Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Frontispiece
Plait Merchants trading with the French Prisoners of War at Norman Cross
From a painting by A. C. Cooke in the Town Hall, Luton

PRISONERS OF WAR IN BRITAIN
1756 TO 1815
A RECORD OF THEIR LIVES, THEIR ROMANCE AND THEIR SUFFERINGS

BY

FRANCIS ABELL

HUMPHREY MILFORD

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW

NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY

1914

OXFORD: HORACE HART

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PREFACE

Two influences have urged me to make a study of the subject of the prisoners of war in Britain.

First: the hope that I might be able to vindicate our country against the charge so insistently brought against her that she treated the prisoners of war in her custody with exceptional inhumanity.

Second: a desire to rescue from oblivion a not unimportant and a most interesting chapter of our national history.

Whether my researches show the foregoing charge to be proven or not proven remains for my readers to judge. I can only say that I have striven to the utmost to prevent the entrance of any national bias into the presentation of the picture.

As to the second influence. It is difficult to account for the fact that so interesting a page of our history should have remained unwritten. Even authors of fiction, who have pressed every department of history into their service, have, with about half a dozen exceptions, neglected it as a source of inspiration, whilst historical accounts are limited to Mr. Basil Thomson’s Story of Dartmoor Prison, Dr. T. J. Walker’s Norman Cross, and Mr. W. Sievwright’s Perth Depôt, all of which I have been permitted to make use of, and local handbooks.

Yet the sojourn among us of thousands of war prisoners between the years 1756 and 1815 must have been an important feature of our national life—especially that of officers on parole in our country towns; despite which, during my quest in many counties of England, Scotland, and Wales, I have been surprised to find how rapidly and completely the memory of this sojourn has faded; how faintly even it lingers in local tradition; how much haziness there is, even in the minds of educated people, as to who or what prisoners of war were; and how the process of gathering information has been one of almost literal excavation and disinterment. But the task has been a great delight. It has introduced me to all sorts and conditions of interesting people; it has taken me to all sorts of odd nooks and corners of the country; and it has drawn my attention to a literature which is not less valuable because it is merely local. I need not say that but for the interest and enthusiasm of private individuals I could never have accomplished the task, and to them I hope I have made sufficient acknowledgement in the proper places, although it is possible that, from their very multitude, I may have been guilty of omissions, for which I can only apologize.

FRANCIS ABELL

London, 1914.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I
INTERNATIONAL RECRIMINATIONS

He who, with the object of dealing fairly and squarely with that interesting and unaccountably neglected footnote to British history, the subject of prisoners of war in Britain, has sifted to the best of his ability all available sources of information both at home and abroad, as the present writer has done, feels bound to make answer to the questions:

1. Did we of Britain treat our prisoners of war with the brutality alleged by foreign writers almost without exception?

2. Did our Government sin in this respect more than did other Governments in their treatment of the prisoners taken from us?

As an Englishman I much regret to say in reply to the first question, that, after a very rigorous examination of authorities and weighing of evidence, and making allowance for the not unnatural exaggeration and embellishment by men smarting under deprivation of liberty, I find that foreigners have not unduly emphasized the brutality with which we treated a large proportion of our prisoners of war, and I am fairly confident that after a study of the following pages my readers will agree with me.

Between our treatment of prisoners on parole and in confinement on land, and foreign treatment of our countrymen similarly situated, the difference, if any, is very slight, but nothing comparable with the English prison-ship system existed anywhere else, except at Cadiz after the battle of Baylen in 1808, and to the end of time this abominable, useless, and indefensible system will remain a stain upon our national record.

In reply to the second question, the balance appears to be fairly even between the behaviour of our own and foreign Governments—at any rate, between ours and that of France—for Britain and France practically monopolize the consideration of our subject; the number of prisoners taken by and from the United States, Spain, Holland, Denmark, and other countries, is comparatively insignificant.

Each Government accused the other. Each Government defended itself. Each Government could bring forward sufficient evidence to condemn the other. Each Government, judging by the numerous official documents which may be examined, seems really to have aimed at treating its prisoners as humanely and as liberally as circumstances would allow. Each Government was badly served by just those sections of its subordinates which were in the closest and most constant contact with the prisoners. It is impossible to read the printed and written regulations of the two Governments with regard to the treatment of war-prisoners without being impressed by their justness, fairness, and even kindness. The French rules published in 1792, for instance, are models of humane consideration; they emphatically provided that foreign prisoners were to be treated exactly as French soldiers in the matter of sustenance, lodging, and care when sick.

All this was nullified by the behaviour of subordinates. It is equally impossible to read the personal narratives of British prisoners in France and of French prisoners in Britain without being convinced that the good wills of the two Governments availed little against the brutality, the avarice, and the dishonesty of the officials charged with the carrying out of the benevolent instructions.

It may be urged that Governments which really intended to act fairly would have taken care that they were suitably served. So we think to-day. But it must always be borne in mind that the period covered in this book—from 1756 to 1815—cannot be judged by the light of to-day. It was an age of corruption from the top to the bottom of society, and it is not to be wondered at that, if Ministers and Members of Parliament, and officers of every kind—naval, military, and civil—were as essentially objects of sale and purchase as legs of mutton and suits of clothes, the lower orders of men in authority, those who were in most direct touch with the prisoners of war, should not have been immune from the contagion.

Most exactly, too, must it be remembered by the commentator of to-day that the age was not only corrupt, but hard and brutal; that beneath the veneer of formal politeness of manner there was an indifference to human suffering, and a general rudeness of tastes and inclinations, which make the gulf separating us from the age of Trafalgar wider than that which separated the age of Trafalgar from that of the Tudors.

It is hard to realize that less than a century ago certain human beings—free-born Britons—were treated in a fashion which to-day if it was applied to animals would raise a storm of protest from John o’ Groats to the Land’s End: that the fathers of some of us who would warmly resent the aspersion of senility were subject to rules and restrictions such as we only apply to children and idiots; that at the date of Waterloo the efforts of Howard and Mrs. Fry had borne but little fruit in our prisons; and that thirty years were yet to pass ere the last British slave became a free man. Unfortunates were regarded as criminals, and treated accordingly, and the man whose only crime was that he had fought for his country, received much the same consideration as the idiot gibbering on the straw of Bedlam.

It could not be expected that an age which held forgery and linen-stealing to be capital offences; which treated freely-enlisted sailors and soldiers as animals, civil offenders as lunatics, and lunatics as dangerous criminals; of which the social life is fairly reflected in the caricatures of Gillray and Rowlandson; which extolled much conduct which to-day we regard as base and contemptible as actually deserving of praise and admiration, should be tenderly disposed towards thousands of foreigners whose enforced detention in the land added millions to taxation, and caused a constant menace to life and property.

So, clearly bearing in mind the vast differences between our age and that covered in these pages, let us examine some of the recriminations between Britain and France, chiefly on the question of the treatment of prisoners of war, as a preparation for a more minute survey of the life of these unfortunates among us, and an equitable judgement thereon.

In Britain, prisoners of war were attended to by ‘The Commissioners for taking care of sick and wounded seamen and for exchanging Prisoners of War’, colloquially known as ‘The Sick and Hurt’ Office, whose business was, ‘To see the sick and wounded seamen and prisoners were well cared for, to keep exact accounts of money issued to the receiver, to disburse in the most husbandly manner, and in all things to act as their judgements and the necessities of the service should require.’ John Evelyn, Samuel Pepys, and Home, the author of Douglas, had been Commissioners. On December 22, 1799, the care of prisoners of war was transferred to the Transport Office, and so remained until 1817. In 1819 the Victualling Office took over the duty.

Throughout the period of the Seven Years’ War—that is, from 1756 to 1763—there was a constant interchange of letters upon the subject of the treatment of prisoners of war. The French king had made it a rule to distribute monthly, from his private purse, money for the benefit of his subjects who were prisoners in Britain; this was called the Royal Bounty. It was applied not merely to the relief and comfort of the prisoners while in confinement, but also to the payment of their homeward passages when exchanged, and of certain dues levied on them by the British Government upon entering and leaving the country. The payment was made on a graduated scale, according to rank, by regularly appointed French agents in England, whose exact and beautifully kept accounts may be examined at the Archives Nationales in Paris.

This Royal Bounty, the French Government asserted, had been inspired by the continual complaints about the bad treatment of their countrymen, prisoners of war in England. To this it was replied that when the French prisoners arrived it was determined and arranged that they should have exactly the same victualling both in quality and quantity as British seamen, and this was actually increased by half a pound of bread per man per diem over the original allowance. It was asserted that all the provisions issued were good, although the bread was not always fresh baked. This should be remedied. The meat was the same in quality as that served out to British seamen—indeed it was better, for orders were issued that the prisoners should have fresh meat every meat day (six in the week) whereas British seamen had it only twice a week, and sometimes not so often.

The Commissioners of the Admiralty expressed their difficulty in believing that the French prisoners were really in need of aid from France, but said that if such aid was forthcoming it should be justly distributed by appointed agents.

They appended a Table d’Avitaillement to this effect:

Every day except Saturday every man received one and a half pounds of bread, three-quarters of a pound of beef, and one quart of beer. On Saturday instead of the beef he got four ounces of butter or six ounces of cheese. Four times a week each man was allowed in addition half a pint of peas.

For money allowance officers of men-of-war received one shilling a day, officers of privateers and merchant ships sixpence. These officers were on parole, and in drawing up their report the Admiralty officials remark that, although they have to regret very frequent breaches of parole, their standard of allowances remains unchanged.

With regard to the prison accommodation for the rank and file, at Portchester Castle, Forton Prison (Portsmouth), Millbay Prison (Plymouth), the men slept on guard-beds, two feet six inches in breadth, six feet in length, provided with a canvas case filled with straw and a coverlid. Sick prisoners were treated precisely as were British.

At Exeter, Liverpool, and Sissinghurst—‘a mansion house in Kent lately fitted up for prisoners’—the men slept in hammocks, each with a flock bed, a blanket, and a coverlid.

All this reads excellently, but from the numberless complaints made by prisoners, after due allowance has been made for exaggeration, I very much doubt if the poor fellows received their full allowance or were lodged as represented.

This was in 1757. As a counterblast to the French remonstrances, our Admiralty complained bitterly of the treatment accorded to British prisoners in French prisons, especially that at Dinan. We quote the reply of De Moras, the French Administrator, for comparison. The French scale of provisioning prisoners was as follows:

On Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday each prisoner received one and a half pounds of bread, one pint of beer at least, one pound of good, fresh meat, well cooked, consisting of beef, mutton, or veal, ‘without heads and feet’, soup, salt, and vinegar. On Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, and ‘maigre’ days, half a pound of beans or peas well cooked and seasoned, and two ounces of butter. The same allowance was made in all prisons, except that in some wine took the place of beer.

The Administrator complained that he had great difficulty in getting contractors for provisioning prisoners—a fact not without significance when we note how eagerly the position of contractor for prisoners of war was competed for in England.

De Moras further stated that prisoners when sick were sent to the regular Service Hospitals, where they received the same attention as Frenchmen. Each officer prisoner received a money allowance of thirty sous—one shilling and threepence—a day, and renewed clothing when needed.

The following remonstrance, dated 1758, is one of many relating to alleged British peculation in the matter of the French Royal Bounty.

‘Plusieurs Français enfermés dans le château de Portchester représentent l’excessive longueur de leur détention et ont fait connoître une manœuvre qui les prive d’un secours en argent que le Roy leur fait donner tous les mois; après avoir changé l’or et l’argent qui leur a été donné pour une monnoie de cuivre nommée half pens on en a arrêté le cours et on les a mis dans l’impossibilité de jouir du soulagement que le Roy avoit voulu leur accorder.’

Commenting upon this De Moras adds:

‘Je suis instruit que les châtiments les plus rigoureux sont employés à l’égard des Français prisonniers pour la faute la plus légère et que celui qui cherche à s’évader est chargé de fers, mis en cachot, et perd toute espérance de liberté. Je sais que quelques paroles inconsidérées lâchées contre votre agent à Portsmouth ont excité sa colère au point de faire dépouiller 150 Français et de leur faire donner la bastonnade avec si peu de ménagements que quelques-uns sont morts des suites de cette barbare punition. Quant à la nourriture elle est assés décriée par tous les Français qui reviennent d’Angleterre, et il est vray que si on leur distribue souvent du biscuit aussy mal fabriqué que celuy que quelques-uns d’eux out raporté, et que j’ay veu, l’usage n’en peut estre que désagréable et pernicieux. Ils disent aussy que la viande ne vaut pas mieux, et qu’il en est de même de toutes les espèces de denrées.

‘Je ne l’attribue qu’à l’infidélité et à l’avidité des entrepreneurs.’

