nothing alone, he
consulted two English friends who had shown considerable sympathy for
the fate of Marshal Ney--men of liberal principles and undoubted
honour, and both of them officers in the British service: these were
Captain Hutchinson and General Sir Robert Wilson. To the latter was
committed the most difficult task, that of conveying out of France the
condemned prisoner; but for this achievement few men were better fitted
than Sir Robert Wilson, a man of fertile imagination, ready courage,
great assurance, and singular power of command over others; who spoke
French well, and was intimately acquainted with the military habits of
different nations.

Sir Robert Wilson's career was a singular one: he had commenced life an
ardent enemy of Bonaparte, and it was upon his evidence, collected in
Egypt and published to the world, that the great general was for a long
time believed to have poisoned his wounded soldiers at Jaffa.
Afterwards he was attached to the Allied Sovereigns in their great
campaign; but upon his arrival in Paris, his views of public affairs
became suddenly changed; he threw off the yoke of preconceived
opinions, became an ardent liberal, and so continued to the last hours
of his life. The cause of this sudden change of opinion has never been
thoroughly known, but certain it is that on every occasion he supported
liberal opinions with a firmness and courage that astonished those who
had known him in his earlier days.

Sir Robert undertook, in the midst of great dangers and difficulties,
to convey Lavalette out of France; having dressed him in the uniform of
an English officer, and obtained a passport under a feigned name, he
took him in a cabriolet past the barriers as far as Compiegne, where a
carriage was waiting for them. They passed through sundry examinations
at the fortified towns, but fortunately escaped; the great difficulty
being that, owing to Lavalette's having been the director of the posts,
his countenance was familiar to almost all the postmasters who supplied
relays of horses. At Cambray three hours were lost, from the gates
being shut, and at Valenciennes they underwent three examinations; but
eventually they got out of France. The police, however, became
acquainted with the fact that Lavalette had been concealed in the Rue
de Helder for three days, at the apartments of Mr. Bruce, and this
enabled them to trace all the circumstances, showing that it was at the
apartments of Hutchin