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 5_s._ 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, 6_s._ per head;
between all the Channel ports 10_s._ 6_d._, and to ports out of the
Channel, £1 1_s._ 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:
Dutch officers returned 316, men 416 732
British officers returned 64, men 290 354
———
Balance due to us 378
———
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.