In 1758, as a reply to complaints made to the British Government about the treatment of prisoners at Portchester, a report to the following effect was made by De Kergan, an officer of the French East India Company on parole.

1. The chief punishment is the cachot, which is wholesomely situated above ground near the entrance gate. It is untrue that prisoners are placed there in irons.

2. Prisoners recaptured after escape are put in the cachot upon half-rations until the expenses of recapture and the reward paid for the same are made up, but prisoners are never deprived of the French King’s Bounty or debarred the market.

3. Only three men have lost everything as a result of recapture: one was a lieutenant who had broken parole from Petersfield; the others were two sailors who defended themselves against Hambledon people who tried to capture them, and killed one.

4. It is utterly untrue that 150 prisoners have been flogged.

5. The biscuit sent to M. de Moras as a specimen of the prison food did not come from Portchester.

6. He reports well upon the food served out to the prisoners.

7. All complaints are listened to.

From the fact that De Kergan was shortly afterwards allowed to go home to France with his servant, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that it had been ‘arranged’ by the British authorities that he should have been selected to make the above report under promise of reward.

De Moras adds that although the number of English prisoners multiplies continually, it is owing to the slackness of exchange. On the part of France, he declares that they are all well treated, and asserts that the balance of prisoners due to France is 800. Complaints from France about the non-distribution of the King’s Bounty are continued during the year 1758 and the following years, and a proposal is made that agents should be stationed in each county to attend solely to the proper arrangement and distribution of all charitable contributions, for the benefit of the prisoners.

‘C’est le seul moyen,’ says De Moras, ‘qui puisse faire goûter aux officiers et aux soldats que le sort des armes a privés de la liberté quelqu’apparence des avantages de la Paix au milieu même des malheurs de la guerre.’

More complaints from our side brought an answer in which lay the kernel of the whole matter: ‘L’exactitude des inférieurs demande à estre souvent réveillée.’

In 1759 the care of the French prisoners in England practically devolved entirely upon us, as their Government unaccountably withdrew all support. The natural consequence was that their condition became pitiable in the extreme—so much so that public subscriptions were opened on behalf of the poor fellows. A London Committee sat at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, and the sum of £7,000 was collected. With this sum were sent to different prisons 3,131 great coats, 2,034 waistcoats, 3,185 pairs of shoes, 3,054 pairs of breeches, 6,146 shirts, 3,006 caps, and 3,134 pairs of stockings. Letters of grateful acknowledgement and thanks were received from most of the dépôts. The following will serve as a specimen.

‘Cornwall Man-of-War at Chatham, 13.1.1760.

‘Nous les prisonniers de guerre à bord du vaisseau du Roi le “Cornwall”, dans la rivière de Chatham, reconnoissons d’avoir reçu chacun par les mains de notre bon commandant Guillaume Lefebre des hardes, consistant d’un surtout, une chemise, un bonnet, une paire de bas, de souliers et de coulottes. Nous prions MM. les Anglais qui out eu cette bonté pour infortunés presque dépourvus auparavant de quoi se garantir de la sévérité de la saison, et de grandes souffrances par le froid, d’être persuadés de notre vive reconnoissance qui ne s’oubliera pas.’

The letter of thanks from Sissinghurst contains excuses for some men who had sold the clothes thus supplied for urgent necessaries, such as tobacco and the postage of letters, and praying for the remission of their punishment by being put on half-rations. From Helston, the collector, W. Sandys, wrote that ‘in spite of vulgar prejudices which were opposed to this charity, and the violent clamours raised against it by the author of a letter who threw on its promoters the accumulated reproach of Traitors, Jacobites and Enemies to their country,’ he sent £32.

It was in allusion to the above act of public benevolence that Goldsmith wrote in the twenty-third letter of the Citizen of the World: ‘When I cast my eye over the list of those who contributed on this occasion, I find the names almost entirely English; scarce one foreigner appears among the number.... I am particularly struck with one who writes these words upon the paper enclosing his benefaction: “The mite of an Englishman, a citizen of the world, to Frenchmen, prisoners of war, and naked.”’

Even abroad this kindly spirit was appreciated, as appears from the following extract from a contemporary Brussels gazette:

‘The animosity of the English against the French decreases. They are now supposed to hate only those French who are in arms. A subscription is opened in the several towns and countries for clothing the French prisoners now in England, and the example has been followed in the capital.’

In 1760 the French Government thus replied to complaints on our side about the ill-treatment of British prisoners at Brest.

‘The castle at Brest has a casemate 22 feet high, 22 feet broad, and 82 long. It is very dry, having been planked especially and has large windows. Prisoners are allowed to go out from morning till evening in a large “meadow” [probably an ironical fancy name for the exercising yard, similar to the name of “Park” given to the open space on the prison hulks]. They have the same food as the men on the Royal ships: 8 ounces of meat—a small measure but equal to the English prison ration—the same wine as on the Royal ships, which is incomparably superior to the small beer of England. Every day an examination of the prisoners is made by the Commissioner of the Prison, an interpreter and a representative of the prisoners. Bedding straw is changed every fifteen days, exactly as in the Royal Barracks.’

Here it is clear that the Frenchman did exactly as the Englishman had done. Having to give a reply to a complaint he copied out the Regulation and sent it, a formal piece of humbug which perhaps deceived and satisfied such men in the street as bothered their heads about the fate of their countrymen, but which left the latter in exactly the same plight as before.

At any rate, with or without foundation, the general impression in England at this time, about 1760, was that such Englishmen as were unfortunate enough to fall into French hands were very badly treated. Beatson in his Naval and Military Memoirs[^[1]] says:

‘The enemy having swarms of small privateers at sea, captured no less than 330 of the British ships.... It is to be lamented that some of their privateers exercised horrid barbarities on their prisoners, being the crews of such ships as had presumed to make resistance, and who were afterwards obliged to submit: Conduct that would have disgraced the most infamous pirate; and it would have redounded much to the credit of the Court of France to have made public examples of those who behaved in this manner. I am afraid, likewise, that there was but too much reason for complaint of ill-treatment to the British subjects, even after they were landed in France and sent to prison. Of this, indeed, several affidavits were made by the sufferers when they returned to England.

‘On the contrary, the conduct of Great Britain was a striking example of their kindness and humanity to such unfortunate persons as were made prisoners of war. The prisons were situated in wholesome places, and subject to public inspection, and the prisoners had every favour shown them that prudence would admit of. From the greatness of their number, it is true, they frequently remained long in confinement before they could be exchanged in terms of the cartel, by which their clothes were reduced to a very bad state, many of them, indeed, almost naked, and suffered much from the inclemency of the weather. No sooner, however, was their miserable condition in this respect made known, than subscriptions for their relief were opened at several of the principal banking-houses in London, by which very great sums were procured, and immediately applied in purchasing necessaries for those who stood in the greatest need of them.

‘The bad state of the finances of France did not permit that kingdom to continue the allowance they formerly granted for the maintenance of their subjects who might become prisoners of war; but the nation who had acquired so much glory in overcoming them, had also the generosity to maintain such of these unfortunate men as were in her power at the public expense.’

The American prisoners conveyed to England during the War of Independence, seem to have been regarded quite as unworthy of proper treatment. On April 2, 1777, Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane wrote from Paris to Lord Stormont, British Ambassador in Paris, on the subject of the ill-treatment of American prisoners in England, and said that severe reprisals would be justifiable. On this a writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, October 1777, commented:

‘It must certainly be a matter of some difficulty to dispose of such a number of prisoners as are daily taken from captured American privateers; some of whom have from 100 to 300 men on board, few less than 70 or 80; against whom the Americans can have no adequate number to exchange.... Were the privateersmen, therefore, to be treated as prisoners of war, our gaols would be too few to hold them. What then is to be done? Not indeed to load them with chains, or force them with stripes, famine, or other cruelties, as the letter charges, to enlist in Government service; but to allow them the same encouragement with other subjects to enter on board the King’s ships, and then they would have no plea to complain of hard usage.’

The letter referred to, sent on by Stormont to Lord North, contained the chief grievance that ‘stripes had been inflicted on some to make them commit the deepest of all crimes—the fighting against the liberties of their country’. The reply to this was the stereotyped one ‘that all possible was done for the prisoners: that they were permitted to receive charitable donations, and that complaints were attended to promptly’. A contemporary number of the London Packet contains a list of subscriptions for the benefit of the American prisoners amounting to £4,600. The Committee for the collection and administration of this money, who sat at the King’s Arms at Cornhill, seem to have occupied themselves further, for in 1778 they call attention to the fact that one Ebenezer Smith Platt, a Georgia merchant, had been put in Newgate, and ironed, and placed in that part of the prison occupied by thieves, highwaymen, housebreakers, and murderers, without any allowance for food or clothes, and must have perished but for private benevolence.

The most absurd reports of the brutal treatment of French prisoners in England were circulated in France. It was gravely reported to the Directory that English doctors felt the pulses of French prisoner patients with the ends of their canes; that prisoners were killed en masse when subsistence became difficult; that large numbers were punished for the faults of individuals; and that the mortality among them was appalling. The result was that the Directory sent over M. Vochez to inquire into matters. The gross calumnies were exposed to him; he was allowed free access to prisons and prison ships; it was proved to him that out of an average total of 4,500 prisoners on the hulks at Portsmouth only six had died during the past quarter, and, expressing himself as convinced, he returned, promising to report to the French minister the ‘gross misrepresentations which had been made to him’.

A good specimen of the sort of report which sent M. Vochez over to England is the address of M. Riou to the Council of Five Hundred of the 5th of Pluviôse of the year 6—that is January 25, 1798.

After a violent tirade against England and her evil sway in the world, he goes into details. He says that when his Government complained of the promiscuous herding together of officers and men as prisoners of war, the English reply was: ‘You are republicans. You want equality, therefore we treat you here equally.’ Alluding to the harsh treatment of privateersmen taken prisoners, he declares it is because they do more harm to England by striking at her commerce than any fleets or armies. He brings up the usual complaints about bad and insanitary prisons, insufficient food, and the shameful treatment of officers on parole by the country people. One hundred Nantes captains and officers had told him that prisoners were confined in parties of seventy-two in huts seventeen feet long and ten feet high, some of them being merely cellars in the hillside; that the water soaked through hammocks, straw, and bread; that there was no air, that all this was light suffering compared with the treatment they received daily from agents, officers, soldiers, and jailors, who on the slightest pretext fired upon the prisoners. ‘Un jour, à Plymouth même, un prisonnier ajusté par un soldat fut tué. On envoie chercher le commissaire. Il vient: soulève le cadavre: on lui demande justice; il répond: “C’est un Français,” et se retire!’

Alluding to the precautionary order which had been recently given in England that all parole should cease, and that all officers on parole should be sent to prisons and prison ships, he says: ‘There is now no parole for officers. All are pell-mell together, of all ranks and of both sexes. A woman was delivered of a child, she was left forty-eight hours without attention, and even a glass of water was denied her. Even the body of a dead dog was fought for by the famished prisoners.’

He then describes in glowing terms the treatment of English prisoners in France; he suggests a tax for the relief of the French prisoners of war, a ‘taxe d’humanité,’ being one-third of the ordinary sumptuary tax, and winds up his attack:

‘Français! Vous avez déposé une foule d’offrandes sur l’autel de la Patrie! Ce ne sera pas tromper vos intentions que de les employer au soulagement de l’humanité souffrante. Vous voulez combattre l’Angleterre: eh bien! Soulagez les victimes; conservez 22,000 Républicains qui un jour tourneront contre leurs oppresseurs leurs bras dirigés par la Vengeance! N’oubliez pas que le Gouvernement anglais médite la ruine de la République; que, familiarisé avec tous les crimes, il en inventera de nouveaux pour essayer de la renverser; mais elle restera triomphante, et le Gouvernement anglais sera détruit! Attaquez ce monstre! Il expirera sous vos coups! Quirot, Le Clerc (Maine-et-Loire), Riou.’

The Times of January 8, 1798, comments severely upon the frequent tirades of the Directory, ridiculing the attitude of a Government remarkable above all others for its despotic character and its wholesale violation of the common rights of man, as a champion of philanthropy, of morals, and of humanity, and its appeal to all nations to unite against the only country which protects the victims of Directorial anarchy. After declaring that the prisoners in England are treated better than prisoners of war ever were treated before, a fact admitted by all reasonable Frenchmen, the writer says:

‘And yet the Directory dares to state officially in the face of Europe that the Cabinet of St. James has resolved to withdraw all means of subsistence from 22,000 Republican prisoners in England, and has shut them up in dungeons, as if such a measure, supposing it even to be true, could have any other object than to force the French Government to provide for the sustenance of the French prisoners in this country in the same manner as our Government does with respect to the English prisoners in France.’

