having procured a passport for two merchants, Brooke left a large dinner party at Valenciennes, boldly drove through the town, and reached Cologne. Broughton, a Staffordshire baronet's son, escaped in the guise of a courier. Sir Beaumont Dixie escaped by pretending to be drowned while bathing, but was recaptured. Colonel Annesley, apparently the son and successor of Lord Annesley, who was on his honeymoon in May 1803, got away from Verdun in December 1811. Alexander Don, the future baronet, fled from Paris in February 1810. Philip Champion de Crespigny, brother of the first baronet—he was married at the Danish Embassy, Paris, in 1809, his bride having apparently gone over to share his detention—escaped from St. Germain in May 1811. He lived to be eighty-six, dying in 1851. Dr. Roget (nephew of Sir Samuel Romilly), the future author of the Bridgewater Treatise on Physiology, and of the Thesaurus of Synonyms, escaped in July 1803 from Geneva, his father's birthplace. He lived till 1869, and was just a nonogenarian.
It is but fair to say that the bulk of the 355 defaulters belonged to the mercantile marine, and were not hostages, but regular prisoners. Breach of parole was a rare exception among the aristocratic and professional captives, most of whom were liberated only by death or by Napoleon's fall. Thus the Marquis of Tweeddale died at Verdun in
