- Museum number
- 1868,0808.8296
- Title
- Object: Sir Robert Thomas Wilson, général Anglais, Sir John Ely Hutchinson Capitaine, et Michel Bruce, citoyen Anglais, accusés d'avoir facilité l'évasion de Mr de Lavalette, méditant à la Force, cour des opinions, leurs moyens de défense.
- Description
-
A French print. The three walk arm-in-arm (left to right) in a paved space outside the ground floor of a building with large barred windows. The first two wear top-hats and are typical tall Englishmen as depicted by the French (see No. 12365, &c.); all wear tail-coats and trousers; the third, Bruce, is boyish-looking and shorter than the others. The two officers gesticulate, talking together. A turnkey (left) descends a flight of steps (left) from a door, holding keys and a pitcher. In the yard are (bare) trees; an arched trellis with (leafless) shrubs trained over it covers the steps, facing which are ornamental shrubs in pots. A man, wearing a top-hat, watches the three prisoners from behind the bars of a window (right).
May 1816
Etching
- Production date
- 1816
- Dimensions
-
Height: 230 millimetres (trimmed)
-
Width: 321 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', IX, 1949)
Sir R. Wilson (see Nos. 9998, 12912), Captain John Hely-Hutchinson, and young Michael Bruce, son of Crawford Bruce, a Paris banker, were arrested on 13 Jan. for contriving the escape from France of General Lavalette, whose wife had changed clothes with him in prison where he was under sentence of death. The French Government had intercepted letters from Wilson to Lord Grey describing in detail Lavalette's escape in British uniform with a British passport procured by Wilson. He was escorted by the three men through the British lines to Mons. The imprisonment, refusal of bail, and the trial on 22 Apr. roused great interest in England (as in France, see De Vinck, Nos. 9699-9701) and much Whig sympathy. The sentence was the minimum: three months' imprisonment. A General Order was issued on 10 May by the Duke of York expressing the Regent's high displeasure, Wilson being an officer of high rank, and Hely-Hutchinson in the Army of Occupation. 'Gent. Mag.', 1816, i, pp. 73, 170, 625 f.; 'Examiner', 1816, pp. 36, 39, 52, 257 ff., 274-6; 'Ann. Reg.', 1816, pp. 329-36; Dupin (who defended them), 'Procès des trois Anglais . . .', 1816; Gronow, 'Reminiscences', 1892, i. 100-4. See Nos. 12623, 12707, 12707 A.
(Supplementary information)
Dated by M. D. George, c. Jan. 1816.
This print is listed in the 'Bibliographie de France' for 11 May 1816 by Plancher, although his name as publisher is not on the plate.
"La Force" was a prison in Paris.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.8296
