In what was known as Lang’s Barn, now subdivided into cottages, the French prisoners extemporized a theatre, and no doubt some of their decorative work lies hidden beneath the whitewash. The barn was the property of the grandfather of the late Andrew Lang. The experiences of Sous-lieutenant Doisy de Villargennes, of the 26th French line regiment, I shall now relate with particular pleasure, not only on account of their unusual interest, but because they reflect the brightest side of captivity in Britain. Doisy was wounded after Fuentes d’Oñoro in May 1811, and taken prisoner. He was moved to hospital at Celorico, where he formed a friendship with Captain Pattison, of the 73rd. Thence he was sent to Fort Belem at Lisbon, which happened to be garrisoned by the 26th British Regiment, a coincidence which at once procured for him the friendship of its officers, who caused him to be lodged in their quarters, and to be treated rather as an honoured guest than as a prisoner, but with one bad result—that the extraordinary good living aggravated his healing wound, and he was obliged to return to hospital. These were days of heavy drinking, and Lisbon lay in the land of good and abundant wine; hosts and guest had alike fared meagrely and hardly for a long time, so that it is not difficult to account for the effect of the abrupt change upon poor Doisy. However, he pulled round, and embarked for Portsmouth, not on the ordinary prisoner transport, but as guest of Pattison on a war-ship. Doisy, with sixty other officers, were landed at Gosport, and, contrary to the usual rule, allowed to be on parole in the town previous to their dispatch to their _cautionnement_. At the Gosport prison—Forton—whither he went to look up comrades, Doisy was overjoyed to meet with his own foster-brother, whom he had persuaded to join his regiment, and whom he had given up as lost at Fuentes d’Oñoro, and he received permission to spend some time with him in the prison. I give with very great pleasure Doisy’s remarks upon captivity in England in general, and in its proper place under the heading of Forton Prison (see pp. 217–18) will be found his description of that place, which is equally pleasant reading. ‘I feel it my duty here, in the interests of truth and justice, to combat an erroneous belief concerning the hard treatment of prisoners of war in England.... No doubt, upon the hulks they led a very painful existence; execrable feeding, little opportunity for exercise, and a discipline extremely severe, even perhaps cruel. Such was their fate. But we must remember that only refractory prisoners were sent to the hulks.’ (Here we must endorse a note of the editor of Doisy’s book, to the effect that this is inaccurate, inasmuch as there were 19,000 prisoners upon the hulks, and they could not all have been ‘refractory’.)