The guard removed the Royalists to the hospital for safety, and later their opponents wrote a penitential letter to Captain Moriarty. In June 1814 the removal of the prisoners began. Those that went down the river in boats were heartily cheered by the people. Others marched to Newburgh, where, on the quay, they held a last market for the sale of their manufactures, which was thronged by buyers anxious to get mementoes and willing to pay well for them. ‘All transactions were conducted honourably, while the additional graces of French politeness made a deep impression upon the natives of Fife, both male and female,’ adds the chronicler. It was during this march to Newburgh that the prisoners sold the New Testaments distributed among them by a zealous missionary. Altogether it was a pleasant wind-up to a long, sad period, especially for the Frenchmen, many of whom got on board the transports at Newburgh very much richer men than when they first entered the French dépôt, or than they would have been had they never been taken prisoners. Especially pleasant, too, is it to think that they left amidst tokens of goodwill from the people amongst whom many of them had been long captive. The Dépôt was finally closed July 31, 1814. During one year, that is between September 14, 1812, and September 24, 1813, there were fourteen escapes or attempted escapes of prisoners. Of these seven were frustrated and seven were more or less successful, that is to say, sixty-one prisoners managed to get out of the prison, but of these thirty-two were recaptured while twenty-nine got clean away. From 1815 to 1833 the Dépôt was used as a military clothing store, and eventually it became the General Prison for Scotland. CHAPTER XII THE PRISONS ASHORE 4. PORTCHESTER Of the thousands of holiday-makers and picnickers for whom Portchester Castle is a happy recreation ground, and of the hundreds of antiquaries who visit it as being one of the most striking relics of combined Roman and Norman military architecture in Britain, a large number, no doubt, learn that it was long used as a place of confinement for foreign prisoners of war, but are not much impressed with the fact, which is hardly to be wondered at, not only because the subject of the foreign prisoners of war in Britain has never received the attention it deserves, but because the interest of the comparatively modern must always suffer when in juxtaposition with the interest of the far-away past. But this comparatively modern interest of Portchester is, as I hope to show, very real.