Some months later Buonaparte in a State paper practically challenged Great Britain to fight him single-handed, as she would be if war broke out again. After much fruitless negotiation England declared war against France on the 16th May 1803, and eleven years more were added to the active existence of Norman Cross, as one factor in the gigantic struggle between the two nations. Six days after the declaration of war, France, by the First Consul’s decree, filled her prisons with the 10,000 British men of all degrees, between the age of eighteen and sixty, whom she found within her bounds at that date. This step she justified as a fair reprisal for the action of an English captain who seized two French merchant vessels before the declaration of war had reached the French Minister. Buonaparte knew that a bill for a levée en masse had been presented to Parliament, and that to secure, before they could be enrolled, 10,000 of the able-bodied men of the nation, (the whole of the population at that date was only twelve and a half million) was a wise step.
Our Admiralty, immediately after the renewal of the war, called upon the Transport Board to find depots for the parole prisoners, whom we were taking, in merchant vessels and other craft, not ships of war. Bishops Waltham and Tavistock were suggested, and should the numbers be considerable, Oldham and Tiverton were to be added, while Stapleton Prison was to be prepared for prisoners of war. This, it will be remembered, was the third and last time that Stapleton had been requisitioned for such a purpose, it having been built originally in 1782 to receive prisoners taken in the war which was ended in the following year by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1833 it was converted into a workhouse.
The prisons first suggested, being deemed insufficient, Peterborough was proposed to the Transport Board, and the Board replied, that on receipt of an intimation from the Admiralty, they would make the necessary arrangements for the reception of prisoners at Norman Cross.
On 18th June 1803 the Admiralty appointed, as agents for prisoners of war, Captain Thesiger at Portsmouth, Captain Baker at Stapleton, Captain Pressland at Liverpool, Captain Poulden at Norman Cross.
In consequence of Stapleton being used instead of Liverpool, Captain Pressland, R.N., was sent to Norman Cross, at a salary, in addition to his full pay, of £200 per annum, and 7s. 6d. per diem for expenses. [247] Thus manned for the work, the Norman Cross Depot started on the eleven years of arduous work which lay before it. The agents were to be in supreme authority, but were not to interfere with the medical or surgical treatment of the sick, this being entirely in the hands of the Board of the Sick and Hurt.
Mr. Hadley of Lynn contracted to convey prisoners to and from Norman Cross on lighters at 1s. 9d. each, and to victual them at 7d. each, the military guard being carried on the same terms.
Prisoners soon arrived, the first detachment being 179 Frenchmen on 28th August. Then came 250 from Portsmouth. They arrived at Portsmouth on board the Pegasus, but deprived of the winged horse and reduced to Shanks’ pony, their journey from Portsmouth to Norman Cross took them from the 5th to the 18th September. In October several detachments arrived, among them one of over 200 French and 5 Dutch.
Between the years 1803 and 1814 no fewer than 122,440 prisoners of war of various nationalities were brought to Great Britain, most of them during the years 1805–10; of these 10,341 died in prison, and 17,607 were exchanged or paroled to France as invalids. [248] Norman Cross had its full share of this enormous crowd of prisoners, and the discipline of the prison, the life, and occupation of the prisoners can have differed little from that of the previous seven years. The greatly diminished chance of a prisoner obtaining his freedom by exchange, and the longer duration of each man’s term of durance, must, however, have greatly aggravated for the worse their mental misery and physical discomfort.
On the other hand, experience had suggested to the authorities various details in the treatment of their captives, which were adopted with the object of bettering their lot. In the structure of the prison itself there were, during this period, several important changes. The outer stockade fence was replaced by the brick wall, within which ran the dry, paved ditch. The boys’ separate prison was built in a bricked-in enclosure, outside the prison wall, through a door in which was the only entrance into the new enclosure. In 1805 the surgeon’s new brick house was built in the hospital quadrangle, but beyond these points there is nothing special to add to the description already given.
There would necessarily be the same anxious watching on the part of the prisoners of the events of the war; they would probably mock at the 300,000 volunteers, foot and mounted, who came forward and rendered the levée en masse unnecessary. With what elation they must have heard of the Grande Armée de Bretagne, ranged opposite the southern shore of England, separated only by the narrow channel, across which 150,000 French soldiers were to be floated by the 2,000 vessels assembled at Boulogne, ready to transport them so soon as the weather and the supporting fleet for which they were waiting combined to favour the enterprise! That threatened invasion, which hung like a black terror over England in those early years of the nineteenth century, was for them within their prison walls the bright light of hopeful expectation; and when the news of the 21st October reached England, the news which was communicated to Cadet Hopkinson at Verdun, shorn of its glory and its fateful significance to the French in the taunting words, “Votre Nelson est mort,” it would be told to the prisoners at Norman Cross, in words conveying the whole truth, “Our Nelson has fallen, but not before he had destroyed your fleet, and your country is now no longer a naval power.” What despair must have again filled their hearts! If they disbelieved the fact at first, the arrival of Corporal de la Porte and his comrades, followed by crew after crew of the captured sailors and soldiers, must have too surely confirmed the news.