His violent disposition now led him to quarrel with a country gentleman who had insulted his sister, and his semi-exile was changed by lettre de cachet into imprisonment in the Chateau d'If.
Raja Dhuleep Singh received an allowance of £50,000 a year, on which he retired as a country gentleman to Norfolk in England.
His father, Pons, comte de Fenelon, was a country gentleman of ancient lineage, large family and small estate.
Even so, the issue of the struggle was for long doubtful, and there were moments when it might have ended by a policy of wise concession; but the Americans, though reduced at times to desperate straits, had the advantage of fighting in their own country, and above all they found in George Washington a leader after the model of the English country gentleman who had upheld the standard of liberty against the Stuarts, and worthy of the great cause for which they fought.
He had retained all the habits of a country gentleman of his native Beam, careless, familiar, boastful, thrifty, cunning, combined since his sojourn at the court of the Valois with a taint of corruption.