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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From the regularity with which our authorities seem to have been content to give without receiving, one cannot help wondering if, after all, there might not have been some foundation for the frequent French retort that while we received sound men, we only sent the diseased, and aged, or boys. Yet the correspondence from our side so regularly and emphatically repudiates this that we can only think that the burden of the prisoners was galling the national back, and that the grumble was becoming audible which later broke out in the articles of the Statesman, the Examiner, and the Independent Whig.

From January 1, 1796, to March 14, 1798, the balance between Britain and Holland stood thus:

Dutch officers returned 316, men 416 732 British officers returned 64, men 290 354 Balance due to us 378

Just at this time there were a great many war-prisoners in England. Norman Cross and Yarmouth were full, and new prison ships were being fitted out at Chatham. The correspondence of the ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office consisted very largely of refusals to applicants to be allowed to go to France on parole, so that evidently the prisoner exchange was in so unsatisfactory a condition that even the passage of cartel loads of invalids was suspended.