1 In July 1803, John Edmund Halpin, an Irish actor and miniaturist, opened a ‘Farce for the benefit of the distressed English’ detained in Fontainebleau with a ‘Prologue’ inviting his captive brethren to partake in a new society: the Committee for the relief of British prisoners of war in France. [1] Halpin was a détenu, one of the four hundred civilian hostages arrested en masse following Bonaparte’s mandate in May 1803–known as the Second Prairial decree–to detain all British subjects in France, between the age of eighteen and sixty. The measure had marked the recommencement of hostilities between the two countries, which meant that British civilians were promptly joined by sailors and soldiers. [2] After a few months of house arrest, Halpin and other détenus were thus sent to Verdun, the central parole ‘depot’ for ‘English civilians accompanied by women and children, and servicemen vested with rank’; whilst others of a lower sort suffered more severe confinement elsewhere in the provinces. [3] In Verdun, the play was staged again with an amended prologue which revealed a change in the ‘sociability of charity’. [4] Genteel stages of fundraising in theatricals, races and clubs were increasingly populated by naval captives who, like Captain Gower and Captain Brenton, were eager to offer their ‘friendly’ patronage. [5] With captive clergymen, they opened a ‘charitable’ office in Verdun to monitor a network of assistance organised by the prisoners themselves, who resumed banking and local connections across the Channel. The revised ‘Prologue’ travelled through letters to the Admiralty, insurance brokers and the prisoners’ kin at home. George Hay sent a manuscript copy to his family in Edinburgh in 1804, whilst James Lawrence presented it to a publisher in 1806 to encourage remittances to a fund organised at Lloyd’s of London and to be distributed to an estimated 16,000 British captives through the intermediary of parole detainees in Verdun. [6] The ‘Prologue’ circulated in several detention places for common soldiers and sailors which constellated the North-East of France: Valenciennes, Arras, Besançon, Givet, Bitche. This inspired prisoners to seek further political patronage in Britain, and to petition William Wilberforce to consider war captivity as a ‘worse’ distress than slavery, a cause to defend in parliament. [7]

2 This piece of poetry, its uses and voyages tell us something about the importance of connections in a transnational charity network organised not only for but also by prisoners of war. This constitutes the core of this article, which considers the notion of connection, and indeed connections, as they were understood in the eighteenth century. As Naomi Tadmor noted, the term ‘connection’ became popular during the period as part of an opaque language of kinship emerging in polite conversations, and nuptial and political negotiations. [8] Used in the plural form, it could refer to kin and non-kin relations including friends and neighbours, the closeness of the linkage being modulated by the adjectives ‘distant’ or ‘near’. This language of ‘connections’ was employed by the captives and their relations in Britain, via the press and letters, as part of their charitable activities. [9] Women utilised it to petition various political bodies, particularly in maritime communities where religious, banking and naval ties enabled subscriptions for the relief of prisoners to flourish. [10] Whilst existing studies have emphasized the patriotic impetus of a British nation eager to relieve their compatriots sequestered abroad by subscribing to the Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund, this article intends to offer a more nuanced study of such charitable endeavours by emphasizing how a network emerged from multilateral financial, professional, spiritual, and local forms of kinship. [11]

I. Charity and POW studies: a historiographical dialogue

3 To explore how connections served philanthropic endeavours in detention, this article combines two recent historiographical trends in charity and POW studies. In the 1990s, historians of early-modern welfare and medicine began to consider the two ends of the ‘charitable equation’, previously conceived as a unilateral and vertical process. [12] Not only the production but also the reception of charity became a subject of investigation. [13] Whilst Colin Jones and Joseph Ward have illuminated the deficiencies of a top-down approach to charity, I would go further by questioning the nature of an exchange, which, I argue, constitutes more a multipolar spectrum than a binary equation. Indeed, the active effort demonstrated by the British prisoners in creating their own relief blurred the traditional benefactor/recipient dyad, as their mutual and multilateral subscriptions mobilised a variety of interests and involvements at Lloyd’s.

4 Furthermore, the institutional myopia denounced by Anne Borsay strongly resonates with the nation-centric paradigms within which the existing literature on Napoleonic British captives has so far confined the study of their self-help networks. [14] Studies of the Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund have presented the prisoners only as incidental objects of a national war effort rather than as agents in the organisation of their own relief. [15] Conversely, French historians have insisted on the diplomatic and economic implications that providing aid to foreigners had for the French State and its expanding territory. [16] Although valuable, these perspectives do not show full appreciation of a situation which, in fact, complicates national narratives and necessitates a transnational route few historians have taken so far. Only Joanna Innes, Renaud Morieux and Erica Charters have paved the way for a pan-European approach to charity in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wartime. [17] I will further their approach by posing one question: how did Napoleonic prisoners navigate varied forms of welfare and charity in Britain and France? To answer this question, this article will sketch the transnational channelling of captive relief, with an eye for the nature of charity (monetary, material, associative), and the meanings of this assistance on both sides of the Channel. [18]

