Charles Edward Jennings de Kilmaine - Imprisonment and Release

Imprisonment and Release

Even at this epoch of deception and duplicity, and when political insanity and revenge were rampant, Kilmaine, who had rendered such gallant services to that new and most faithless Republic, had by a judicious retreat (executed against the advice of the meddling and presumptuous representatives of the people, and in consequence thereof perilled his life), preserved to France her most important army. And precisely for that reason, was ceremoniously denounced to the Convention. It didn't help that he had also became the object of suspicion on account of his foreign birth and his relations abroad. He was immediately deprived of his command and relieved from the army and sent into exile to Luxembourg. He accepted it all with calm dignity, saying,

"I am ready, to serve the cause of the Republic in whatever rank I am placed, and wherever set I shall do my duty."

In a short time, Kilmaine returned to Paris undercover, and retired with his wife to the Parisian suburb of Passy. There they lived quietly for some months. When the Reign of Terror began, he and his wife were arrested and flung into a loathsome prison in Paris, where he passed a year. One would think that being imprisoned as a foreigner, was an act of injustice which would weigh heavily on an officer who had given 30 years of unselfish devotion to France, had gone through nine campaigns and had fought in 46 battles. However in the obscurity of his dungeon, he got his reward, however strange, in that he had not perished on the scaffold like the gallant Custine, his predecessor in the command, like his old colonel and protector Biron, and like Houchard, who for the brief period of fifteen days had been his successor, and who, after winning a signal and decided victory over the Duke of York, suffered but a cruel death of his own people.

Kilmaine narrowly escaped the guillotine and recovered his liberty after the fall of Robespierre. By the influence of the more extreme revolutionary party, he was released immediately on an order signed personally by Carnot and remained for sometime in Paris with his wife. Without military employment, though eagerly and anxiously seeking it, he was not about to settle into his second retirement.