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: