Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Castine, Thomas
CASTINE, THOMAS (d. 1793?), a native of Ballyneille, parish of Loman, Isle of Man, is stated by the Manx historian Train to have enlisted in the ‘king's own’ regiment of foot (4th foot), in which he rose to the rank of sergeant. Returning on furlough after a few years' absence, the story continues, he married about 1773 a young woman named Helen Corlace, with whom he was acquainted before his departure, and indulging in dissipation with former companions, he overstayed his leave. Fearing apprehension as a deserter, he escaped in a smuggling lugger to Dunkirk, and, entering the French army, served in America. At the outbreak of the French revolution he held the rank of colonel of infantry. Train speaks of him as one of the most prominent chiefs of the revolutionary armies, and refers to his services at Mayence, and his execution in Paris in August 1793, apparently identifying him with the general of division, Adam Philip de Custine, who was executed at Paris on 17 Aug. 1793 for alleged treason at Mayence, and whose fate and the romantic circumstances attending it have been related by Alison and other writers. Train further states that Castine's wife was left behind when he absconded, and that the issue of the marriage, a son, was twenty years of age and a servant at the time of his father's death in 1793. This young man enlisted in the Manx Fencibles, and was subsequently a sergeant in the Galloway militia. In 1837 he was a shopkeeper in the village of Auchencuir, co. Galloway. Understanding that his father had died possessed of property in France, he had made application, through the late Mr. Cutlar Fergusson, M.P. for Kirkcudbright, to Prince Talleyrand, when French ambassador in London; but the inquiry instituted showed that all traces of such property, if it ever existed, had been lost in the troubles and confusion of 1793. The first and last portions of this story are, no doubt, authentic; but although there is reason to suppose that the Manx deserter, Castine, held rank in the French revolutionary army, there is nothing to connect him with the general of division, Custine. The name of Thomas Castine does not appear in the alphabetical lists of persons guillotined given by Prudhomme.
[Train's Hist. I. of Man, ii. 349; Alison's Hist. of Europe, iii.; Prudhomme's Crimes de la Révolution (Paris, 1797).]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.57
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 273 | ii | 14 f.e. | Castine, Thomas: for Cutler Fergus read Cutlar Fergusson |