In consequence of this correspondence on the 15th December 1799, the Duke of Portland, acting in the absence of Mr. Secretary Dundas, communicated to the Admiralty the King’s wishes as to future arrangements. After protesting against the “departure (on the part of the French Government) from the agreement entered into between the two countries, and which tended so materially to mitigate the calamities of war,” he directed, as to the British prisoners in France, that Captain Cotes, the British agent in Paris, should ascertain exactly the daily allowance made to each man by the French Government, and that he should, at the expense of the British Government, make up any deficiency existing between that allowance and the ration supplied by the British Government during the years 1798 and 1799. At the same time the Minister directed the Transport Commissioners to supply the French prisoners in Britain, from the date when the French agent ceased to supply them, with the same rations of provisions as were granted before the arrangement of December 1797, and he adds:
“As no mention is made of Clothing or other necessaries in Captain Cotes’ letter, I think it right to add that the Commissioners of Transports and for taking care of Prisoners of War are on no account to furnish any to the French Prisoners, as this charge has at all times been supported by the French Government.”
From this time to the termination of the war the arrangement as to the feeding of the prisoners remained the same, but a terrible source of misery to the French prisoners at Norman Cross, and to other French prisoners of war in England, was the firm refusal of the French Government to agree to the clause in Lord Portland’s letter, referring to the clothing of the prisoners.
In another Edict, dated March 1800, signed by Buonaparte as First Consul, Article 1, is “The Ministers of War and of the Marine shall ensure by every possible means, subsistence and clothing to the Russian, Austrian and English Prisoners of War”—“they shall take care that they are treated with all Attention and Indulgence consistent with public safety.” [81] The British Government declined to accept the arrangement implied in this Arrêté, and adhered to what had been the uniform custom in the wars between France and England, and they continued to supply, through their agent in France, all clothing and similar necessaries to the British captives, and even to the Russians who had been serving with them in Holland; while the French, although they were not called upon to clothe the British, refused, notwithstanding the miserable state to which their countrymen in the prisons were reduced by the want of it, to supply them with any clothing.
That the firmness of the two Governments led to terrible suffering in the British prisons cannot be doubted—a suffering which was not shared by the British in France, who were regularly clothed by the agent of their own Government; and it has been already stated that at certain periods of the struggle, including the latter part of 1797, the British Government did provide, in the last extremity, clothing for the neglected subjects of their enemy, protesting, that they did this only as an act of humanity, and not as a duty.
In looking for the apparent unwillingness of the French to meet the British on equal terms, we must remember certain differences in the great principles in which the two nations conducted war. Alison, commenting on the Peninsular Campaign, says:
“The British, according to the established mode of civilised warfare, at least in modern times, maintained themselves chiefly from magazines in their rear; and when they were obliged to depend upon the supplies of the provinces where the war was carried on, they paid for their food as they would have done in this country.” [82]
The French, on the other hand, by reverting to the old Roman system, of making war maintain war, not only felt no additional burden, but experienced the most sensible relief by their armies carrying on hostilities in foreign states. From the moment that his forces entered a hostile territory, it was a fundamental principle of Napoleon’s that they should “draw nothing from the French Exchequer.” This principle applied to the case of the prisoners of war would certainly never tolerate that France should follow the mode of civilised warfare, at least in modern times, and should maintain her soldiers (varying during the war from 20,000 to 67,000) incarcerated in Britain if, by starving them or leaving them naked, she could thrust the burden of doing so on to the British nation.
The great disparity between the number of the French prisoners in Britain and the British in France must have strongly influenced the First Consul to issue the Edict, which cancelled without ceremony the arrangement in force for the two years 1798–99. A return made in December 1799, when our Government again took over the victualling of the French prisoners, showed their number to be 25,646, of whom 10,128 were at Portsmouth, 7,477 at Forton (Portsmouth), 3,038 at Norman Cross, and the rest in Liverpool, Chatham, Stapleton, Edinburgh, and Yarmouth. The number of English in France was about 5,000. The French therefore, during 1798 and 1799, were feeding and clothing 25,646, while the British had to feed and clothe only a little over 5,000. This disparity in the number of the captives of France and England lasted throughout the war, and, as will be seen, interfered seriously with the exchange of prisoners. With the resumption of the old arrangement, there came again the old complaints; that those of the British were in some degree justified, is clear from words of explanation used by the French Commissary, “If the situation of the Finances of the Republic did not allow of the prisoners receiving the whole of what the law allowed them, it was not the less true that they experienced in that respect the benefits of the solicitude of the Government.” The words in italics practically concede the fact that the British prisoners in France were not receiving what the law allowed them.
The French never lost sight of the hope, by one means or another, of getting the prisoners back into the fighting ranks, and when in answer to a complaint of the French, M. Otto the commissary had been told “That the people here are not better fed than the prisoners,” his retort in writing to the Transport Commissioners was, “If the scarcity of Provisions is so notorious that the Government [British], notwithstanding its solicitude, cannot relieve the wants of its own people, why should it unnecessarily increase the consumption by feeding more than 22,000 prisoners?” M. Otto’s solution of all the difficulties was, send us back our soldiers and sailors, and cease to burden yourselves with them.