5 In this respect, my approach is in keeping with the recent works on the agency deployed by prisoners in shaping their own experiences of detention through mutual aid within the space of the camp. [19] Whilst in 2008, Heather Jones described captivity as a ‘missing paradigm’ in WW1 studies, her plea to incorporate detention in the field has since been extrapolated to historical studies in general, leading war detention to emerge as a subject of investigation in its own right, known as POW studies. [20] Since the 1990s and 2000s, captivity has thus shifted from a ‘Cinderella subject’ to a coherent research theme with an increasingly socio-cultural focus and an interest in apprehending captivity from below. My research is aligned with this perspective, and draws upon State records as much as ‘ego-documents’ penned by captives during and after detention. [21] These personal documents reveal that humanitarianism was shaped by the prisoners themselves as a form of ‘relief’. This terminology appears significant, as it conflated, etymologically perhaps as much as symbolically, relief with release: a prospect they sought to find amongst themselves despite their current situation. [22]

6 To explore these aspirations, the first section of this article will position the daily finances of the prisoners within a French military welfare system. Considering the limits of this system will lead me to explore how captives cemented connections with London-based funds and banks. This, with a closer consideration of local and parish subscriptions, nuances the time-honoured discourse of a univocal British war effort through prisoner relief, by highlighting significant regional differences–if not conflicts–in conceptions and practices of international charity. Drawing on a letter-book of the Committee mentioned above, the last section will investigate the consumption of charity by the prisoners themselves, with particular attention to the tensions between charity and solidarity amongst naval captives.

II. A ‘treatment’

7 As Patricia Crimmin has argued, governmental aid to military prisoners was engrained in the financial war waged between France and Britain during the period. [23] The abandonment of the ransoming system, which no longer coincided with revolutionary tenets, led to a more subtle scheme of economic pressure. [24] Napoleon’s decision that every nation should provide for the prisoners held on their soil aimed to encumber the British economy and enforce peace negotiations. [25] However, this strategy proved more expensive than expected. A rough estimation has shown that the French State spent approximately three million francs per annum to subsidise the British captives, which equated to twenty-five per cent of the total military expenditures in 1810, despite the fact that the prisoners formed a very small group. [26]

8 The language used by the Napoleonic State to characterise the aid to prisoners was military, referring to the funds as ‘traitement’, ‘solde’, ‘indemnité’ and more occasionally ‘secours’. [27] This ‘treatment’ aimed to position the British captives within a military and post-republican scheme of pensions and transportation refunds. The initial policy enforced by the Ministry of Police in 1803 was inspired by a decree issued on 13 May 1799, stipulating that captive sub-officers and soldiers should receive, in addition to food provisions, half of the wages granted to their counterparts in the French army. The officers and sub-lieutenants, on the other hand, would obtain the same subsidies as the French officers declared unfit for service. [28] Within this framework, prisoners en route could claim back some of their lodging and transport expenses, which four merchantmen did in Arras in 1810. [29] Accompanied by a table comparing the treatments of French and British prisoners, Fouché’s schema envisioned a reciprocal military welfare for the prisoners of the two nations. [30] This, however, failed to materialise, as exchanges of captives were fraught with unprecedented difficulties.

9 The main point of contention was the eviction of the détenus from these plans, that is to say the British civilians captured en masse when hostilities resumed in May 1803. From 1803 to 1805, non-belligerent ‘hostages’ were denied financial aid from the French government, as evidenced by civilian couples’ petitions for subsistence and requests to be assimilated to prisoners taken under arms in 1804. [31] Servicemen arrested in May 1803, such as Colonel Abercrombie, were equally denied these grants. Whilst the Napoleonic State proved more lenient towards their British ‘first-class prisoners’ than their predecessors, and did not resort to punish the subject of a ‘tyrannical nation’ through forced labour, as was the case for the Spanish captives, I would argue that the ways in which the French government oscillated in supporting the British civil and military captives by constantly re-categorising them socially, positioned them as ‘impossible citizens’ of a post-Revolutionary society. [32]

10 In 1806, the Berlin decree revised the ‘détenu’ category by ceasing to differentiate the capture of civilians and military prisoners, yet leaving aside the living conditions of those already detained. [33] The implementation of this measure proved problematic, especially for female detainees. This is evidenced by the debate about mixed-raced female passengers taken on board British vessels. In 1806, the capture of eight Anglo-Indian women, travelling to Calcutta under the command of Captain Alexander Foggo of the East India Company, provoked discussions about the aid they should receive from the French state. [34] They had been declared ‘indigent’ by the local authorities and therefore were allowed to ‘take part in the bread distribution’ organised by the local dépôt de bienfaisance. Yet, this civil assistance was not considered substantial enough by Louis Wirion, the commandant of the depot, who submitted a request for them to receive relief from the Ministry of War and potentially be sent to England. The nature of the document, presented as a ‘signalement’–a table detailing the identity of these ‘Mulatto women’ in a format similar to physiognomic descriptions of deserters or criminals–suggests that race, age, religion, and colonial ties were crucial criteria in considering state relief for them. [35] Wirion insisted on their receiving assistance because of their age (from twenty-four to fifty years old), their denomination (three being Catholic, the others Hindu), but mostly because they were ‘coloured women’ devoid of any ‘attachment to a master’. The request was therefore symptomatic of a patriarchal state, which conceived aid to foreign female captives at the confluence of military welfare and local social control.

11 The provision of military allowances to prisoners taken under arms was equally subject to change, owing to the difficulties experienced by post-Revolutionary personnel in identifying the socio-professional status of their British counterparts. The constant re-categorisation of non-commissioned lieutenants and ships’ masters, which the French national authorities struggled to position in their transnational ranking scheme, is illuminating. Considered as sub-officers, the masters were excluded from the parole system, which led them to reclaim their status as ‘gentleman officers’ and petition for receiving the corresponding subsidies. [36] In 1806, Napoleon thus reformed the categorisation of ‘prisoners who should be treated as sub-lieutenants under the 350 francs per annum’. However, the list of two hundred eligible captives in Verdun also included ‘passengers’ from various social backgrounds: doctors, students, tradesmen, booksellers, landowners, clergymen, and the most elusive categories of all, ‘gentilhommes’. [37] Unsatisfied with this categorisation, the Transport Office intervened in 1808, by publishing a memorial explaining the Admiralty’s decision to ‘confer upon Masters of [the] Royal Navy the rank of lieutenant’. [38] But the question of the ‘rank’ of masters of merchantmen was still debated between the French Ministry of War, Napoleon and the Transport Office. The debate only ceased in July 1813 when the French Admiralty accepted a request for ‘masters really in possession of officer ranks and certificates’. [39] The ‘reality’ of rank, in absence of documentation attesting the captive’s social status in Britain, was a concept the French authorities wrestled with to implement their aid to captives.

12 This support proved insufficient on a daily basis. Indeed, after the religious turmoil of the Revolution and the drastic restructuring of the hospital system, the Napoleonic State strongly encouraged local voluntary aid. [40] ‘The nation’s system of relief’, wrote Colin Jones, was ‘now buttressed by state-sponsored … home relief agencies, the bureaux de bienfaisance’. [41] This enforced local benevolence was a structure in which the prisoners had to partake, not benefit from. Balls, diners and plays were taxed by the municipal authorities, and the receipts were donated to the local poor through the bureau in Bar-sur-Ornain. One prisoner noted that:

13 After hiring the theatre and decorations, buying dresses and paying some of the actors and actresses, prompters, and candle-snuffers … [parole prisoners who ran theatricals] were obliged to pay the French poor at Verdun the droit des indigens (which is a fixed sum, or percentage paid for each performance, on every theatre in France, to the poor of the town; and which, by the bye, may be no improper way of raising a poor tax), [but] the British détenus received but little assistance from the undertaking. [42]

14 The prisoners’ resources also served to sponsor the French government through the Caisse d’amortissement. [43] In November 1808, the possessions of ten prisoners who died in Verdun were auctioned. The receipts were divided between the Ministry of War, local creditors and three hundred and nineteen francs were deposited into a fund for the governmental debt, which suggests that the prisoners were not merely recipients but were expected to contribute to their gaolers’ welfare system on a local and national scale. [44]

15 Captivity in Napoleonic France is often conceived as a temporal hole, during which the prisoners steadily emptied their purses until destitution. [45] Yet, their account books, wills and inventories reveal a more complex picture. [46] When unravelled, they show how individuals worked their way around the limitations of this French welfare system and the maintenance of their monies abroad through the help of bankers. [47] A salient example would be the account book kept by Sir Thomas Lavie ‘for the Young Gentlemen of His Majesty’s late ship Blanche’, which contains accounts of everyday expenditures between 1808 to 1813 for board, lodgings, clothes, provisions, and tuition. [48] The book suggests that, whilst French military subsidies were meagre, help was sought from Parisian and local bankers. The book includes an account opened by Revd William Gorden and Thomas Lavie with Perrégaux & Co. detailing substantial funds transmitted by eight money-lenders in Verdun at low interest. [49]

16 The Swiss and cosmopolitan financier, Jean-Frédéric Perrégaux had acted as a liaison officer for the British travellers during the Revolution. [50] During the Napoleonic conflicts, he kept a double commerce, acting both as an official representative of the newly-created Bank of France, and a private agent of his clients in captivity. [51] For Perrégaux, and his associate and successor Lafitte, finances were never at war, which clearly raised the suspicions of the Emperor after 1806. [52] However, Lavie’s account-book suggests that, despite the continental blockade, these bankers distributed monies from subscriptions raised at Lloyd’s in London through five members of the Committee of relief formed at Verdun. They used connections with banking houses in Holland and Britain (Greenwood, Lee, Wilson, Mines & Factor, Thornton and Power Drummond) to channel the remittances. [53] Teetering on the brink of legality, their activity was tolerated by the Ministère de la Guerre, as long as they concerned only private funds from the captive’s kin, which weakened Napoleon’s plans to isolate British prisoners from their mother country. [54] If political loyalties were thus in conflict with private interests on the French side, it remains to determine the meaning and mechanics of this transnational network within the discourses of patriotic charity emerging in Britain during the period.

III. Verdun and the Royal Exchange

17 One image, a seal depicting a belligerent Britannia slaying a dragon underlined by the inscription ‘Britons strike home’, has long served to encapsulate the nationalistic spirit of the aptly-named Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund. [55] Inspired by visual tropes of martial nationalism, this image has been used to illustrate studies of the fund and writings by British captives who benefitted from it. [56] Yet the existing research conducted into the fund and its agenda to relieve British captives in France has not demonstrated a critical engagement with the institution, which, in fact, commissioned most of these studies from the late nineteenth century up to the present day. [57] The result is an inward-looking narrative celebrating ‘the oldest UK Fund of its kind in existence’, failing to assess the meaning, mechanisms and achievements of an establishment, which actually led to some opposition in Britain. [58] In particular, little attention has been given to the individual connections of its members and their transnational interlocutors, were they bankers or captives. Drawing on meeting minutes and correspondence, I argue that in the case of captives’ relief, the fund’s nationalistic discourse was a facade hiding insurance and banking enterprises buttressed by ties of kinship.

18 Established on 28 July 1803 at Lloyd’s Coffee House in the City of London, the Fund led by Brook Watson and leading businessmen was a financial and moral response to the threat of invasion from the French neighbour, with whom hostilities had been resumed two months since. The first meeting made their rationale explicit: ‘it behoves to us to meet our situation as man–as freeman–but above all, as Britons. On this alone, with the Divine Aid, depends our exemption from the yoke of Gallic despotism.’ [59] Drawing on a gendered propagandist discourse, their first meeting minute articulated their charity agenda as ‘comfort and relief’ provision. [60] As John Crowley has recently argued, the concept of comfort underwent a significant change in the eighteenth century: it shifted from a strictly moral notion of spiritual and emotional support to a modern embrace of its physical dimension as bodily and environmental contentment. [61] The provision of ‘comfort’ by the Patriotic Fund encompassed these two dimensions. Combining moral and medical languages, their purpose was to ‘alleviate’, ‘palliate’, ‘assuage’, and ‘smooth the brow of sorrow’ of those distressed by the impact of a necessary war. [62] This materialised in a threefold policy providing pecuniary support to invalid combatants, annuities to widows and orphans, and the remittance of financial reward and badges of honour to servicemen who had distinguished themselves in battle.

19 Despite the emphasis on the defence of a quintessentially British freedom, the fund did not include the relief of British prisoners in its initial agenda. It was only two years later, in June 1805, upon the receipt of a letter from Paul Le Mesurier, a London-based banker acting on behalf of his customer detained in Verdun, Captain Brenton, that the fund ‘resolved that the alleviation of the sufferings of prisoners of war … [was] within the meaning of this institution’. [63] It was in keeping with ‘the meaning’ of the fund, because the prisoners had already established a hospital in Verdun, and were requesting further aid specifically for ‘the relief of the sick and wounded’. [64] The funds raised for the prisoners were thus to serve as military and medical aid. Arguably, the delay of the Lloyd’s in getting involved in prisoner relief was caused by the predominance of civilian captives, whose residual Francophilia had caused their detention. It was only when naval men became dominant in the depot that the connection was sealed between Verdun and the Royal Exchange, and money was entrusted to captives.

20 The language of trust developed by the aptly named ‘Trustees’ of the Fund reveals that connection with captive agents abroad was entrenched in a socio-professional differentiation rather than a unifying patriotic momentum. Trust was placed in their captive peers in Verdun, not in the lower orders of the Northern depots. Whilst all communication had to be carried out through them, not all Britons in Verdun were to be trusted to receive and distribute the money adequately. The monies were to be put under ‘the care of five of the principal officers, or medical men, of His Majesty’s Navy or Army, now prisoners of war in France; or such other prisoners of war, as shall be chosen by them in case of their exchange’. [65] The captive agents had to report on their activities under the supervision of the instigators of the partnership, significantly a doctor and a sailor: Dr Allen and Captain Brenton. [66]

21 Ties of kinship between members of the fund and Verdun detainees have only been alluded to in existing studies. [67] Yet it appears significant that out of nine Trustees, two key members had relatives detained there: Germain Lavie, whose brother Captain Thomas Lavie had been captured on the Blanche, and sent to Verdun with James Secretan, serving under his command, who was the son of another Trustee named Frederick Secretan. Significantly, Thomas Lavie immediately entered the Committee upon his arrival at Verdun to distribute money from the Fund, which suggests that financial trust was not only based on professional status but also family ties. [68] On the whole, looking at individual connections between Verdun and the Royal Exchange reveals the blurred line between private and public interests in prisoner of war relief.

22 The fund relied, in fact, on a thriving maritime insurance market, a ‘sea bubble mania’ which collided with national obligations. [69] After the financial crisis of the American War of Independence, the Napoleonic Wars restructured the British market: foreign businesses were channelled to London, where traders covered all sorts of risks and spread the losses. The mass of insurance was placed at Lloyd’s. There, fortunes could be made, especially as the boom in premiums incited many merchants to insure marine property. [70] Such escalating wealth led Lloyd’s to build a special and interested relationship with the Royal Navy, which prompted the creation of a fund for the sailors’ widows and orphans. Their support was part of a dual culture of risk management and risk taking, which ‘gave the coffee-house more than just mercantile prestige’.  [71] As a contemporary put it, through charity provision, Lloyd’s became a power within the British state: ‘an Empire within itself; an empire which in point of commercial sway, variety of powers, and almost incalculable resources gives laws to the trading part of the universe’. [72] This provoked discontent amongst politicians. The radical William Cobbett objected that, ‘a set of traders at Lloyd’s’ were ‘usurp[ing] the functions of the Crown by bestowing [monies and honorary swords] on naval and military officers’. Even the First Lord of the Admiralty condemned ‘the mischievous system of rewards … which is held out to the navy as giving greater encouragement than the government of the country’. [73] Tensions culminated in 1810 with a trial of Lloyd’s in Parliament, which pointedly attacked their financial monopoly and the mercantile nature of their philanthropic activities.

23 The mechanics of subscriptions for prisoners further suggest the close intimacy of trade and charity in their activities. [74] Advertisements were regularly placed in national newspapers for ‘contributions to be received at the bar of Lloyd’s Coffee-house’, and ‘by all the bankers in the United Kingdom’. [75] ‘Coffee-houses’ had passed their glory days, the country having moved from coffee- to tea-drinking sociability over the previous decade. [76] As a result, select coffee-houses such as Lloyd’s came to play a more prominent role in the dissemination of financial intelligence to international markets. [77] They underwent a similar transformation to the ‘financial revolution’ experienced by the port of London after the Glorious Revolution, by shifting from political table-companionship to credit and insurance activities. [78] The Patriotic Fund subscriptions for prisoners thus did not occur in spaces of consumption, the ‘bar’ at Lloyd’s being a wooden barrier separating it from other offices rather than a drinks counter.

24 These endeavours were also buttressed outside the walls of the Lloyd’s by other coffee-houses acting as moneylending establishments, as suggested by a series of articles in the Literary Panorama (Fig.1). They had ramifications outside the City, as exemplified by adverts placed in local newspapers such as the Nottingham Review, which announced a series of subscriptions in 1811 to be ‘received at the different banks in Nottingham’. The advert mentioned four local bankers based on Long Row as the prime and first contributors to the fund, which further confirms that charity for prisoners was based on banking ties and practices. [79] Indeed, the interests of these banks were woven into a network of apprenticeships and investments conducted under Lloyd’s. [80]

25 The sums raised were considerable. The first payment to Verdun amounted to £27,000. In 1809, £16,700 was raised. [81] The subscriptions were nevertheless affected by the vicissitudes of war, the Peninsular War in particular, which led them to refocus their agenda on the dependants of dead servicemen. As a result, the Patriotic Fund claimed back some of the ample funds the Verdun detainees had received. In July 1812, a letter from the fund secretary advised that prisoners had exceeded the amount of £5,000 donations for 1811 by 23,008 francs, which were to be reimbursed to Lloyd’s by immediate transfer. [82] By 1812, the monies of the fund diminished and the annual payment to Verdun ceased, but other individual funds picked up the torch up to 1814. [83]

Fig.1

Sample of banks contributing to the Patriotic Fund’s subscriptions for the prisoners in Verdun

Sample of banks contributing to the Patriotic Fund’s subscriptions for the prisoners in Verdun

26 In 1806, the maritime insurance broker John Julius Angerstein, who acted as a banker for the Lloyd’s, made a direct appeal to the Fund for two hundred and twenty masters of merchant ships detained in France. [84] In July 1806, The Times recorded that, following the failure of this appeal, a ‘Society established at Lloyd’s’ was created by him for these prisoners, and had already received a contribution of £643. The monies came from individual donors, who gave ten guineas each, but the bulk of the contributions came from the Royal Exchange Assurance and London Assurance Corporation, which gave fifty guineas each, and the Committee of Underwriters on the Abergavenny East Indiaman contributed £50. This suggests that the fund was part of a risk management scheme in the shipping market. These funds collected under the auspices of Angerstein were transmitted by Perrégaux as ‘billets d’allouaine’, with the significant request that this ‘fund should be distributed to them half in money and half in provisions’. [85] These provisions, mainly shoes and clothes, were not sent from Britain, as British goods were banned on French soil and the Transport Office experienced difficulties during the machine-breaking crisis of 1811-1817. [86] The prisoners were thus to be clad with French clothes, which further complicates the idea of a nationalistic effort in charity.

27 The currency of charity is rarely considered. Yet, as an object, money and its channelling to France had meaningful implications. The Patriotic Fund transferred money through one sinew of the British power: the Navy. They used individual bills of exchange devoid of the visual patriotism flaunted in coins and notes, which the work of David Blaazer has identified as a central component of British nation-building. [87] The money received by prisoners was thus French, either in Francs or livres tournois, which suggests that the remittances were more pragmatic than overtly patriotic. Other funds, however, used Louis coins to demonstrate a symbolic support to the victims of the ‘Corsican usurper’. In 1807, the equivalent of £5,000 was received at Verdun ‘to be distributed at the rate of one louis d’or per man to every man in distress’. [88] After the monetary change, one Louis was worth twenty francs, a highly valuable contribution to the prisoners’ purses. The ‘Louis Charity’, as it was called at the time, emanated from ‘an unknown quarter’ connected to Thomas Coutts & Co. [89] The anonymous nature of this London-based fund suggests that this subscription might have been organised by French émigrés, who used a monetary token of the lost King as a vector for a politically-orientated solidarity with fellow exiles.

28 Relief to captives was not simply monetary, but also spiritual. This support materialised in books sent from the ‘British and Foreign Bible Society’. [90] Established in 1804, this voluntary society developed in the wake of an evangelical revival in eighteenth-century England. Whilst its rationale was to publish and facilitate the distribution of the Bible at home and abroad, their annual reports reveal that they put a particular emphasis on providing prisoners of war in Britain with copies of the Scriptures to be kept and read on their return to their home country. This relief was not Protestant per se, but ecumenical. However, their activities did not concern the British prisoners of war in France until 1812. This late connection was initiated by Revd William Gorden, from the Committee at Verdun, who, despite the blockade, obtained in 1813 the shipment by post to Morlaix of twenty two boxes, ‘eleven of each containing two hundred copies of the Bible, and the rest three hundred copies of the new testament’, to be distributed by the Verdun agents in Longwy, Besançon and Bitche. [91] In 1807, the Birmingham Quakers had attempted a similar scheme, and in 1811 their London branch followed suit, but these differed by being exclusively for military prisoners. [92] The last example suggests that prisoner of war relief emerged from different local incentives and conceptions of international charity that could stand in stark contrast with the motivations of the Royal Exchange.

IV. ‘Proposita philanthropica’: secular local subscriptions

29 This Latin phrase was the heading under which the Literary Panorama regularly advertised calls for local subscriptions for the relief of prisoners in France. [93] The expression was characteristic of the literary outlook of its editor, Charles Taylor. [94] Whilst his initiative was entrenched in a practice of voluntary state-sponsorship, which had its precedents in the Revolutionary Wars, his articles were devoid of martial rhetoric. Rather, they insisted on the cosmopolitan and ‘humane’ nature of the endeavour, a discourse aimed to touch his targeted audience: literary and entertainment circles. [95]

30 Theatres, operas and concert halls were indeed privileged vectors of international fund-raising amongst the higher classes of British society. In 1811, the Annals of Bath announced that private subscriptions had been made ‘by the inhabitants of Bath’ for the ‘relief of British prisoners of war in France’. [96] Additionally, ‘a concert was held in the upper-rooms on their behalf, when by the assiduous attention of the performers (gratuitously given) … the sum of two hundred and seventy-one pounds was collected’. [97] Whilst the assistance to British prisoners was said to emanate from ‘the feelings of patriotism and humanity’ towards fellow ‘countrymen’, double the amount of money was raised for the ‘suffering Portuguese nation’ during this event. [98] The compatriot in need was clearly an imagined kin figure, whose contours stretched geographically with the vicissitudes of war. [99] Other contributions were made by various theatres donating the proceeds of particular performances. The Theatre Royal in Covent Garden donated the profits of a performance of Hamlet in 1811. [100] Individual performers also contributed in their own right. Mr Braham and Madame Catalani, for instance, gratuitously performed the ‘Grand Scena’, ‘Aria’ and the highly-topical ‘Death of Nelson’. This ‘sociability of charity’ in concerts halls was inscribed in the rise of associate philanthropy in Britain, where genteel actors, especially women, found in charity a noble gesture, in every sense of the term. [101]

31 Another important contribution, though more modest in scope, was the regimental subscriptions made by the volunteer corps. As Austin Gee’s study has recently demonstrated, volunteers ‘subscribed widely to public charities, particularly those that had patriotic connotations’. [102] It is thus not surprising that volunteer subscriptions were organized towards the Patriotic Fund, as evidence of their national loyalty. In 1811, a volunteer subscription was organised in Surrey, which raised two hundred pounds ‘towards the relief of the British prisoners in France’. [103] Yet, once again, more monies were collected for the ‘suffering Portuguese’ with three hundred pounds to be distributed as humanitarian aid to civilians whose towns had been turned into battlefields by the French and British armies. Overall, whilst the British Army made a number of regimental contributions, little bulk monies were sent from the Navy, despite the individual interventions of naval officers, which implies that the military support to prisoners from the home country was not a unitary process.

32 Finally, donations were sought in a novel space: the shop. In November 1811, a reader of The Times suggested that charity boxes should be established in shops for the prisoners in France. [104] The author recommended ‘the shopkeepers in and about London … to have on their counters, or in any other conspicuous part of their shops, a box, with a small hole in it, superscribed “For British prisoners in France”.’ The box was supposed to be ‘opened weekly and the content sent to general subscriptions’. Money boxes were not a new invention. They had been used privately for family savings, and they were commonplace in the eighteenth-century public sphere for charity in hospitals, churches, seminaries and prisons. [105] What was considered as a novelty was the transfer of this anonymous system to the commercial space of the shop, which the author conceived as a zone of social contact favourable for charity: ‘when you consider the many individuals who go into retail shops in the course of a day, the efficacy of this plan will appear more plainly’. [106] Whilst the plan aimed at encouraging charitable sentiments amongst the anonymous customers, one specific social group was particularly targeted: ‘the many people of low rank in society’, who ‘have as strong a wish to assist their brethren in captivity as those whose means enable them to do it in a way congenial to their hearts, but are checked from offering their mite.’ The author then detailed a system for the receipt of old coppers, which deprived donors would not think worth giving to national subscriptions. This scheme further suggests the amalgamation of charity and trade in Britain already at play in the Lloyd’s policy, and the polyphonic languages of relief provision developed in diverse localities.

V. An act of ‘remembrance’: religious fund-raising

33 In 1808, the Literary Panorama announced that ‘after a very appropriate discourse, on Sunday the 22d Nov., a collection was made in the parish church of Clapham [London], for the relief of our unfortunate countrymen detained as prisoner of war in France. The sum of £87. 19s. 9d. was collected’. [107] Subscriptions for prisoner relief were indeed entrenched in traditions of congregational fund-raising, which was not merely confined to London. Similar sermons were preached throughout the country, and the hat was passed amongst worshippers missing a captive relative, neighbour or friend. Such activities were predominant in the North of England, particularly in Yorkshire, where nonconformist communities such as the Presbyterian congregations in Whitby and Hull actively sought to encourage ‘compassion for prisoners’. [108] The East and North Ridings were strongholds of Presbyterianism in the eighteenth century with sixty-three Presbyterian families in Whitby. [109] A case study of a sermon preached by Revd Young in this town explains the specificities of these congregational undertakings.