In February 1798 the French Directory announced through Barras, the president, that it would undertake the subsistence of the French prisoners in England, meaning by subsistence, provisions, clothing, medical attendance, and to make good all depredations by prisoners.

The Times of February 27 said:

‘The firm conduct of our Government in refusing any longer to make advances for the maintenance of French prisoners, has had the good effect of obliging the French Directory to come forward with the necessary supplies, and as the French agents have now the full management of this concern, we shall no longer be subject to their odious calumnies against the humanity of this country.’

Directly the French Government took over the task of feeding and clothing the prisoners in England, they reduced the daily rations by one quarter. This irritated the prisoners extremely, and it was said by them that they preferred the ‘atrocious cruelty of the despot of London to the humanity and measures of the Five Directors of Paris’. A correspondent of The Times of March 16, 1798, signing himself ‘Director’, said that under the previous British victualling régime, a prisoner on his release showed the sum of four guineas which he had made by the sale of superfluous provisions, and the same writer declared that it had come to his knowledge that the new French provision agent had made overtures to the old British contractor to supply inferior meat.

In 1798 it was resolved in the House of Commons that an inquiry should be made to establish the truth or the reverse of the French complaints about the treatment of French prisoners in England. It was stated that the reports spread about in France were purposely exaggerated in order to inflame national feeling against Britain. Mr. Huskisson confirmed this and alluded to the abominable treatment of Sir Sydney Smith.

Colonel Stanley affirmed that the prisoners were generally well treated: he had lately been in Liverpool where 6,000 were confined, and found the officers had every indulgence, three billiard tables, and that they often performed plays.

In May 1798 the Report was drawn up. After hearing evidence and making every inquiry it was found that the French complaints were gross exaggerations; the Commissioners observed that ‘our prisoners in France were treated with a degree of inhumanity and rigour unknown in any former war, and unprecedented in the annals of civilized nations’, and reiterated the complaint that all British proposals for the exchange of prisoners were rejected.

The Report stated that there was good medical attendance given to prisoners in Britain; that there were constant checks on fraud by contractors and officials; that the prisoners appointed their own inspector of rations; that fraudulent contractors were proceeded against, and punished, giving as a recent example, a Plymouth contractor who, having failed in his engagements to supply the prisons with good provisions of full weight, was imprisoned for six months and fined £300.

The Report stated that the daily scale of provisions for prisoners in health was: one and a half pounds of bread, three-quarters of a pound of beef, one-third of an ounce of salt, and one quart of beer, except on Saturdays, when four ounces of butter and six ounces of cheese were substituted; and on four days of the week half a pint of pease, or in lieu one pound of cabbage stripped from the stalk.

The prisoners selected their own surgeons if they chose, and the same diet was given to sick prisoners as to sick British seamen. Each man was provided with a hammock, a palliasse, a bolster and a blanket, the straw of bolsters and palliasses being frequently changed.

A letter written in 1793 to the Supplement of the Gentleman’s Magazine, holds good for 1798, as to the belief of the man in the street that the foregoing liberal and humane regulations were worth more than the paper they were written on:

‘The Sans Culottes we hold in prison never lived so well in their lives before: they are allowed every day three-quarters of a pound of good beef, two pounds of bread with all the finest of the flour in it, the bran alone being extracted, two quarts of strong well-relished soup, one pound of cabbage with the heart included, and a quart of good beer. As a Frenchman can live upon one pound of meat for a week, this allowance is over-plenteous, and the prisoners sell more than half of it. With the money so obtained they buy as much strong beer as they can get leave to have brought them.... Such is the manner in which Englishmen are at this juncture treating their natural, inveterate, and unalterable enemies.’

On December 22, 1799, the French Government—now the Consulate—repudiated the arrangement made by the Directory for the subsistence of French war-prisoners in England, and the British Government was obliged to undertake the task, the Transport Office now replacing the old ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office. So the prisoner committees in the dépôts and prisons were abolished, and all persons who, under the previous arrangement, were under the French agents and contractors, and as such had been allowed passports, returned to their original prisoner status.

The Duke of Portland wrote thus to the Admiralty:

‘It is less necessary on this occasion to recall the circumstances which gave rise to the arrangement under which the two Governments agreed to provide for the wants of their respective subjects during their detention, as they have been submitted to Parliament and published to the world in refutation of the false and unwarrantable assertions brought forward by the French Government on this subject; but His Majesty cannot witness the termination of an arrangement founded on the fairest principles of Justice and Protection due by the Powers of War to their respective Prisoners, and proved by experience to be the best calculated to provide for their comfort, without protesting against the departure (on the part of the French Government) from an agreement entered into between the two countries, and which tended so materially to mitigate the Calamities of War. To prevent this effect as much as possible with respect to the British prisoners now in France, it is His Majesty’s pleasure that Capt. Cotes should be instructed to ascertain exactly the rate of daily allowance made to each man by the French Government, and that he should take care to supply at the expense of this country any difference that may exist between such allowance and what was issued by him under the late arrangement.

‘With respect to all the prisoners not on Parole in this country, it is His Majesty’s command that from the date of the French agent ceasing to supply them, the Commissioners of Transports and for taking care of prisoners of war shall furnish them immediately with the same ration of Provisions as were granted before the late arrangement took place.’

(Not clothing, as this had always been supplied by the French Government.)

Previous to this repudiatory act of France, the British Government made a similar proposal to Holland, accompanying it with the following remarks, which certainly seem to point to a desire to do the best possible to minimize the misery of the unfortunate men.

‘We trust that your Government will not reject so humane a proposition, which, if accepted, will, of course, preclude the possibility of complaints or recriminations between the respective Governments, and probably meliorate the fate of every individual to which it relates. In health their mode of living will be more conformable to their former habits. In sickness they will be less apt to mistrust the skill of their attendants, or to question the interest they may take in their preservation. On all occasions they would be relieved from the suspicion that the Hand which supplies their wants and ministers to their comfort, is directed by that spirit of Hostility which is too often the consequence of the Prejudice and Enmity excited by the State of War between Nations.’

However, the Dutch Government, no doubt acting under orders from without, replied that it was impossible to comply. So Dutch prisoners became also the objects of our national charity.

The Moniteur thus defended the Act of Repudiation:

‘The notification of the abandonment by the French Government of the support of French prisoners in England is in conformity with the common customs of war, and is an act of wise administration and good policy. The old Directory is perhaps the first Government which set the example of a belligerent power supporting its prisoners upon the territories of its enemies ... Men must have seen in this new arrangement a sort of insult. The English papers of that time were filled with bitter complaints, with almost official justification of this conduct, supported by most authentic proofs. Well-informed men saw with surprise the French Government abandon itself blindly to these impolitic suggestions, release the English from the expense and embarrassment of making burthensome advances, exhaust of its own accord the remains of its specie in order to send it to England; deprive themselves of the pecuniary resources of which they stood in such pressing need, in order to add to the pecuniary resources of its enemies; and, in short, to support the enormous expenses of administration.

‘The English, while they exclaimed against the injustice of the accusation, gathered with pleasure the fruits of this error of the Directory; though our old Monarchical Government left England during the whole war to support the expenses of the prisoners, and did not liquidate the balance until the return of Peace, and consequently of circulation, credit, commerce, and plenty, rendered the payment more easy. The generally received custom of leaving to the humanity of belligerent nations the care of protecting and supporting prisoners marks the progress of civilization.’

The results of repudiation by France of the care of French prisoners in England were not long in showing themselves.

The agent at Portchester Castle wrote to the Transport Office:

‘August, 1800.

‘Gentlemen:

‘I am under the necessity of laying before you the miserable situation of a great number of Prisoners at this Depôt for want of clothing. Many of them are entirely naked, and others have to cut up their hammocks to cover themselves. Their situation is such, that if not provided with these articles before the cold weather commences they must inevitably perish.

‘I beg to observe that it is nearly eighteen months since they were furnished with any article of wearing apparel by the French Government, and then only a single shirt to each suit which must necessarily have been worn out long since.

John Holmwood.’

And again, later on:

‘The prisoners are reduced to a state of dreadful meagreness. A great number of them have the appearance of walking skeletons. One has been found dead in his hammock, and another fell out from mere debility and was killed by the fall. The great part of those sent to the hospital die in a short time, others as soon as they are received there.’

These were written in consequence of letters of complaint from prisoners. The Agent in France for prisoners of war in England, Niou, was communicated with, but no reply came. Otto, the Commissioner of the Republic in England, however, said that as the French Government clothed British prisoners, although they were not exactly British prisoners but allies, it was our duty to clothe French prisoners. The British Government denied this, saying that we clothed our allies when prisoners abroad, and ascribed much of the misery among the French prisoners to their irrepressible gambling habits. Dundas wrote a long letter to the French Commissioners about the neglect of their Government, but added that out of sheer compassion the British Government would supply the French prisoners with sufficient clothing. Lord Malmesbury hinted that the prisoners were refused the chance of redress by the difficulty of gaining access to their Commissary, which Grenville stated was absolutely untrue, and that the commonest soldier or sailor had entire freedom of access to his representative.

On October 29, 1800, Otto, the French Commissioner in England, wrote:

‘My letter from Liverpool states that the number of deaths during the past month has greatly exceeded that of four previous months, even when the depôt contained twice the number of prisoners. This sudden mortality which commenced at the close of last month, is the consequence of the first approach of cold weather, all, without exception, having failed from debility. The same fate awaits many more of these unfortunate beings, already half starved from want of proper food, and obliged to sleep upon a damp pavement or a few handfuls of rotten straw. Hunger and their own imprudence, deprived them of their clothes, and now the effect of the cold weather obliges them to part with a share of their scanty subsistence to procure clothing. In one word, their only hope is a change in their situation or death.’

In this account Otto admits that the prisoners’ ‘imprudence’ has largely brought about the state of affairs. Rupert George, Ambrose Serle, and John Schenck, the Transport Office Commissioners who had been sent to inquire, report confirming the misery, and re-affirm its chief cause. About Stapleton Prison they say:

‘Those who are not quite ragged and half naked, are generally very dirty in their scanty apparel, and make a worse appearance as to health than they would do had they the power in such a dress to be clean. Profligacy and gambling add to the distress of many, and it is perhaps impossible to prevent or restrain this spirit, which can exercise itself in corners. The Dutch prisoners at Stapleton (1800), being clothed by the Dutch Government are in much better health than the French.’

The Commissioners sent to Otto an extract of a letter from Forton, near Gosport. Griffin, the prison surgeon, says that ‘several prisoners have been received into the Hospital in a state of great debility owing to their having disposed of their ration of provisions for a week, a fortnight, and in some instances for a month at a time. We have felt it our duty to direct that such persons as may be discovered to have been concerned in purchasing any article of provision, clothing or bedding, of another prisoner, should be confined in the Black Hole and kept on short allowance for ten days and also be marked as having forfeited their turn of exchange.’

Callous, almost brutal, according to our modern standards, as was the general character of the period covered by this history, it must not be inferred therefrom that all sympathy was withheld from the unfortunate men condemned to be prisoners on our shores. We have seen how generously the British public responded to the call for aid in the cases of the French prisoners of 1759, and of the Americans of 1778; we shall see in the progress of this history how very largely the heart of the country people of Britain went out to the prisoners living on parole amongst them, and I think my readers may accept a letter which I am about to put before them as evidence that a considerable section of the British public was of opinion that the theory and practice of our system with regard to prisoners of war was not merely wrong, but wicked, and that very drastic reform was most urgently needed.

Some readers may share the opinion of the French General Pillet, which I append to the letter, that the whole matter—the writing of the anonymous letter, and the prosecution and punishment of the newspaper editor who published it, was a trick of the Government to blind the public eye to facts, and that the fact that the Government should have been driven to have recourse to it, pointed to their suspicion that the public had more than an inkling that it was being hoodwinked.

In the Statesman newspaper of March 19, 1812, appeared the following article:

‘Our unfortunate prisoners in France have now been in captivity nine years, and, while the true cause of their detention shall remain unknown to the country there cannot be any prospect of their restoration to their families and homes. In some journeys I have lately made I have had repeated opportunities of discovering the infamous practices which produce the present evil, and render our exiled countrymen the hopeless victims of misery....’

(The writer then describes the two classes of prisoners of war in England.)

‘They are all under the care of the Transport Office who has the management of the money for their maintenance, which amounts to an enormous sum (more than three millions per annum) of which a large part is not converted to the intended purpose, but is of clear benefit to the Commissioners and their employers. The prisoners on parole receiving 1s. 6d. per diem produce comparatively little advantage to the Commissioners, who are benefited principally by the remittances these prisoners receive from France, keeping their money five or six months, and employing it in stock-jobbing. They gain still something from these, however, by what their agents think proper to send them of the property of those who die or run away. The prisoners in close confinement are very profitable. These prisoners are allowed by the Government once in eighteen months a complete suit of clothing, which however, they never receive. Those, therefore, among them who have any covering have bought it with the product of their industry, on which the Agents make enormous profits. Those who have no genius or no money go naked, and there are many in this deplorable state. Such a picture Humanity revolts at, but it is a true one, for the produce of the clothing goes entirely into the pockets of the Commissioners.

