212 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



their burials appears to have been kept ; and the parish 

 churchyard, situated within the castle walls, was not 

 used as their place of interment. The corpses of 

 French prisoners seem to have been buried in any 

 waste corner of the parish, chiefly — so tradition as- 

 serts — on the strip of shore outside the castle walls, 

 which is covered at high water by the tide. Skeletons, 

 however, have been discovered in various parts of the 

 parish, sometimes in considerable numbers, and gene- 

 rally without any indication of a coffin. These burials 

 were done by contract, and the same coffin, so again 

 tradition has it, served to carry numberless bodies to 

 their burial. But while the prisoners were buried 

 anyhow and anywhere, in the roughest possible 

 fashion, and with the least trouble and expense, the 

 soldiers on guard who died at Portchester were in- 

 terred in the parish churchyard. And among them 

 the mortality was great. 



The majority of the prisoners are said to have been 

 atheists, and to have openly scoffed at all forms of 

 religious belief. It is pleasant, however, to be able to 

 add that two French priests, who had taken refuge in 

 England from the horrors of the Reign of Terror, and 

 who were allowed by the British Government to reside 

 at Portchester, succeeded in winning the respect and 

 affection of all within the castle walls. Their names 

 were respectively Le Bail and Le Lait, and they were 

 ever ready, not only to give spiritual help and con- 

 solation to those who would accept their ministrations, 

 but also to share with the more destitute prisoners 

 their miserable pittance of fourteen shillings a week. 



The enormous cost of clothing and feeding the 

 French prisoners fell almost entirely, owing to the 

 neglect of Napoleon, upon the British Government, 