34 In 1809, two years after leaving his native Edinburghshire and having been ordained pastor of the Presbyterian congregation at the Cliff Lane chapel in Whitby, George Young published a sermon he had preached for the British captives in France. [110] The text was re-arranged for publication and included as a preface, an address to his readers to subscribe to the Patriotic Fund. All proceeds of his publication were to be donated to the fund. [111] Following the official line of the fund, the preacher insisted on the loss of three inherently national characteristics in captivity: liberty, property, and Protestant faith. [112] These served as a prelude to a broader argument in four acts, in which he developed a particular language of international charity based on divine and kin connections. Deconstructing his rhetoric and outlook on captivity highlights a fascinating local and devotional vision of international charity as an act of ‘remembrance’.

35 Entitled Compassion for Prisoners Recommended, the sermon was given to the text Hebrews XIII.3: ‘remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them’. [113] ‘Remembrance’, a fundamental concept shaping the Protestant mind, formed the core of a poignant interpretation of the verse, which the following passage encapsulates.

36 The Remembrance here mentioned is not merely an act of memory. When we are enjoined to remember our Creator, and to remember the Sabbath-day, the injunctions imply much more than the bare recollection that we have a Creator, and that there is a Sabbath: And when we are exhorted to remember them that are in bonds, we are not called merely to recollect that they exist, or to think of their hardships, but to cherish a compassion and active remembrance of them … We must remember them as if we were bound with them … We ought to remember them, as we should do if we were their fellow-prisoners … We should be willing to become their fellow-prisoners in a certain sense, by consenting to bear a portion of their hardships, in [s]traitening [sic.] ourselves, in order to send them relief … We ought to remember them as we ourselves would wish to be remembered if we were in their situation. [114]

37 By making the connection between the everyday of the flock (remembering God, remembering His Son through the Eucharist conceived as a mental recollection of the Last Supper rather than a transubstantiationalist ritual, and thus remembering themselves as spiritual beings) and the task in hand (remembering captives abroad), the minister presented the charitable act as a communal experience where the boundaries of the selves dissolved. [115] To be ‘as one with’ those in need by giving money, provisions or simply time and prayers was a common theme in charity persuasion at the time. Yet, Young’s address appears extraordinarily powerful, and not at all fitting with the common view of a Presbyterian ‘old-fashioned way of haranguing’. [116] The speech reached into the life of its audience, realigning them with the theological through the affective power of a familiar notion. [117] His variations on ‘remembrance’ must have strongly resonated in the minds of his flock educated to think that ‘without remembrance, there is no salvation’. [118] The sermon was published in three editions within the year of its preaching, which clearly indicates that the congregation responded with fervour to this divine ‘command’. [119]

38 ‘We are commanded … to have pity on those who are in prison, not through any criminal conduct, but merely through the misfortunes attendant on war: especially if they are our own countrymen and friends’, claimed Young. [120] The last allusion suggests that, despite requesting aid to British prisoners of war regardless of their origin, the minister solicited compassion through local kinship. [121] The military captive was presented as a threefold kin figure: a family member, a friend and a parishioner. ‘To part of them’, he claimed, ‘some of you are bound by the ties of blood, and others by the ties of friendship. Some of them have often gone with you to the Sanctuary of God: Some of them have worshipped with us in this house. In contributing for their relief you are providing for your own’. [122] This threefold kinship with the captives abroad was representative of the concentric circles of relations Will Coster has identified, in which cognatic, agnatic and fictive connections merged to form the notion of ‘kin’ in the late eighteenth century. [123] This extended kinship shaped Young’s romantic depiction of the misery of the captive lost in a connection limbo: ‘no dear bosom friend, no fond mother, no loving sister … perhaps they are now in the land of silence’. [124] The reference to ‘the land of silence’ was very powerful reminder of Psalm XCIV.17. This musical lamentation thanking God for His deliverance from personal distress aimed to further engrain the vision of a communion branching out overseas in the minds and hearts of his flock. [125]

39 Spiritual kinship was also the basis for organising local collections and sermons for prisoners of war. It is indeed significant that two years later, in 1811, another Presbyterian minister in Hull, Revd Morley, also decided to give a sermon to the text Hebrews XIII.3 as a ‘recommendation’, a ‘cause … pleaded’ for the British prisoners in France. [126] It is likely that the two preachers met, for Young was an honorary member of the Hull Literary and Philosophical Society. They shared similar scientific interests since they both wrote on maritime history, geology and medicine. [127] In fact, Revd Morley continued Young’s appeal to ‘remember’ the captives through kinship. He asked his flock to consider the ‘feelings of a prudent, virtuous, and affectionate wife, who has the sole means of her sustenance, the partner of her joys, of her sorrows, and of her life, torn away from her, and from her infant offspring, as a prisoner of war.’ He solicited pecuniary assistance by reminding his reader of Solomon’s command to ‘profess to be sincere in their pretensions to kindness towards their relatives, neighbours, and acquaintance [not only] while they see the sun of worldly prosperity shining upon them, but … under the dark cloud of temporal adversity.’ [128] Overall, despite their involvement in national fund-raising, these activities in maritime communities in Yorkshire suggest the potency of spiritual and local kinship in providing relief to captives abroad.

