The Agent assured them that they should have justice, but they did not get it.
As physical resistance to attacks and insults would have made matters worse for the Frenchmen, besides being hopeless in the face of great odds of numbers, it was resolved in one place at any rate, the name of which I cannot find, to resort to boycotting as a means of reprisal. I give the circulated notice of this in its original quaint and illiterate French:
‘En conséquence de la délibération faite et teneu par le corps de François deteneus en cette ville il a esté ordonné qu’après qu’il aura cette Notoire, que quelque Marchand, Fabriquant, Boutiquier etcetera de cette ville aurons insulté, injurié, ou comis quelque aiesais (?) au vis à vis de quelque François tel que puis être, et que le fait aura été averée, il sera mis une affiche dans les Lieus les plus aparants portant proscription de sa Maison, Boutique, Fabrique etcetera, et ordonné et defendeu à tout François quelque qualité, condition qu’il soy sous Paine d’être regardé et déclaré traité à la Patrie et de subire plus grande Punition suivent l’exsigence du cas et qu’il en sera decidé.
‘La France.’
The above is dated 1758.
In 1779 the parole prisoners at Alresford complained of being constantly molested and insulted by the inhabitants, and asked to be sent elsewhere. Later, however, the local gentry and principal people guarantee a cessation of this, and the prisoners pray to be allowed to stay. The officer prisoners asked to be allowed to accept invitations at Winchester, but were refused. In the same year prisoners at Redruth complained of daily insults at the hands of an uncivilized populace, and from Chippenham twenty-nine officers signed a complaint about insults and attacks, and stated that as a result one of them was obliged to keep his room for eight days.
On the other hand, prisoners under orders to leave Tavistock for another parole town petition to be allowed to remain there, as the Agent has been so good to them; and as a sign that even in Kent matters were changing for the better, the prayer of some parole prisoners at Tenterden to be sent to Cranbrook on account of the insults by the people, is counterbalanced by a petition of other prisoners in the same town who assert that only a few soldiers have insulted them, and asking that no change be made, as the inhabitants are hospitable and kindly, and the Agent very just and lenient.
Much quiet, unostentatious kindness was shown towards the prisoners which has not been recorded, but in the Memoir of William Pearce of Launceston, in 1810, it is written that he made the parole prisoners in that town the objects of his special attention; that he gave them religious instruction, circulated tracts among them in their own language, and relieved their necessities, with the result that many reformed and attended his services. One prisoner came back after the Peace of 1815, lived in the service of the chapel, and was buried in its grave-yard. En parenthèse the writer adds that the boys of Launceston got quite into the habit of ejaculating ‘Morbleu!’ from hearing it so constantly on the lips of the French prisoners.
In the Life of Hannah More, written by William Roberts, we read:
‘Some French officers of cultivated minds and polished manners being on their parole in the neighbourhood of Bristol, were frequent guests at Mr. More’s house, and always fixed upon Hannah as their interpreter, and her intercourse with their society is said to have laid the ground of that free and elegant use of their language for which she was afterwards distinguished.’