Читать книгу Prisoners of War in Britain 1756 to 1815. A record of their lives, their romance and their sufferings онлайн

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Garneray says:

‘It is difficult to give the reader an idea of the barbarous manner in which the French were treated on this hospital ship. I will only give one more instance, for my aim is not to horrify, and there were acts of cruelty which the pen hesitates to describe. One day the English doctor was asked to authorize wine to be given to a young officer, grievously ill, in order to strengthen him. “Are you mad?” replied the doctor. “To dare to ask me to give strength to an enemy? Get out! You must be a fool!”’

When Garneray returned to the Vengeance he had news of the Baron de Bonnefoux—extracts from whose life upon the Chatham hulks have already been given,—and speaks of him as bent upon escaping, and fears he would be shot one of these days.

Garneray later is allowed to go on parole to Bishop’s Waltham, about his sojourn at which place something will be said when the story of the Prisoners on Parole comes to be told. Suffice it therefore to say that Garneray got away from Bishop’s Waltham to Portsmouth, and well across the Channel on a smuggling vessel, when he was recaptured by a British cruiser, and once again found himself a prisoner on the Vengeance. After more sufferings, brutal treatment, and illness, Garneray was at length made free by the Treaty of Paris in 1814.