‘This Board has uniformly wished to treat Prisoners of War with every degree of humanity consistent with the public safety: but in the present circumstances it has been judged expedient to remove all Prisoners of War on Parole from places near the Coast to Inland towns. You will therefore observe that the order is not confined to you, but relates generally to all Prisoners on Parole: and with regard to your comparison of the treatment of prisoners in this country with that of British prisoners in France, the Commissioners think it only necessary to remark that the distance to which it is now proposed to remove you does not exceed 170 miles, whereas British prisoners in France are marched into the interior to a distance of 500 miles from some of the ports into which they are carried.’
Morgan was allowed eventually his choice of Richmond or Barnet as a place of parole, a privilege accorded him because of his kindness to a Mr. Hurry, during the detention of the latter as a prisoner in France.
In 1811, so many prisoners escaped from Wincanton that all the parole prisoners in the place were marched to London to be sent thence by sea to Scotland for confinement. ‘Sudden and secret measures’ were taken to remove them, all of the rank of captain and above, to Forton for embarkation, except General Houdetôt, who was sent to Lichfield. From Okehampton sixty were sent to Ilfracombe, and thence to Swansea for Abergavenny, and from Bishop’s Waltham to Oswestry in batches of twelve at intervals of three days.
Many parole towns petitioned for the retention of the prisoners, but all were refused; the inhabitants of some places in Devon attempted to detain prisoners for debts; and Enchmarsh, the Agent at Tiverton, was suspended for not sending off his prisoners according to orders. Their departure was the occasion in many places for public expressions of regret, and this can be readily appreciated when it is considered what the residence of two or three hundred young men, some of whom were of good family and many of whom had private means, in a small English country town meant, not merely from a business but from a social point of view.
In The Times of 1812 may be read that a French officer, who had been exchanged and landed at Morlaix, and had expressed disgust at the frequent breaches of parole by his countrymen, was arrested and shot by order of Bonaparte. I merely quote this as an example that even British newspapers of standing were occasionally stooping to the vituperative level of their trans-Channel confrères.
CHAPTER XXVIII
COMPLAINTS OF PRISONERS
It could hardly be expected that a uniform standard of good and submissive behaviour would be attained by a large body of fighting men, the greater part of whom were in vigorous youth or in the prime of life, although, on the whole, the conduct of those who honourably observed their parole seems to have been admirable—a fact which no doubt had a great deal to do with the very general display of sympathy for them latterly. In some places more than others they seem to have brought upon themselves by their own behaviour local odium, and these are the places in which were quartered captured privateer officers, wild, reckless sea-dogs whom, naturally, restraint galled far more deeply than it did the drilled and disciplined officers of the regular army and navy.
In 1797, for instance, the inhabitants of Tavistock complained that the prisoners went about the town in female garb, after bell-ringing, and that they were associated in these masquerades with women of their own nation. So they were threatened with the Mill Prison at Plymouth.
In 1807 complaints from Chesterfield about the improper conduct of the prisoners brought a Transport Office order to the Agent that the strictest observation of regulations was necessary, and that the mere removal of a prisoner to another parole town was no punishment, and was to be discontinued. In 1808 there was a serious riot between the prisoners and the townsfolk in the same place, in which bludgeons were freely used and heads freely broken, and from Lichfield came complaints of the outrageous and insubordinate behaviour of the prisoners.
In 1807 Mr. P. Wykeham of Thame Park complained of the prisoners trespassing therein; from Bath came protests against the conduct of General Rouget and his A.D.C.; and in 1809 the behaviour of one Wislawski at Odiham (possibly the ‘Wysilaski’ already mentioned as at Sanquhar) was reported as being so atrocious that he was at once packed off to a prison-ship.