‘A certain amount of bread, meat, &c., of good quality ought to be furnished to each prisoner every day. They receive these victuals, but they are generally of bad quality, and there is always something wanting in the quantity—as one half or one third at least, which is of great amount. Besides, when any person is punished, he receives only one half of what is called a portion. These measures, whenever taken, produce about £250 or £300 a day in each depôt according to the number of prisoners, and of course, are found necessary very often. These are the regular and common profits. The Commissioners receive besides large sums for expenses of every description which have never been incurred in the course of the year, and find means to clear many hundreds of thousands of pounds to share with their employers.’

The writer goes on to say that

‘the real reason for bringing so many prisoners into the country is not military, but to enrich themselves [i.e. the Government]. For the same reason they keep the San Domingo people of 1803, who, by a solemn capitulation of Aux Cayes were to be returned to France. So with the capitulation of Cap François, who were sent home in 1811 as clandestinely as possible. Bonaparte could say ditto to us if any of ours capitulated in Spain like the Duke of York in Holland.

‘All this is the reason why our people in France are so badly treated, and it is not to be wondered at.

‘Honestus.’

The Transport Office deemed the plain-speaking on the part of an influential journal so serious that the opinion of the Attorney-General was asked, and he pronounced it to be ‘a most scandalous libel and ought to be prosecuted’. So the proprietor was proceeded against, found guilty, fined £500, imprisoned in Newgate for eighteen months, and had to find security for future good behaviour, himself in £1,000, and two sureties in £500 each.

I add the remarks of General Pillet, a prisoner on a Chatham hulk, upon this matter. They are from his book L’Angleterre, vue à Londres et dans ses provinces, pendant un séjour de dix années, dont six comme prisonnier de guerre—a book utterly worthless as a record of facts, and infected throughout with the most violent spirit of Anglophobism, but not without value for reference concerning many details which could only come under the notice of a prisoner.

‘Mr. Lovel, editor of the Statesman, a paper generally inclined in favour of the French Government, had published in March 19, 1812, a letter signed “Honestus”, in which the writer detailed with an exactness which showed he was thoroughly informed, the different sorts of robberies committed by the Transport Office and its agents upon the French prisoners, and summed them up. According to him these robberies amounted to several millions of francs: the budget of the cost of the prisoners being about 24,000,000 francs. Mr. Lovel was prosecuted. “Honestus” preserved his anonymity; the editor was, in consequence, condemned to two years imprisonment and a heavy fine. His defence was that the letter had been inserted without his knowledge and that he had had no idea who was the author. I have reason to believe, without being absolutely sure, that the writer was one Adams, an employé who had been dismissed from the Transport Office, a rascal all the better up in the details which he gave in that he had acted as interpreter of all the prisoners’ correspondence, the cause of his resentment being that he had been replaced by Sugden, even a greater rascal than he. I wrote to Mr. Brougham, Lovel’s Solicitor, and sent him a regular sworn statement that the prisoners did not receive one quarter the clothing nominally served to them, and for which probably the Government paid; that, estimating an outfit to be worth £1, this single item alone meant the robbery every eighteen months of about £1,800,000. My letter, as I expected, produced no effect; there was no desire to be enlightened on the affair, and the judicial proceedings were necessary to clear the Transport Office in the eyes of the French Government. Hence the reason for the severe punishment of Lovel, whose fine, I have been assured, was partly paid by the Transport Office, by a secret agreement.’

The General, after some remarks about the very different way in which such an affair would have been conducted in France, appends a note quoting the case of General Virion, who, on being accused of cruelty and rapacity towards the English prisoners in Verdun, blew his brains out rather than face the disgrace of a trial.

Pillet wrote to Lovel, the editor, thus:

‘On board the prison ship Brunswick,

Chatham, May 19, 1813.

‘Sir:

‘Since I have become acquainted with the business of the letter of “Honestus” I have been filled with indignation against the coward who, having seemed to wish to expose the horrible truth about the character and amount of the robberies practised upon prisoners of war, persists in maintaining his incognito when you have asked him to come forward in your justification.... Unhappily, we are Frenchmen, and it seems to be regarded in this country as treason to ask justice for us, and that because it is not possible to exterminate France altogether, the noblest act of patriotism seems to consist in assassinating French prisoners individually, by adding to the torments of a frightful imprisonment privations of all sorts, and thefts of clothing of which hardly a quarter of the proper quantity is distributed....

‘We have asked for impartial inquiries to be made by people not in the pay of the Admiralty; we have declared that we could reveal acts horrible enough to make hairs stand on end, and that we could bring unimpeachable witnesses to support our testimony. These demands, even when forwarded by irreproachable persons, have been received in silence. Is it possible that there are not in England more determined men to put a stop to ill-doing from a sense of duty and irrespective of rank or nation? Is it possible that not a voice shall ever be raised on our behalf?

‘Your condemnation makes me fear it is so.

‘If only one good man, powerful, and being resolved to remove shame from his country, and to wash out the blot upon her name caused by the knowledge throughout Europe of what we suffer, could descend a moment among us, and acquaint himself with the details of our miseries with the object of relieving them, what good he would do humanity, and what a claim he would establish to our gratitude!’

Pillet adds in a note:

‘Lord Cochrane in 1813 wished to examine the prison ships at Portsmouth. Although he was a member of Parliament, and a captain in the navy, permission was refused him, because the object of his visit was to ascertain the truth about the ill-treatment of the prisoners. Lord Cochrane is anything but an estimable man, but he is one of those who, in the bitterness of their hatred of the party in power, sometimes do good. He complained in Parliament, and the only reply he got was that as the hulks were under the administration of the Transport Office, it could admit or refuse whomsoever it chose to inspect them.’

CHAPTER II
THE EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS

From first to last the question of the Exchange of Prisoners was a burning one between Great Britain and her enemies, and, despite all efforts to arrange it upon an equitable basis and to establish its practice, it was never satisfactorily settled. It is difficult for an Englishman, reviewing the evidence as a whole and in as impartial a spirit as possible, to arrive at any other conclusion than that we were not so fairly dealt with by others as we dealt with them. We allowed French, Danish, and Dutch officers to go on parole to their own countries, which meant that they were on their honour to return to England if they were not exchanged by a certain date, and we continued to do so in face of the fact that violation of this pledge was the rule and not the exception, and that prominent officers of the army and navy were not ashamed thus to sin. Or we sent over shiploads of foreigners, each of whom had been previously arranged for as exchanged, but so often did the cartel ships, as they were called, return empty or without equivalent numbers from the French ports that the balance of exchange was invariably heavily against Britain. The transport of prisoners for whom exchanges had been arranged, and of invalids and boys, was by means of cartel ships which were hired, or contracted for, by Government for this particular service, and were subject to the strictest regulation and supervision. The early cartel ports were Dover, Poole, and Falmouth on this side; Calais, St. Malo, Havre, and Morlaix in France, but during the Napoleonic wars Morlaix was the French port, Plymouth, Lynn, Dartmouth, and Portsmouth being those of England. The French ports were selected with the idea of rendering the marches of exchanged prisoners to their districts as easy as possible.

A cartel ship was not allowed to carry guns or arms, nor any merchandise; if it did the vessel was liable to be seized. The national flag of the port of destination was to be flown at the fore-top-gallant mast, and the ship’s flag on the ensign staff, and both were to be kept continually flying. Passengers were not allowed to carry letters, nor, if from England, gold coin; the latter restriction being imposed so as partially to check the lucrative trade of guinea-running, as, during the early nineteenth century, on account of the scarcity of gold in France, there was such a premium upon British guineas that the smuggling of them engaged a large section of the English coast community, who were frequently backed up by London houses of repute. Passengers going to France on their own account paid £5 5s. each, with a deposit against demurrage on account of possible detention in the French port at one guinea per day, the demurrage being deducted from the deposit and the balance returned to the passenger.

The early cartel rates were, from Dover to Calais, 6s. per head; between all the Channel ports 10s. 6d., and to ports out of the Channel, £1 1s. For this the allowance of food was one and a half pounds of bread, three-quarters of a pound of meat, and two quarts of beer or one quart of wine, except between Dover and Calais, where for the meat was substituted four ounces of butter or six ounces of cheese. Commanding officers had separate cabins; a surgeon was compulsorily carried; officers and surgeon messed at the captain’s table. It was necessary that the ship should be provisioned sufficiently for an emergency, and it was especially ruled that if a ship should be delayed beyond sailing time owing to weather or incomplete number of passengers, nobody upon any pretence was to leave the ship.

In 1808, on account of the discomforts and even the dangers of the cartel service, as well as the abuse of it by parole-breakers and others, a request was made that a naval officer should accompany each cartel ship, but this was refused by the Admiralty upon the ground that as such he might be arrested upon reaching a French port. As it became suspected that between the cartel shipowners and captains and the escape agents a very close business understanding existed, it was ordered in this same year, 1808, that all foreigners found about sea-port towns on the plea that they were exchanged prisoners waiting for cartel ships, should be arrested, and that the batches of exchanged prisoners should be timed to reach the ports so that they should not have to wait.

Later, when practically Plymouth and Morlaix had a monopoly of the cartel traffic, the cartel owner received uniformly half a guinea per man if his carriage-rate was one man per ton of his burthen; and seven shillings and sixpence if at the more usual rate of three men to two tons, and for victualling was allowed fourteen pence per caput per diem.

In 1757 much correspondence between the two Governments took place upon the subjects of the treatment and exchange of prisoners, which may be seen at the Archives Nationales in Paris, resulting in a conference between M. de Marmontel and M. de Moras, Minister of Marine and Controller-General of Finances, and Vanneck & Co., agents in England for French affairs. Nothing came of it except an admission by the French that in one respect their countrymen in England were better treated than were the English prisoners in France, in that whereas the French prisoners were provided with mattresses and coverlids, the English were only given straw. England claimed the right of monopolizing the sea-carriage of prisoners; and this France very naturally refused, but agreed to the other clauses that king’s officers should be preferred to all other in exchange, that women and children under twelve should be sent without exchange, and that in hospitals patients should have separate beds and coverlids. But after a long exchange of requests and replies, complaints and accusations, England ceased to reply, and matters were at a standstill.

In 1758 there was a correspondence between M. de Moras and M. de Marmontel which shows that in these early days the principle of the exchange of prisoners possessed honourable features which were remarkably wanting on the French side during the later struggles between the two countries. Three French ‘broke-paroles’ who in accordance with the custom of the time should, when discovered, have been sent back to England, could not be found. M. de Moras suggested that in this case they should imitate the action of the British authorities in Jersey, who, unable to find nine English prisoners who had escaped from Dinan, stolen a fishing-boat, and got over to Jersey, had sent back the stolen vessel and nine French prisoners as an equivalent.

The following was the passport form for French prisoners whose exchange had been effected.

‘By the Commissioners for taking care of sick and wounded seamen, and for Exchanging Prisoners of War.

‘Whereas the one person named and described on the back hereof is Discharged from being Prisoner of War to proceed from London to France by way of Ostend in exchange for the British prisoner also named and described on the back hereof; you and every of you (sic) are hereby desired to suffer the said Discharged Person to pass from London to France accordingly without any hindrance or molestation whatever. This passport to continue in force for six days from the date of these presents.

‘June 3rd. 1757.

‘To all and Singular the King’s officers Civil and Military, and to those of all the Princes and States in Alliance with His Majesty.’

In 1758 the complaints of the French Government about the unsatisfactory state of the prisoner exchange system occupy many long letters. ‘Il est trop important de laisser subsister une pareille inaction dans les échanges; elle est préjudiciable aux deux Puissances, et fâcheuse aux familles’, is one remark. On the other hand, the complaint went from our side that we sent over on one occasion 219 French prisoners, and only got back 143 British, to which the French replied: ‘Yes: but your 143 were all sound men, whereas the 219 you sent us were invalids, boys, and strangers to this Department.’ By way of postscript the French official described how not long since a Dover boat, having captured two fishing-smacks of Boulogne and St. Valéry, made each boat pay twenty-five guineas ransom, beat the men with swords, and wounded the St. Valéry captain, remarking: ‘le procédé est d’autant plus inhumain qu’il a eu lieu de sang-froid et qu’il a été exercé contre des gens qui achetoient leur liberté au prix de toute leur fortune’.

This and other similar outrages on both sides led to the mutual agreement that fishing-boats were to be allowed to pursue their avocation unmolested—an arrangement which in later times, when the business of helping prisoners to escape was in full swing, proved to be a mixed blessing.

