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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As neither party would yield, the negotiations were broken off. The Moniteur complained that some one of higher rank than Mr. Mackenzie had not been sent as British representative, and the British paper The Statesman commented strongly upon our non-acceptance of Bonaparte’s terms, although endorsing our refusal to accede to the particular article about the proportion of the exchange.

General Pillet, before quoted, criticizes the British action in his usual vitriolic fashion. After alluding bitterly to the conduct of the British Government in the matters of San Domingo and the Hanoverian army—both of which are still regarded by French writers as eminent instances of British bad faith, he describes the Morlaix meeting as an ‘infamous trap’ on the part of our Government.

‘We had the greater interest in this negotiation,’ he says; we desired exchange with a passion difficult to describe. Well! we trembled lest France should accept conditions which would have returned to their homes all the English prisoners without our receiving back a single Frenchman who was not sick or dying ... it was clearly demonstrated that the one aim of the London Cabinet was to destroy us all, and from this moment it set to work to capture as many prisoners as possible, so that it might almost be said that this was the one object of the War!’