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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‘C’est une misérable spéculation pour un pauvre prisonnier affamé; il consent à vendre sa place afin de se procurer un peu plus de vivre pendant quelques jours, et afin de ne pas mourir de faim il accélère la destruction de sa santé, et se réduit dans cette horrible situation à coucher sur un plancher ruisselant d’eau, l’évaporisation des transpirations forcées qui a lieu dans ce séjour d’angoisses et de la mort.’

He declares that the air is so foul when the decks are shut up that the candles will not burn, and he has heard even the guards call for help when they have opened the hatches and the air has escaped. The food he describes as execrable, so that the two boats which had the monopoly of coming alongside to sell butter, tea, coffee, sugar, potatoes, candles, and tobacco at a price one-third above that on land, did a roaring trade. The general reply to complaints was that any food was good enough for French dogs.

If they were badly fed, says Pillet, they were worse clothed. Nominally they received every eighteen months a coat, waistcoat, breeches, two pairs of stockings, two shirts, a pair of shoes, and a cap. He declares he can prove that the prisoners did not receive this complete rig-out once in four years, and that if a prisoner had any rags of his own, or received any money, he got no clothes! What clothes they did get were so badly made that they generally had to be re-made. He says that at Portsmouth, where the hulk agent Woodriff was at any rate conscientious enough to issue the clothes on the due dates, his secretary would buy back the shirts at one shilling each, and so, as Government paid three shillings each for them, and there were at Portsmouth, Forton, and Portchester some twelve thousand prisoners on the average, his ‘pickings’ must have been considerable!