I do not think that the above-quoted argument of the French, that in return for sound men we were in the habit of sending the useless and invalids, and that this largely compensated for the apparent disproportion in the numbers exchanged—an argument which they used to the end of the wars between the two nations—is to be too summarily dismissed as absurd. Nor does it seem that our treatment of the poor wretches erred on the side of indulgence, for many letters of complaint are extant, of which the following from a French cartel-ship captain of 1780 is a specimen:

‘Combien n’est-il pas d’inhumanité d’envoyer des prisonniers les plus malades, attaqués de fièvre et de dissentoire. J’espère, Monsieur, que vous, connoissant les sentiments les plus justes, que vous voudriez bien donner vos ordres à M. Monckton, agent des prisonniers français, pour qu’il soit donné à mes malades des vivres frais, suivant l’ordinnance de votre Majesté; ou, qu’ils soient mis à l’hôpital.’

It would seem that during the Seven Years’ War British merchant-ship and privateer officers were only allowed to be on parole in France if they could find a local person of standing to guarantee the payment of a sum of money to the Government in the case of a breach of parole.

The parole rules in France, so far as regarded the limits assigned to prisoners at their towns of confinement, were not nearly so strict as in England, but, on the other hand, no system of guarantee money like that just mentioned existed in England.

On March 12, 1780, a table of exchange of prisoners of war, with the equivalent ransom rates, was agreed to, ranging from £60 or sixty men for an admiral or field-marshal to £1 or one man for a common sailor or soldier in the regular services, and from £4 or four men for a captain to £1 or one man of privateers and merchantmen.

In 1793 the French Government ordained a sweeping change by abolishing all equivalents in men or money to officers, and decreed that henceforth the exchange should be strictly of grade for grade, and man for man, and that no non-combatants or surgeons should be retained as prisoners of war. How the two last provisions came to be habitually violated is history.

On February 4, 1795, the Admiralty authorized the ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office to send a representative to France, to settle, if possible, the vexed question of prisoner exchange, and on March 22 Mr. F. M. Eden started for Brest, but was taken on to Roscoff. A week later a French naval officer called on him and informed him that only the Committee of Public Safety could deal with this matter, and asked him to go to Paris. He declined; so the purport of his errand was sent to Paris. A reply invited him to go to Dieppe. Here he met Comeyras, who said that the Committee of Public Safety would not agree to his cartel, there being, they said, a manifest difference between the two countries in that Great Britain carried on the war with the two professions—the navy and the army—and that restoring prisoners to her would clearly be of greater advantage to her than would be the returning of an equal number of men to France, who carried on war with the mass of the people. Moreover, Great Britain notoriously wanted men to replace those she had lost, whilst France had quite enough to enable her to defeat all her enemies.

So Eden returned to Brighthelmstone. Later, a meeting at the Fountain, Canterbury, between Otway and Marsh for Britain, and Monnerson for France, was equally fruitless, and it became quite evident that although France was glad enough to get general officers back, she had no particular solicitude for the rank and file, her not illogical argument being that every fighting man, officer or private, was of more value to Britain than were three times their number of Frenchmen to France.

In 1796 many complaints were made by the British cartel-ship masters that upon landing French prisoners at Morlaix their boats were taken from them, they were not allowed to go ashore, soldiers were placed on board to watch them; that directly the prisoners were landed, the ships were ordered to sea, irrespective of the weather; and that they were always informed that there were no British prisoners to take back.

In this year we had much occasion to complain of the one-sided character of the system of prisoner exchange with France, the balance due to Britain in 1796 being no less than 5,000. Cartel after cartel went to France full and came back empty; in one instance only seventy-one British prisoners were returned for 201 French sent over; in another instance 150 were sent and nine were returned, and in another 450 were sent without return.

From the regularity with which our authorities seem to have been content to give without receiving, one cannot help wondering if, after all, there might not have been some foundation for the frequent French retort that while we received sound men, we only sent the diseased, and aged, or boys. Yet the correspondence from our side so regularly and emphatically repudiates this that we can only think that the burden of the prisoners was galling the national back, and that the grumble was becoming audible which later broke out in the articles of the Statesman, the Examiner, and the Independent Whig.

From January 1, 1796, to March 14, 1798, the balance between Britain and Holland stood thus:

Just at this time there were a great many war-prisoners in England. Norman Cross and Yarmouth were full, and new prison ships were being fitted out at Chatham. The correspondence of the ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office consisted very largely of refusals to applicants to be allowed to go to France on parole, so that evidently the prisoner exchange was in so unsatisfactory a condition that even the passage of cartel loads of invalids was suspended.

In 1798 an arrangement about the exchange of prisoners was come to between England and France. France was to send a vessel with British prisoners, 5 per cent of whom were to be officers, and England was to do the same. The agents on each side were to select the prisoners. It was also ruled that the prisoners in each country were to be supported by their own country, and that those who were sick, wounded, incapacitated, or boys, should be surrendered without equivalent.

But in 1799 the French Republican Government refused to clothe or support its prisoners in Britain, so that all exchanges of prisoners ceased. Pending the interchange of correspondence which followed the declaration of this inhuman policy, the French prisoners suffered terribly, especially as it was winter, so that in January 1801, on account of the fearful mortality among them, it was resolved that they should be supplied with warm clothing at the public expense, and this was done, the cost being very largely defrayed by voluntary subscriptions in all parts of the Kingdom.

This was not the first or second time that British benevolence had stepped in to stave off the results of French inhumanity towards Frenchmen.

The letter before quoted from the agent at Portchester (p. [18]) and the report on Stapleton (p. [19]) in the chapter on International Recriminations have reference to this period.

This state of matters continued; the number of French prisoners in Britain increased enormously, for the French Government would return no answers to the continued representations from this side as to the unsatisfactory character of the Exchange question. Yet in 1803 it was stated that although not one British prisoner of war, and only five British subjects, had been returned, no less than 400 French prisoners actually taken at sea had been sent to France.

In 1804 Boyer, an officer at Belfast, wrote to his brother the general, on parole at Montgomery, that the Emperor would not entertain any proposal for the exchange of prisoners unless the Hanoverian army were recognized as prisoners of war. This was a sore topic with Bonaparte. In 1803 the British Government had refused to ratify the condition of the Treaty of Sublingen which demanded that the Hanoverian army, helpless in the face of Bonaparte’s sudden invasion of the country, should retire behind the Elbe and engage not to serve against France or her Allies during the war, in other words to agree to their being considered prisoners of war. Bonaparte insisted that as Britain was intimately linked with Hanover through her king she should ratify this condition. Our Government repudiated all interest in Hanover’s own affairs: Hanover was forced to yield, but Britain retaliated by blockading the Elbe and the Weser, with the result that Hamburg and Bremen were half ruined.

A form of exchange at sea was long practised of which the following is a specimen:

‘We who have hereunto set our names, being a lieutenant and a master of H.B.M.’s ship Virgin, do hereby promise on our word of honour to cause two of His Christian Majesty’s subjects of the same class who may be Prisoners in England to be set at liberty by way of Exchange for us, we having been taken by the French and set at liberty on said terms, and in case we don’t comply therewith we are obliged when called on to do so to return as Prisoners to France. Given under our hands in port of Coruña, July 31, 1762.’

As might be supposed, this easy method of procuring liberty led to much parole breaking on both sides, but it was not until 1812 that such contracts were declared to be illegal.

During 1805 the British Government persisted in its efforts to bring about an arrangement for the exchange of prisoners, but to these efforts the extraordinary reply was:

‘Nothing can be done on the subject without a formal order from the Emperor, and under the present circumstances His Imperial Majesty cannot attend to this business.’

The Transport Board thus commented upon this:

‘Every proposal of this Government relative to the exchanging of prisoners has been met by that of France with insulting evasion or contemptuous silence. As such [sic] it would be derogatory to the honour of the Kingdom to strive further in the cause of Humanity when our motives would be misnamed, and the objects unattained.

‘This Board will not take any further steps in the subject, but will rejoice to meet France in any proposal from thence.’

In the same year the Transport Office posted as a circular the Declaration of the French Government not to exchange even aged and infirm British prisoners in France.

In 1806 the Transport Office replied as follows to the request for liberation of a French officer on parole at Tiverton, who cited the release of Mr. Cockburn from France in support of his petition:

‘Mr. Cockburn never was a prisoner of war, but was detained in France at the commencement of hostilities contrary to the practise of civilized nations, and so far from the French Government having released, as you say, many British prisoners, so that they might re-establish their health in their own country, only three persons coming under the description have been liberated in return for 672 French officers and 1,062 men who have been sent to France on account of being ill. Even the favour granted to the above mentioned three persons was by the interest of private individuals, and cannot be considered as an act of the Government of that country.’

(A similar reply was given to many other applicants.)

Denmark, like Holland, made no replies to the British Government’s request for an arrangement of the exchange of prisoners, and of course, both took their cue from France. In the year 1808 the balance due from Denmark to Britain was 3,807. There were 1,796 Danish prisoners in England. Between 1808 and 1813 the balance due to us was 2,697. As another result of the French policy, the Transport Office requested the Duke of Wellington in Spain to arrange for the exchange of prisoners on the spot, as, under present circumstances, once a man became a prisoner in France, his services were probably lost to his country for ever. Yet another result was that the prisoners in confinement all over Britain in 1810, finding that the exchange system was practically suspended, became turbulent and disorderly to such an extent, and made such desperate attempts to break out, notably at Portchester and Dartmoor, that it was found necessary to double the number of sentries.

At length in 1810, soon after the marriage of Bonaparte with Marie Louise, an attempt was made at Morlaix to arrange matters, and the Comte du Moustier met Mr. Mackenzie there. Nothing came of it, because of the exorbitant demands of Bonaparte. He insisted that all prisoners—English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians—should be exchanged, man for man, rank for rank, on the same footing as the principal power under whom they fought; in other words, that for 50,000 Frenchmen, only 10,000 British would be returned, the balance being made up of Spanish and Portuguese more or less raw levies, who were not to be compared in fighting value with Englishmen or Frenchmen.

The second section of the fourth article of Mr. Mackenzie’s note was:

‘All the French prisoners, of whatever rank and quality, at present detained in Great Britain, or in the British possessions, shall be released. The exchange shall commence immediately after the signature of this convention, and shall be made by sending successively to Morlaix, or to any other port in the British Channel that may be agreed on, or by delivering to the French Commissioners, a thousand French prisoners for a thousand English prisoners, as promptly and in the same proportion as the Government shall release the latter.’

As neither party would yield, the negotiations were broken off. The Moniteur complained that some one of higher rank than Mr. Mackenzie had not been sent as British representative, and the British paper The Statesman commented strongly upon our non-acceptance of Bonaparte’s terms, although endorsing our refusal to accede to the particular article about the proportion of the exchange.

General Pillet, before quoted, criticizes the British action in his usual vitriolic fashion. After alluding bitterly to the conduct of the British Government in the matters of San Domingo and the Hanoverian army—both of which are still regarded by French writers as eminent instances of British bad faith, he describes the Morlaix meeting as an ‘infamous trap’ on the part of our Government.

‘We had the greater interest in this negotiation,’ he says; we desired exchange with a passion difficult to describe. Well! we trembled lest France should accept conditions which would have returned to their homes all the English prisoners without our receiving back a single Frenchman who was not sick or dying ... it was clearly demonstrated that the one aim of the London Cabinet was to destroy us all, and from this moment it set to work to capture as many prisoners as possible, so that it might almost be said that this was the one object of the War!’

Las Cases quotes Bonaparte’s comments in this matter:

‘The English had infinitely more French than I had English prisoners. I knew well that the moment they had got back their own they would have discovered some pretext for carrying the exchange no further, and my poor French would have remained for ever in the hulks. I admitted, therefore, that I had much fewer English than they had French prisoners: but then I had a great number of Spanish and Portuguese, and by taking them into account, I had a mass of prisoners considerably greater than theirs. I offered, therefore, to exchange the whole. This proposition at first disconcerted them, but at length they agreed to it. But I had my eye on everything. I saw clearly that if they began by exchanging an Englishman against a Frenchman, as soon as they got back their own they would have brought forward something to stop the exchanges. I insisted therefore that 3,000 Frenchmen should be exchanged against 1,000 English and 2,000 Spaniards and Portuguese. They refused this, and so the negotiations broke off.’

Want of space prevents me from quoting the long conversation which was held upon the subject of the Exchange of Prisoners of War between Bonaparte and Las Cases at St. Helena, although it is well worth the study.

