since gone, the constant friction of the wet trowsers rubbed the skin completely off my legs, and the raw flesh, feeling as if cauterised, increased my torments to an indescribable degree. But many were in a far worse condition, and lay down completely exhausted with excess of fatigue and misery, waiting impatiently for death to relieve their pangs . . . About this time I saw a dragoon sprawling in the mud, quite drunk, and seemingly unconscious of his miserable situation, laughing and yelling out his bacchanalian ribaldry. This poor wretch undoubtedly became food for the crows in a few short hours. Our cavalry and artillery horses died in such numbers, that nearly the whole road between Lugo and Corunna was strewed with their bloated carcasses.60
While one section of the remains of the British army struggled towards Corunna, the situation of those headed for Vigo was no less desperate, as John Harris of the 95th Rifles (and once a shepherd in Dorset) recorded:The shoes and boots of our party were now mostly either destroyed or useless to us, from foul roads and long miles, and many of the men were entirely bare-footed, with knapsacks and accoutrements altogether in a dilapidated state. The officers were also, for the most part, in as miserable a plight. They were pallid, way-worn, their feet bleeding, and their faces overgrown with beards of many days’ growth . . . Many of the poor fellows, now near sinking with fatigue, reeled as if in a state of drunkenness, and altogether I thought we looked the ghosts of our former selves.61
If anything, the suffering of the camp-followers was even worse than that of the soldiers, and many of the incidents of the retreat were seared into the memories of those who survived, including Rifleman Harris:One of the men’s wives (who was struggling forward in the ranks with us, presenting a ghastly picture of illness, misery, and fatigue,) being very large in the family-way, towards evening stepped from amongst the crowd, and lay herself down amidst the snow, a little out of the main road. Her husband remained with her; and I heard one or two hasty observations amongst our men, that they had taken possession of their last resting-place. The enemy were, indeed, not far behind at this time, the night was coming down, and their chance seemed in truth but a bad one. To remain behind the column of march in such weather was to perish, and we accordingly soon forgot all about them. To my surprise, however, I, some little time afterwards (being myself then in the rear of our party), again saw the woman. She was hurrying, with her husband, after us, and in her arms she carried the babe she had just given birth to. Her husband and herself, between them, managed to carry that infant to the end of the retreat, where we embarked. God tempers the wind, it is said, to the shorn lamb; and many years afterwards I saw that boy, a strong and healthy lad. The woman’s name was M’Guire, a sturdy and hardy Irishwoman; and lucky it was for herself and babe that she was so, as that night of cold and sleet was in itself sufficient to try the constitution of most females.62
Stories with a happy ending were the exception, and Harris could hardly bear to recall another sight:Soon after our halt beside the turnip-field the screams of a child near me caught my ear, and drew my attention to one of our w
omen, who was endeavouring to drag along a little boy of about seven or eight years of age. The poor child was apparently completely exhausted, and his legs failing under him. The mother had occasionally, up to this time, been assisted by some of the men, taking it in turn to help the little fellow on; but now all further appeal was in vain. No man had more strength than was necessary for the support of his own carcass, and the mother could no longer raise the child in her arms, as her reeling pace too plainly shewed. Still, however, she continued to drag the child along with her. It was a pitiable sight, and wonderful to behold the efforts the poor woman made to keep the boy amongst us. At last the little fellow had not even strength to cry, but, with mouth wide open, stumbled onwards, until both sank down to rise no more. The poor woman herself had, for some time, looked a moving corpse; and when the shades of evening came down, they were far behind amongst the dead or dying in the road. This was not the only scene of the sort I witnessed amongst the women and children during that retreat. Poor creatures!63