"... all men are brethren"

This quote is from the inscription panel on the Valleyfield Monument to French prisoners of war in Penicuik, Midlothian.

Penicuik was once known as "the papermaking town" and when I was at school there in the 1960s I recall visiting one of the mills where they used Esparto grass (from Egypt?) to make fine paper, for a school project. There are no papermills in Penicuik now.

The mills were used during the Napoleonic Wars of 1811-14 to house no less than 7,500 prisoners of war, the majority of them French and the balance representing just about every country in Europe plus some from further afield. The remains of 309 prisoners who died during their internment are buried near the site of the monument, erected by Thomas Cowan, the owner of the papermills, in 1830.

Cowan commissioned one of Scotland's best Greek-revival architects, Thomas Hamilton, to design the monument, a giant and perfectly proportioned sarcophagus with immaculate Greek detailing. It is a beautiful and dignified memorial, as is the inscription: "Certain inhabitants of this parish, desiring to remember that all men are brethren, caused this monument to be erected, in the year 1830."