As the object of this work is confined to prisoners of war in Britain, it is manifestly beyond its province to discuss at length the vexed questions of the comparative treatment of prisoners in the two countries. I may reiterate that on the whole the balance is fairly even, and that much depended upon local surroundings. Much evidence could be cited to show that in certain French seaports and in certain inland towns set apart for the residence of Bonaparte’s détenus quite as much brutality was exercised upon British subjects as was exercised upon French prisoners in England. Much depended upon the character of the local commandant; much depended upon the behaviour of the prisoners; much depended upon local sentiment. Bitche, for instance, became known as ‘the place of tears’ from the misery of the captives there; Verdun, on the other hand, after the tyrannical commandant Virion had made away with himself, was to all appearances a gay, happy, fashionable watering-place. Bitche had a severe commandant, and the class of prisoner there was generally rough and low. Beauchêne was a genial jailer at Verdun, and the mass of the prisoners were well-to-do. So in Britain. Woodriff was disliked at Norman Cross, and all was unhappiness. Draper was beloved, and Norman Cross became quite a place of captivity to be sought after.

CHAPTER III
THE PRISON SYSTEM—THE HULKS

The foreign prisoner of war in Britain, if an ordinary sailor or soldier, was confined either on board a prison ship or in prison ashore. Officers of certain exactly defined ranks were allowed to be upon parole if they chose, in specified towns. Some officers refused to be bound by the parole requirements, and preferred the hulk or the prison with the chance of being able to escape.

Each of these—the Hulks, the Prisons, Parole—will be dealt with separately, as each has its particular characteristics and interesting features.

The prison ship as a British institution for the storage and maintenance of men whose sole crime was that of fighting against us, must for ever be a reproach to us. There is nothing to be urged in its favour. It was not a necessity; it was far from being a convenience; it was not economical; it was not sanitary. Man took one of the most beautiful objects of his handiwork and deformed it into a hideous monstrosity. The line-of-battle ship was a thing of beauty, but when masts and rigging and sails were shorn away, when the symmetrical sweep of her lines was deformed by all sorts of excrescences and superstructures, when her white, black-dotted belts were smudged out, it lay, rather than floated, like a gigantic black, shapeless coffin. Sunshine, which can give a touch of picturesqueness, if not of beauty, to so much that is bare and featureless, only brought out into greater prominence the dirt, the shabbiness, the patchiness of the thing. In fog it was weird. In moonlight it was spectral. The very prison and cemetery architects of to-day strive to lead the eye by their art away from what the mind pictures, but when the British Government brought the prison ship on to the scene they appear to have aimed as much as possible at making the outside reflect the life within.

No amount of investigation, not the most careful sifting of evidence, can blind our eyes to the fact that the British prison hulks were hells upon water. It is not that the mortality upon them was abnormal: it was greater than in the shore prisons, but it never exceeded 3 per cent upon an average, although there were periods of epidemic when it rose much higher. It is that the lives of those condemned to them were lives of long, unbroken suffering. The writer, as an Englishman, would gladly record otherwise, but he is bound to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. True it is that our evidence is almost entirely that of prisoners themselves, but what is not, is that of English officers, and theirs is of condemnation. It should be borne in mind that the experiences we shall quote are those of officers and gentlemen, or at any rate educated men, and the agreement is so remarkable that it would be opening the way to an accusation of national partiality if we were to refuse to accept it.

The only palliating consideration in this sad confession is that the prisoners brought upon themselves much of the misery. The passion for gambling, fomented by long, weary hours of enforced idleness, wrought far more mischief among the foreign prisoners in England, than did the corresponding northern passion for drink among the British prisoners abroad, if only from the fact that whereas the former, ashore and afloat, could gamble when and where they chose, drink was not readily procurable by the latter. The report of a French official doctor upon prison-ship diseases will be quoted in its proper place, but the two chief causes of disease named by him—insufficient food and insufficient clothing—were very largely the result of the passion for gambling among the prisoners.

A correspondent of The Times, December 16, 1807, writes:

‘There is such a spirit of gambling existing among the French prisoners lately arrived at Chatham from Norman Cross, that many of them have been almost entirely naked during the late severe weather, having lost their clothes, not even excepting their shirts and small clothes, to some of their fellow prisoners: many of them also are reduced to the chance of starving by the same means, having lost seven or eight days’ provisions to their more fortunate companions, who never fail to exact their winnings. The effervescence of mind that this diabolical pursuit gives rise to is often exemplified in the conduct of these infatuated captives, rendering them remarkably turbulent and unruly. Saturday last, a quarrel arose between two of them in the course of play, when one of them, who had lost his clothes and food, received a stab in the back.’

‘Gambling among the French prisoners on the several prison-ships in the Medway has arrived at an alarming height. On board the Buckingham, where there are nearly 600 prisoners, are a billiard table, hazard tables, &c.; and the prisoners indulge themselves in play during the hours they are allowed for exercise.’

For the chief cause of suffering, medical neglect, there is, unhappily, but little defence, for, if the complaints of neglect, inefficacy, and of actual cruelty, which did manage to reach the august sanctum of the Transport Office were numerous, how many more must there have been which were adroitly prevented from getting there.

Again, a great deal depended upon the prison-ship commander. French writers are accustomed to say that the lieutenants in charge of the British prison ships were the scum of the service—disappointed men, men without interest, men under official clouds which checked their advance; and it must be admitted that at first sight it seems strange that in a time of war all over the world, when promotion must have been rapid, and the chances of distinction frequent, officers should easily be found ready, for the remuneration of seven shillings per diem, plus eighteenpence servant allowance, to take up such a position as the charge of seven or eight hundred desperate foreigners.

But that this particular service was attractive is evident from the constant applications for it from naval men with good credentials, and from the frequent reply of the authorities that the waiting list was full. If we may judge this branch of the service by others, and reading the matter by the light of the times, we can only infer that the Commander of a prison hulk was in the way of getting a good many ‘pickings’, and that as, according to regulation, no lieutenant of less than ten years’ service in that rank could apply for appointment, the berth was regarded as a sort of reward or solatium.

Be that as it may have been, the condition of a prison ship, like the condition of a man-of-war to-day, depended very largely upon the character of her commander. It is curious to note that most of the few testimonies extant from prisoners in favour of prison-ship captains date from that period of the great wars when the ill-feeling between the two countries was most rancorous, and the poor fellows on parole in English inland towns were having a very rough time.

In 1803 the Commandant at Portsmouth was Captain Miller, a good and humane man who took very much to heart the sufferings of the war prisoners under his supervision. He happened to meet among the French naval officers on parole a M. Haguelin of Havre, who spoke English perfectly, and with whom he often conversed on the subject of the hard lot of the prisoners on the hulks. He offered Haguelin a place in his office, which the poor officer gladly accepted, made him his chief interpreter, and then employed him to visit the prison ships twice a week to hear and note complaints with the view of remedying them.

Haguelin held this position for some years. In 1808 an English frigate captured twenty-four Honfleur fishing-boats and brought them and their crews into Portsmouth. Miller regarded this act as a gross violation of the laws of humanity, and determined to undo it. Haguelin was employed in the correspondence which followed between Captain Miller and the Transport Office, the result being that the fishermen were well treated, and finally sent back to Honfleur in an English frigate. Then ensued the episode of the Flotte en jupons, described in a pamphlet by one Thomas, when the women of Honfleur came out, boarded the English frigate, and amidst a memorable scene of enthusiasm brought their husbands and brothers and lovers safe to land. When Haguelin was exchanged and was leaving for France, Miller wrote:

‘I cannot sufficiently express how much I owe to M. Haguelin for his ceaseless and powerful co-operation on the numerous occasions when he laboured to better the condition of his unfortunate compatriots. The conscientiousness which characterized all his acts makes him deserve well of his country.’

In 1816, Captain (afterwards Baron) Charles Dupin, of the French Corps of Naval Engineers, placed on record a very scathing report upon the treatment of his countrymen upon the hulks at Chatham. He wrote:

‘The Medway is covered with men-of-war, dismantled and lying in ordinary. Their fresh and brilliant painting contrasts with the hideous aspect of the old and smoky hulks, which seem the remains of vessels blackened by a recent fire. It is in these floating tombs that are buried alive prisoners of war—Danes, Swedes, Frenchmen, Americans, no matter. They are lodged on the lower deck, on the upper deck, and even on the orlop-deck.... Four hundred malefactors are the maximum of a ship appropriated to convicts. From eight hundred to twelve hundred is the ordinary number of prisoners of war, heaped together in a prison-ship of the same rate.’

The translator of Captain Dupin’s report[^[2]] comments thus upon this part of it:

‘The long duration of hostilities, combined with our resplendent naval victories, and our almost constant success by land as well as by sea, increased the number of prisoners so much as to render the confinement of a great proportion of them in prison-ships a matter of necessity rather than of choice; there being, in 1814, upwards of 70,000 French prisoners of war in this country.’

About Dupin’s severe remarks concerning the bad treatment of the prisoners, their scanty subsistence, their neglect during sickness and the consequent high rate of mortality among them, the translator says:

‘The prisoners were well treated in every respect; their provisions were good in quality, and their clothing sufficient; but, owing to their unconquerable propensity to gambling, many of them frequently deprived themselves of their due allowance both of food and raiment. As to fresh air, wind-sails were always pointed below in the prison ships to promote its circulation. For the hulks themselves the roomiest and airiest of two and three deckers were selected, and were cleared of all encumbrances.

‘Post-captains of experience were selected to be in command at each port, and a steady lieutenant placed over each hulk. The prisoners were mustered twice a week; persons, bedding, and clothing were all kept clean; the decks were daily scraped and rubbed with sand: they were seldom washed in summer, and never in winter, to avoid damp. Every morning the lee ports were opened so that the prisoners should not be too suddenly exposed to the air, and no wet clothes were allowed to be hung before the ports.

French Sailors on an English Prison Ship.
(After Bombled.)

‘The provisions were minutely examined every morning by the lieutenant, and one prisoner from each mess was chosen to attend to the delivery of provisions, and to see that they were of the right quality and weight. The allowance of food was:

‘Each man on each of five days per week received one and a half pounds of wheaten flour bread, half a pound of good fresh beef with cabbage or onions, turnips and salt, and on each of the other two days one pound of good salted cod or herrings, and potatoes. The average number of prisoners on a seventy-four was from six to seven hundred, and this, it should be remembered, on a ship cleared from all encumbrances such as guns, partitions, and enclosures.’

Dupin wrote:

‘By a restriction which well describes the mercantile jealousy of a manufacturing people, the prisoners were prohibited from making for sale woollen gloves and straw hats. It would have injured in these petty branches the commerce of His Britannic Majesty’s subjects!’

to which the reply was:

‘It was so. These “petty branches” of manufactures were the employment of the wives and children of the neighbouring cottagers, and enabled them to pay their rent and taxes: and, on a representation by the magistrates that the vast quantities sent into the market by the French prisoners who had neither rent, nor taxes, nor lodging, firing, food or clothes to find, had thrown the industrious cottagers out of work, an order was sent to stop this manufacture by the prisoners.’

As to the sickness on board the hulks, in reply to Dupin’s assertions the Government had the following table drawn up relative to the hulks at Portsmouth in a month of 1813:

Dupin also published tables of prison mortality in England in confirmation of the belief among his countrymen that it was part of England’s diabolic policy to make prisoners of war or to kill or incapacitate them by neglect or ill-treatment. Between 1803 and 1814, the total number of prisoners brought to England was 122,440. Of these, says M. Dupin,

leaving a balance of 26,767, who presumably were tough enough to resist all attempts to kill or wreck them.

To this our authorities replied with the following schedule:

leaving a balance of at least 94,492 sound men; for, not only, as has been said above, were a large proportion of the 17,607 sound men, but no allowance was made in this report for the great number of prisoners who arrived sick or wounded.

The rate of mortality, of course, varied. At Portsmouth in 1812 the mortality on the hulks was about 4 per cent. At Dartmoor in six years and seven months there were 1,455 deaths, which, taking the average number of prisoners at 5,000, works out at a little over 4 per cent annually. But during six months of the years 1809–1810 there were 500 deaths out of 5,000 prisoners at Dartmoor, due to an unusual epidemic and to exceptionally severe weather. With the extraordinary healthiness of the Perth dépôt I shall deal in its proper place.

I have to thank Mr. Neves, editor of the Chatham News, for the following particulars relative to Chatham.

‘The exact number of prisoners accommodated in these floating prisons cannot be ascertained, but it appears they were moored near the old Gillingham Fort (long since demolished) which occupied a site in the middle of what is now Chatham Dockyard Extension. St. Mary’s Barracks, Gillingham, were built during the Peninsular War for the accommodation of French prisoners. There is no doubt that the rate of mortality among the prisoners confined in the hulks was very high, and the bodies were buried on St. Mary’s Island on ground which is now the Dockyard Wharf.

Prison Ships.
(From a sketch by the author.)

