The Life of a Regimental Officer During the Great War, 1793-1815Mockler-Ferryman, A. F. (Augustus Ferryman)
History
The Life of a Regimental Officer During the Great War, 1793-1815
Mockler-Ferryman, A. F. (Augustus Ferryman)
Great Britain -- History -- 1789-1820; Rice, Samuel, 1775-1840
people in England who favoured the Revolution must have changed
their opinions since the recent horrible massacre in Paris."
It was, however, one thing to declare himself an Aristocrat in a
letter home, but quite another thing to let it be known in St Omer,
and he admits sailing under false colours, in that he wore "the
cockaded tricolour, decreed by the National Assembly." He excuses
himself thus: "If you were to appear without one, you would be mobbed
and called 'Aristocrat' by every saucy boy in the street. So much so
that one of the actors last night at the Playhouse, during the time
he was performing, was shouted to for his cockade, and they would not
let him perform without it. One of the others brought him one, which
he put to his breast, but that did not satisfy the audience, for they
shouted again _à chapeau_, and he was obliged to put it in his hat,
to save himself from a broken head."
Though Sam Rice held French revolutionary methods in general
abhorrence, he appears to have approved of the treatment dealt out to
the religious orders, for, in describing events at St Omer, he says:
"The nuns are all going to be turned out of their convents, and also
the friars. Most of them have been sent away, and there only remains
one church of them, from which they will be speedily dislodged.
There were twelve capital houses with nice gardens which those
rascals the monks inhabited--one for each, and they were allowed a
considerable sum for their maintenance; but now the people have seen
what rogues they were, and have turned them out neck and crop, and
have sent them into the country to live upon twelve pounds a-year.
Their library and church are turned into magazines for hay and
different stores, and all the religious houses are to be converted
into barracks for the soldiers." It is perhaps worthy of remark that
eighteen of these persecuted Jesuit fathers of St Omer were granted,
in 1794, an asylum in England, and, bringing with them several of
their pupils, founded Stonyhurst College, for the education of Roman
Catholics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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