[ 48*2 ] [Nov. 



BOYS'S NARRATIVE OF AN ESCAPE FROM THE FRENCH PRISON OF 



VALENCIENNES.* 



THE struggle of skill and personal courage against unequal and superior 

 force, even where those qualities are opposed to a constituted and acknow- 

 ledged authority, is always a theme of interest to the million, and its suc- 

 cess generally a subject of congratulation. The disappointment of a bailiff 

 diverts everybody but an attorney. No man considers whether the 

 fugitive really deserves his favour, but speeds him on his way ; and 

 chuckles in the defeat of the slip of parchment the execution of which, 

 nevertheless, he would not, by violence, have resisted. This penchant it 

 is that explains the popularity of such books (the modern epics Iliad and 

 Odyssey of London and Westminster), as " The Lives of the Highway- 

 men," (including of course their deaths). " The Freebooter's Manual," 

 (describing all the most approved methods of handling the property of 

 other people); " Notes taken in Newgate," (by a gentleman accustomed 

 to take notes out of Newgate), &c. &c. in which the hair-breadth deliver- 

 ances of prisoners by unusual and perilous modes of human conveyance 

 up chimnies, over walls, through the roofs of houses, and down drains and 

 sewers become subjects of delight to persons of the most undoubted moral 

 feeling and respectability there is a pleasure, inseparable from our na- 

 ture, in seeing any deep-laid scheme or stratagem, in which we are not per- 

 sonally concerned, unexpectedly, and rather ridiculously overthrown. The 

 maxim of Rochefoucault, that the misfortunes of our friends never very se- 

 riously displease us, is true in an ultra extent of all failures in public ar- 

 rangements so long as the overthrow is attended with no such decided 

 danger to the country as renders it probable it may become mischievous to 

 ourselves. As it may happen to respectable people, therefore, to be enter- 

 tained even with the escape of an offender from gaol in London or Lanca- 

 shire, although that very escape be a defeat not less of moral and legal 

 justice, than of an authority which we bow to, and part and parcel of 

 which may be regarded as our own, we find no apology necessary in laying 

 before our readers a story of the escape of four British officers, prisoners of 

 war, from a foreign dungeon. The advantage being at least so far in our 

 favour, that the power here evaded is one which both our duty and our 

 prejudices incline us rather to defy and to despise; and the eluding parties 

 those to whom* captivity was an honour, instead of a disgrace ; and in 

 whose success we may exult without violence to our consciences if, 

 indeed, the tenderness of that organ be likely to interfere with us in any 

 amusement which we have otherwise a mind to. 



In the year 1803, almost immediately at the close of the short peace 

 between this country and Bonaparte, Captain Boys, being then a midship- 

 man in the Phrebe frigate, was captured as prize-master of an Italian ves- 

 sel, which the Phoebe had taken on her passage between Marseilles and 

 Genoa, and carried by the French man-of-war, Le Rhin, with his crew, 

 into the port of Toulon. No exchange of prisoners, at that time, took 

 place, in consequence of the anger excited first, by the English seizure of 

 French merchant vessels, immediately on the declaration of war replied 

 to by the counter-decree on the side of Bonaparte, the holding all English 



* Narrative of n Captivity and Adventnres in France and Flanders, between the years 

 1 803 and 1&09, by Capt. Edward Boys, R.N. London : Long, Finsbury-place. 