‘In the course of the excavations in connexion with the extension of the Dockyard—a work of great magnitude which was commenced in 1864 and not finished until 1884, and which cost £3,000,000, the remains of many of the French prisoners were disinterred. The bones were collected and brought round to a site within the extension works, opposite Cookham Woods. A small cemetery of about 200 feet square was formed, railed in, and laid out in flower-beds and gravelled pathways. A handsome monument, designed by the late Sir Andrew Clarke, was erected in the centre—the plinth and steps of granite, with a finely carved figure in armour and cloaked, and holding an inverted torch in the centre, under a canopied and groined spire terminating in crockets and gilt finials. In addition to erecting this monument the Admiralty allotted a small sum annually for keeping it in order.

‘The memorial bore the following inscription, which was written by the late Sir Stafford Northcote, afterwards Lord Iddesleigh:

Here are gathered together

The remains of many brave soldiers and sailors, who, having been once the foes, and afterwards captives, of England, now find rest in her soil, remembering no more the animosities of war or the sorrows of imprisonment. They were deprived of the consolation of closing their eyes among the countrymen they loved; but they have been laid in an honoured grave by a nation which knows how to respect valour and to sympathize with misfortune.

‘The Government of the French Republic was deeply moved by the action of the Admiralty, and its Ambassador in London wrote:

The Government of the Republic has been made acquainted through me with the recent decision taken by the Government of the Queen to assure the preservation of the funeral monument at Chatham, where rest the remains of the soldiers and sailors of the First Empire who died prisoners of war on board the English hulks. I am charged to make known to your lordship that the Minister of Marine has been particularly affected at the initiative taken in this matter by the British Administration. I shall be much obliged to you if you will make known to H.M’s Government the sincere feelings of gratitude of the Government of the Republic for the homage rendered to our deceased soldiers.

(Signed) Waddington.

‘In 1904 it became necessary again to move the bones of the prisoners of war and they were then interred in the grounds of the new naval barracks, a site being set apart for the purpose near the chapel, where the monument was re-erected. It occupies a position where it can be seen by passers-by. The number of skulls was 506. Quite recently (1910) two skeletons were dug up by excavators of the Gas Company’s new wharf at Gillingham, and, there being every reason to believe that they were the remains of French prisoners of war, they were returned to the little cemetery above mentioned.’

Memorial To French Prisoners of War in the Royal Naval Barracks, Chatham

That a vast system of jobbery and corruption prevailed among the contractors for the food, clothing, and bedding of the prisoners, and, consequently, among those in office who had the power of selection and appointment; and more, that not a tithe of what existed was expressed, is not the least among the many indictments against our nation at this period which bring a flush of shame to the cheek. As has been before remarked, all that printed regulations and ordinance could do to keep matters in proper order was done. What could read better, for instance, than the following official Contracting Obligations for 1797:

‘Beer: to be equal in quality to that issued on H.M.’s ships. Beef: to be good and wholesome fresh beef, and delivered in clean quarters. Cheese: to be good Gloucester or Wiltshire, or equal in quality. Pease: to be of the white sort and good boilers. Greens: to be stripped of outside leaves and fit for the copper. Beer: every 7 barrels to be brewed from 8 bushels of the strongest amber malt, and 6 or 7 lb. of good hops at £1 18s. per ton. Bread: to be equal in quality to that served on H.M.’s ships.’

As if there was really some wish on the part of the authorities to have things in order, the custom began in 1804 for the Transport Board to send to its prison agents and prison-ship commanders this notice:

‘I am directed by the Board to desire that you will immediately forward to this office by coach a loaf taken indiscriminately from the bread issued to the prisoners on the day you receive this letter.’

In so many cases was the specimen bread sent pronounced ‘not fit to be eaten’, that circulars were sent that all prisons and ships would receive a model loaf of the bread to be served out to prisoners, ‘made of whole wheaten meal actually and bona fide dressed through an eleven shilling cloth’.

Nor was the regulation quantity less satisfactory than the nominal quality. In 1812 the scale of victualling on prison ships according to the advertisement to contractors was:

Sunday. 1½ lb. bread. Monday.  ½ lb. fresh beef. Tuesday.  ½ lb. cabbage or turnip. Thursday. 1 ounce Scotch barley. Saturday.  ⅓ ounce salt.  ¼ ounce onions. Wednesday. 1½ lb. bread, 1 lb. good sound herrings, 1 lb. good sound potatoes. Friday. 1½ lb. bread, 1 lb. good sound cod, 1 lb. potatoes.

In the year 1778 there were 924 American prisoners of war in England. It has been shown before (p. [11]) how the fact of their ill-treatment was forcibly taken up by their own Government, but the following extract from a London newspaper further shows that the real cause of their ill-treatment was no secret:

‘As to the prisoners who were kept in England’ (this is the sequel of remarks about our harsh treatment of American prisoners in America), ‘their penury and distress was undoubtedly great, and was much marked by the fraud and cruelty of those who were entrusted with their government, and the supply of their provisions. For these persons, who certainly never had any orders for ill-treatment of the prisoners by countenance in it, having, however, not been overlooked with the utmost vigilance, besides their prejudice and their natural cruelty, considered their offices as only lucrative jobs which were created merely for their emolument. Whether there was not some exaggeration, as there usually is in these accounts, it is certain that though the subsistence accorded them by Government would indeed have been sufficient, if honestly administered, to have sustained human nature, in the respect to the mere articles of foods, yet the want of clothes, firing, and bedding, with all the other various articles which custom or nature regards as conducive to health and comfort, became practically insupportable in the extremity of the winter. In consequence of the complaint by the prisoners, the matter was very humanely taken up in the House of Peers by Lord Abingdon ... and soon after a liberal subscription was carried on in London and other parts, and this provided a sufficient remedy for the evil.’

On April 13, 1778, a Contractors’ Bill was brought in to Parliament by Sir Philip Jenning Clarke ‘for the restraining of any person being a Member of the House of Commons, from being concerned himself or any person in trust for him, in any contract made by the Commissioners of H.M.’s Navy or Treasury, the Board of Ordnance, or by any other person or persons for the public service, unless the said contract shall be made at a public bidding’.

The first reading of the Bill was carried by seventy-one to fifty, the second reading by seventy-two to sixty-one. Success in the Lords was therefore regarded as certain. Yet it was actually lost by two votes upon the question of commitment, and the exertion of Government influence in the Bill was taken to mean a censure on certain Treasury officials.

So things went on in the old way. Between 1804 and 1808 the evil state of matters was either so flagrant that it commanded attention, or some fearless official new broom was doing his duty, for the records of these years abound with complaints, exposures, trials, and judgements.

We read of arrangements being discussed between contractors and the stewards of prison ships by which part of the statutory provisions was withheld from the prisoners; of hundreds of suits of clothing sent of one size, of boots supposed to last eighteen months which fell to pieces during the first wet weather; of rotten hammocks, of blankets so thin that they were transparent; of hundreds of sets of handcuffs being returned as useless; of contractors using salt water in the manufacture of bread instead of salt, and further, of these last offenders being prosecuted, not for making unwholesome bread, but for defrauding the Revenue! Out of 1,200 suits of clothes ordered to be at Plymouth by October 1807, as provision for the winter, by March 1808 only 300 had been delivered!

Let us take this last instance and consider what it meant.

It meant, firstly, that the contractor had never the smallest intention of delivering the full number of suits. Secondly, that he had, by means best known to himself and the officials, received payment for the whole. Thirdly, that hundreds of poor wretches had been compelled to face the rigour of an English winter on the hulks in a half naked condition, to relieve which very many of them had been driven to gambling and even worse crimes.

And all the time the correspondence of the Transport Office consists to a large extent of rules and regulations and provisions and safeguards against fraud and wrong-doing; moral precepts accompany inquiry about a missing guard-room poker, and sentimental exhortations wind up paragraphs about the letting of grazing land or the acquisition of new chimney-pots. Agents and officials are constantly being reminded and advised and lectured and reproved. Money matters of the most trifling significance are carefully and minutely dealt with. Yet we know that the war-prison contract business was a festering mass of jobbery and corruption, that large fortunes were made by contractors, that a whole army of small officials and not a few big ones throve on the ‘pickings’ to be had.

Occasionally, a fraudulent contractor was brought up, heavily fined and imprisoned; but such cases are so rare that it is hard to avoid the suspicion that their prominence was a matter of expediency and policy, and that many a rascal who should have been hanged for robbing defenceless foreigners of the commonest rights of man had means with which to defeat justice and to persist unchecked in his unholy calling. References to this evil will be made in the chapter dealing with prisons ashore, in connexion with which the misdeeds of contractors seem to have been more frequent and more serious than with the hulks.

If it is painful for an Englishman to be obliged to write thus upon the subject of fraudulent contractors, their aiders and abettors, still more so is it to have to confess that a profession even more closely associated with the cause of humanity seems to have been far too often unworthily represented.

Allusion has been made to the unanimity of foreign officer-prisoners about the utter misery of prison-ship life, but in nothing is their agreement more marked than their condemnation, not merely of our methods of treatment of the sick and wounded, but of the character of the prison-ship doctors. Always bearing in mind that Britain treated her own sailors and soldiers as if they were vicious animals, and that the sickbay and the cockpit of a man-of-war of Nelson’s day were probably not very much better than those described by Smollett in Roderick Random, which was written in 1748, there seems to have been an amount of gratuitous callousness and cruelty practised by the medical officers attached to the hulks which we cannot believe would have been permitted upon the national ships.

And here again the Government Regulations were admirable on paper: the one point which was most strongly insisted upon being that the doctors should live on board the vessels, and devote the whole of their time to their duties, whereas there is abundant evidence to show that most of the doctors of the Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Chatham hulks carried on private practices ashore and in consequence lived ashore.

More will be found upon this unhappy topic in the next chapter of records of life on the hulks, but we may fittingly close the present with the report upon hulk diseases by Dr. Fontana, French Officer of Health to the Army of Portugal, written upon the Brunswick prison ship at Chatham in 1812, and published as an appendix to Colonel Lebertre’s book upon English war-prison life.

He divides the diseases into three heads:

(1) External, arising from utter want of exercise, from damp, from insufficient food—especially upon the ‘maigre’ days of the week—and from lack of clothing. Wounds on the legs, which were generally bare, made bad ulcers which the ‘bourreaux’ of English doctors treated with quack remedies such as the unguent basilicon. He describes the doctor of the Fyen prison hospital-ship as a type of the English ignorant and brutal medical man.

(2) Scorbutic diathesis, arising from the ulcers and tumours on the lower limbs, caused by the breathing of foul air from twelve to sixteen hours a day, by overcrowding, salt food, lack of vegetables, and deprivation of all alcohol.

(3) Chest troubles—naturally the most prevalent, largely owing to moral despair caused by humiliations and cruelties, and deprivations inflicted by low-born, uneducated brutes, miserable accommodation, the foul exhalations from the mud shores at low water, and the cruel treatment by doctors, who practised severe bleedings, prescribed no dieting except an occasional mixture, the result being extreme weakness. When the patient was far gone in disease he was sent to hospital, where more bleeding was performed, a most injudicious use of mercury made, and his end hastened.

The great expense of the hulks, together with the comparative ease with which escape could be made from them, and the annually increasing number of prisoners brought to England, led to the development of the Land Prison System. It was shown that the annual expense of a seventy-four, fitted to hold 700 prisoners, was £5,869. Dartmoor Prison, built to hold 6,000 prisoners, cost £135,000, and the annual expense of it was £2,862: in other words, it would require eight seventy-fours at an annual expense of £46,952 to accommodate this number of prisoners.

The hulks were retained until the end of the great wars, and that they were recognized by the authorities as particular objects of aversion and dread seems to be evident from the fact that incorrigible offenders from the land prisons were sent there, as in the case of the wholesale transfer to them in 1812 of the terrible ‘Romans’ from Dartmoor, and from the many letters written by prisoners on board the hulks praying to be sent to prison on land, of which the following, from a French officer on a Gillingham hulk to Lady Pigott, is a specimen:

H.M.S. Sampson.

‘My Lady:

‘Je crains d’abuser de votre bonté naturelle et de ce doux sentiment de compation qui vous fait toujours prendre pitié des malheureux, mais, Madame, un infortuné sans amis et sans soutiens se réfugie sous les auspices des personnes généreuses qui daignent le plaindre, et vous avez humainement pris part à mes maux. Souffrez donc que je vous supplie encore de renouveler vos demandes en ma faveur, si toutefois cette demande ne doit pas être contraire à votre tranquillité personnelle. Voilà deux ans que je suis renfermé dans cette prison si nuisible à ma santé plus chancellante et plus débile que jamais. Voilà six ans et plus que je suis prisonnier sans espoir qu’un sort si funeste et si peu mérité finisse. Si je n’ai pas mérité la mort, et si on ne veut pas me la donner, il faut qu’on me permette de retourner m’isoler à terre, où je pourrais alors dans la tranquillité vivre d’une manière plus convenable à ma faible constitution, et résister au malheur, pour vous prouver, my lady, que quand j’ai commis la faute pour laquelle je souffre tant, ce fut beaucoup plus par manque d’expérience que par vice du cœur.

‘Jean-Auguste Neveu.’

1812.

This letter was accompanied by a certificate from the doctor of the Trusty hospital ship, and the supplicant was noted to be sent to France with the first batch of invalids.

Many of the aforementioned letters are of the most touching description, and if some of them were shown to be the clever concoctions of desperate men, there is a genuine ring about most which cannot fail to move our pity. Lady Pigott was one of the many admirable English women who interested themselves in the prisoners, and who, as usual, did so much of the good work which should have been done by those paid to do it. It is unfortunate for our national reputation that so many of the reminiscences of imprisonment in England which have come down to us have been those of angry, embittered men, and that so little written testimony exists to the many great and good and kindly deeds done by English men and women whose hearts went out to the unfortunate men on the prison ships, in the prisons, and on parole, whose only crime was having fought against us. But that there were such acts is a matter of history.

CHAPTER IV
LIFE ON THE HULKS

From a dozen accounts by British, American, and French writers I have selected the following, as giving as varied a view as possible of this phase of the War Prison system.

The first account is by the Baron de Bonnefoux, who was captured with the Belle Poule in the West Indies by the Ramillies, Captain Pickmore in 1806, was allowed on parole at Thame and at Odiham, whence he broke parole, was captured, and taken to the Bahama at Chatham.

When Bonnefoux was at Chatham, there were five prison ships moored under the lee of Sheppey between Chatham and Sheerness. He describes the interior arrangements of a hulk, but it resembles exactly that of the painter Garneray whose fuller account I give next.

Writing in 1835, the Baron says:

‘It is difficult to imagine a more severe punishment; it is cruel to maintain it for an indefinite period, and to submit to it prisoners of war who deserve much consideration, and who incontestably are the innocent victims of the fortune of war. The British prison ships have left profound impressions on the minds of the Frenchmen who have experienced them; an ardent longing for revenge has for long moved their hearts, and even to-day when a long duration of peace has created so much sympathy between the two nations, erstwhile enemies, I fear that, should this harmony between them be disturbed, the remembrance of these horrible places would be reawakened.’

Very bitterly does the Baron complain of the bad and insufficient food, and of the ill-fitting, coarse, and rarely renewed clothing, and he is one of those who branded the commanders of the prison ships as the ‘rebuts’—the ‘cast-offs’ of the British navy.

The prisoners on the Bahama consisted largely of privateer captains, the most restless and desperate of all the prisoners of war, men who were socially above the common herd, yet who had not the cachet of the regular officers of the navy, who regarded themselves as independent of such laws and regulations as bound the latter, and who were also independent in the sense of being sometimes well-to-do and even rich men. At first there was an inclination among some of these to take Bonnefoux down as an ‘aristo’; they ‘tutoyer’d’ him, and tried to make him do the fagging and coolie work which, on prison ships as in schools, fell to the lot of the new-comer.

But the Baron from the first took up firmly the position of an officer and a gentleman, and showed the rough sea-dogs of the Channel ports that he meant it, with the result that they let him alone.

Attempted escapes were frequent. Although under constant fear of the lash, which was mercilessly used in the British army at this time, the soldiers of the guard were ready enough to sell to the prisoners provisions, maps, and instruments for effecting escape. One day in 1807 five of the prisoners attempted to get off in the empty water casks which the Chatham contractor took off to fill up. They got safely enough into the water boat, unknown of course to its occupants (so it seems, at any rate, in this case, although there was hardly a man who had dealings with the hulks who would not help the prisoners to escape for money), but at nightfall the boat anchored in mid-stream; one of the prisoners got stuck in his water-cask and called for aid; this was heard by the cabin-boy, who gave the alarm, the result being that the prisoners were hauled out of their hiding places, taken on board, and got ten days Black Hole. The Black Hole was a prison six feet square at the bottom of the hold, to which air only came through round holes not big enough for the passage of a mouse. Once and once only in the twenty-four hours was this cachot visited for the purpose of bringing food and taking away the latrine box. Small wonder that men often went mad and sometimes died during a lengthened confinement, and that those who came out looked like corpses.

The above-mentioned men were condemned to pay the cost of their capture, and, as they had no money, were put on half rations!

The time came round for the usual sending of aged and infirm prisoners to shore prisons. One poor chap sold his right to go to Bonnefoux, and he and his friend Rousseau resolved to escape en route. Bonnefoux, however, was prevented from going, as his trunk had arrived from Odiham and he was required to be present to verify its contents.

In December 1807, three Boulogne men cut a hole just above the water near the forward sentry box on the guard gallery which ran round the outside of the ship, and escaped. Others attempted to follow, but one of them cried out from the extreme cold, was fired at and hauled on board. Three managed to get off to Dover and Calais, one stuck in the mud and was drowned, and the Baron says that the captain of the Bahama allowed him to remain there until he rotted away, as a deterrent to would-be imitators.

Milne, captain of the Bahama, the Baron says, was a drunken brute who held orgies on board at which all sorts of loose and debased characters from the shore attended. Upon one occasion a fire was caused by these revels, and the captain, who was drunk, gave orders that the prisoners should be shot at should the fire approach them, rather than that they should escape.

A rough code of justice existed between the prisoners for the settlement of differences among themselves. One Mathieu, a privateersman, kept a small tobacco stall. A soldier, who already had a long bill running with him, wanted tobacco on credit. Mathieu refused; the soldier snatched some tobacco off the stall, Mathieu struck him with a knife and wounded him badly. Mathieu was a very popular character, but justice had to be done, even to a captive. Luckily the soldier recovered, and Mathieu got off with indemnification.

During the very bad weather of March 1808, the sentries ordinarily on the outer gallery were taken on board. To this gallery a boat was always made fast, and the Baron, Rousseau, and another resolved to escape by it. So they cut the painter and got off, using planks for oars, with holes in them for handhold. They reached land safely, and hid all day in a field, feeding on provisions they had brought from the Bahama. At nightfall they started, and, meeting a countryman, asked the way to Chatham. ‘Don’t go there,’ he replied, ‘the bridge is guarded, and you will be arrested.’ One of the prisoners, not knowing English, only caught the last word, and, thinking it was ‘arrêtez’, drew a piece of fencing foil, with which each was armed, and threatened the man. The others saved him, and in recognition he directed them to a village whence they could cross the Medway. They walked for a long time until they were tired, and reaching a cottage, knocked for admission. A big man came to the door. They asked hospitality, and threatened him in case of refusal. ‘My name is Cole,’ said the man, ‘I serve God, I love my neighbour, I can help you. Depend on me.’ They entered and were well entertained by Cole’s wife and daughter, and enjoyed the luxury of a night’s rest in a decent bed. Next morning, Cole showed them how to reach the Dover road across the river, and with much difficulty was persuaded to accept a guinea for his services.

Such instances of pity and kindness of our country people for escaped prisoners are happily not rare, and go far to counterbalance the sordid and brutal treatment which in other cases they received.

That evening the fugitives reached Canterbury, and, after buying provisions, proceeded towards Dover, and slept in a barn. Freedom seemed at hand when from Dover they had a glimpse of the French coast, but fortune still mocked them, for they sought in vain along the beach for a boat to carry them over. Boats indeed were there, but all oars, sails, and tackle had been removed from them in accordance with Government advice circulated in consequence of the frequent escapes of French officers on parole by stealing long-shore boats.

So they went on to Deal, and then to Folkestone. Here they were recognized as escaping prisoners and were pursued, but they ran and got safely away. They held a consultation and decided to go to Odiham in Hampshire, where all of them had friends among the officers on parole there, who would help them with money. The writer here describes the great sufferings they underwent by reason of the continuous bad weather, their poor clothing, their footsoreness, and their poverty. By day they sheltered in ditches, woods, and under hedges, and journeyed by night, hungry, wet to the skin, and in constant dread of being recognized and arrested. For some unknown reason, instead of pushing westward for their destination they went back to Canterbury, thence to London, then via Hounslow Heath to Odiham, where they arrived more dead than alive, shoeless, their clothing in rags, and penniless. At Odiham they went to one of the little houses on the outskirts of the town, built especially for French prisoners. This house belonged to a Mr. R——, and here the three men remained hidden for eight days. Suddenly the house was surrounded by armed men, the Baron and his companions were arrested and put into the lock-up. Céré, a friend of the Baron’s, believed that R—— had betrayed them, and challenged him. A duel was fought in which R—— was badly wounded, and when he recovered he found that feeling among the Frenchmen in Odiham was so strong, that the Agent sent him away to Scotland under a false name. At Odiham lock-up, Sarah Cooper, an old friend of the Baron’s when he was on parole there, who had helped him to get away, came to see him and left him a note in which she said she would help him to escape, and would not leave him until she had taken him to France. The escape was planned, Sarah contrived to get him a rope ladder and had a conveyance ready to take him away, but just as his foot was on the ladder the police got the alarm, he was arrested, chained, and shut up in the cachot.

For three days the Baron remained in irons, and then was marched to Chatham, so closely watched by the guards that every night the prisoner’s clothes and boots were removed, and were not returned until the morning. They went to Chatham by way of London where they were confined in the Savoy prison, then used for British deserters. These men were friendly to the Frenchmen. All of them had been flogged, one had received 1,100 lashes, and was to receive 300 more.

On May 1, 1808, the unfortunate men found themselves once more on the Bahama, with a sentence of ten days in the Black Hole.

Captain Milne of the Bahama was exasperated at these escapes, and attempts to escape, and was brutal in his endeavours to get hold of the tools with which the prisoners had worked. He tried the effect of starvation, but this only fanned the spirit of revolt in the ship, the state of life in which became very bad, threats, disputes, quarrels and duels being of everyday occurrence. The climax came when bad weather prevented the delivery of bread, and the prisoners were put on biscuit. They assembled in the parc, the open space between the two batteries, forty feet square, and declared they would not disperse until other provisions were served out. Milne was mad with anger and drink, and ordered the soldiers to fire upon the prisoners, but the young officer in command would not respect the order, and, instead, counselled a more moderate action. Bonnefoux managed to calm the prisoners, and determined personally to interview Milne, and represented to him that to compel eight hundred desperate, hungry men to descend from the parc would mean bloodshed. The captain yielded, and peace was temporarily assured.

However, more hole-boring was discovered; Rousseau, the Baron’s friend, slipped overboard and swam away, but was captured just as he was landing; the result being that the watch kept was stricter than ever.

The Baron here dilates upon the frightful immorality of the life on the Bahama. He says:

‘Il n’existait ni crainte, ni retenue, ni amour-propre dans la classe qui n’avait pas été dotée des bienfaits de quelque éducation. On y voyait donc régner insolemment l’immoralité la plus perverse, les outrages les plus honteux à la pudeur et les actes les plus dégoûtants, le cynisme le plus effronté, et dans ce lieu de misère générale une misère plus grande encore que tout ce qu’on peut imaginer.’

There were three classes of prisoners.

(1) Les Raffalés. (2) Les Messieurs ou Bourgeois. (3) Les Officiers.

The Raffalés were the lowest, and lowest of the Raffalés were the ‘Manteaux impériaux.’ These had nothing in the world but one covering, which swarmed with lice, hence the facetious allusion in their name to the bees of the Imperial Mantle. These poor wretches eat nothing during the day, for their gambling left them nothing to eat, but at night they crept about picking up and devouring the refuse of the food. They slept packed closely side by side on the deck. At midnight the officer of the evening gave the word, ‘Par le flanc droit!’ and all turned on to their right sides. At 3 a.m. the word rang out ‘Pare à virer!’[^[3]] and all turned on to their left sides.

They gambled with dice for their rations, hammocks, clothes, anything, and the winners sold for two sous what often was worth a franc. They had a chief who was fantastically garbed, and a drummer with a wooden gamelle. Sometimes they were a terror to the other prisoners, but could always be appeased with something to gamble with.

Bonnefoux’s companions worked in wood and straw. The Bahama had been captured from the Spaniards and was built of cedar, and the wood extracted by the prisoners in making escape holes they worked into razor-boxes and toilette articles. Bonnefoux himself gave lessons in French, drawing, mathematics, and English, and published an English Grammar, a copy of which is at Paris, in the Bibliothèque Nationale.

Gradually the spread of the taste for education had a refining and civilizing effect on board the Bahama, and when Bonnefoux finally obtained parole leave, the condition of affairs was very much improved.