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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We now come to the most rabid of the Frenchmen, General Pillet. Pillet was severely wounded and taken prisoner at Vimiero in 1808, and—in violation, he says, of the second article of the Convention of Cintra, which provided that no French should be considered prisoners of war, but should be taken out of Portugal with arms, &c., by British ships—was brought to England, with many other officers. He was at once allowed to be on parole at Alresford, but, not considering himself bound by any parole terms, attempted to escape with Paolucci, Captain of the Friedland captured in 1808 by the Standard and Active, but was recaptured and sent to the dépôt at Norman Cross. Here his conduct was so reprehensible that he was sent to the Brunswick at Chatham. From the Brunswick he tried to escape in a vegetable boat, but this attempt failed, and it is to the subsequent rigour of his treatment that must be attributed his vitriolic hatred of Britain.

General Pillet is of opinion that the particular branch of the Navy told off for duty on the prison ships was composed of the most miserable scum of English society; of men who have either been accomplices in or guilty of great crimes, and who had been given by the magistrates the alternative of being marines or of being hanged!