VI. Exclusive local solidarities

40 In addition to the three national financial reserves (Patriotic Fund, Lloyd’s Society, Louis Charity) to which the collections mentioned above were donated, a significant number of funds also emanated from independent local subscriptions. [129] These private donations complicate the idea that subscriptions were organised to substantiate a united British war effort against the Gallic captor, as they aimed to provide assistance exclusively to the prisoners originating from their localities. [130]

41 This manifested itself most vividly in subscriptions collected in the Channel Islands (Fig.2). [131] In August 1809, the bankers Le Mesurier remitted £450 collected in Jersey in aid to ‘the Natives of the Island or men of ships belonging there’. [132] They requested that the prisoners should, in return, provide lists of the captive islanders and detailed receipts attesting that money had been ‘distributed among them proportionally’. [133] Similarly, in January 1808, William Gorden was informed of the arrival of a ‘French gentleman’ appointed to distribute monies gathered in Guernsey. This substantial subscription raised much alarm from his correspondent in Arras, George Norton, who deplored such a localist attitude and the potential dissension this could raise amongst prisoners. ‘The Guernsey Subscription … is so large’, he wrote, ‘that I am convinced it will do more harm than good. All these worthy people would act more wisely if they threw their subscriptions into the General Fund at Lloyd’s, but it should be very difficult to make them think so.’ [134] These local endeavours were nourished by the sprawling financial connections of merchant bankers, who were well-implanted in their insular communities and equally familiar with French and London trades. The Le Mesurier brothers, for instance, had developed a successful transnational and colonial network between London, Normandy and Tobago, which led them to play a prominent role in politics during the period. [135] Their influence in Parliament and the City of London Council enabled them to couple their financial projects with a strong agenda ‘in defence of the Channel Islands’ interests’. [136] Like other merchant bankers of Guernsey origin established in London, they lobbied and handled the financial affairs of their fellow islanders, a policy which extended to providing charity for those separated by the war.

Fig. 2

Advertisement for plays ‘Performed, for the Benefit of the Natives of Guernsey, Prisoners of War in France’

Advertisement for plays ‘Performed, for the Benefit of the Natives of Guernsey, Prisoners of War in France’

42 Other maritime communities imbued with strong littoral and county identities, such as Cornwall and Devon, provided region-orientated relief to prisoners. In March 1808, a ‘Dartmouth subscription’ was implemented under the supervision of Verdun in the depots of Arras and Sarrelibre. [137] The following May, Revd Gorden organised the remittance of a fund for ‘the Cornish men’, mostly merchant seamen, ‘at rate of 12 livres each to Masters and 9 livres to Mates’. [138] A distinctive Cornish identity was clearly expressed, on both sides of the Channel, as a response to captivity and displacement. Whilst Linda Colley presented these physical and imagined spaces as the ‘peripheries’ of Britishness, it seems that the so-called ‘Celtic fringe’ crystallised the fissures of both national and local identities in formation during the period. [139]

43 Indeed, internal tensions occurred within the Cornish community, at home and abroad, as a result of subscriptions organised in various villages and dedicated exclusively to their inhabitants and not the entirety of the Cornish captive community. This is particularly evident in the triangular tensions between Mevagissey, Padstow and Port Isaac, three towns situated in a ten-mile perimeter which organised separate subscriptions and money transfers, leading to ‘a great deal of murmuring amongst those belonging to the county that ha[d] not received any benefit from it’ in Verdun. Prisoners from Mevagissey demanded more ‘liberal’ and ‘general’ relief which would include them in collections made on the other side of the Peninsula, yet without much success, the funds having to be ‘divided equal amongst those belonging to th[e] Town … from which they came from’. [140]

44 Claiming rights to locally-exclusive subscriptions was equally problematic for Welsh monies. In July 1808, Hugh Lewis claimed his right to a Welsh fund from a seafaring locality: the ‘Merioneth Subscription’. [141] Lewis was ‘born in the county but quitted it very young’, which led to some reluctance from Verdun. However, his request found a positive outcome through the patronage of a fellow naval man, Captain Ellis. [142] Not only nativity, but naval patronage and kinship thus formed the basis of these locally-oriented networks of charity, which suggest that significant local differences affected charity provision to prisoners of war, especially as littoral spaces and harbours, invested more specifically in the relief of their captive co-natives.

45 Arguably, the mere insistence of every fund or subscribers that recipients should be identified, by their profession and their geographical provenance, tells us something about the potency of regionalism in Britain during the period. In 1809, the Lloyd’s Insurance Fund requested that ‘the names and residence in England of the women and children, of the masters, mates, and merchant passengers who partake of these succours [should be] forwarded monthly’. ‘The reason of this request’, they said, was ‘for the purpose of encouraging the subscriptions which augment in proportion as the families in England find [that] their relatives and townsmen, prisoners in France, are relieved by their donations’. [143] Family and local affiliations, in other words kinship understood broadly as it was in the late eighteenth century, formed the basis of charity provision between France and Britain, rather than a unilateral expression of patriotism. This phenomenon was even more perceptible in the ways in which the prisoners consumed and distributed the monies.

VII. A gentlemen’s mission? Reception and distribution of charity

46 Finding a letter-book of the Verdun Committee for the relief of British prisoners in France in the Birmingham City Library could initially appear as an oddity of the archival system. [144] Why is it there? And why does it only cover a year and a half of a decade-long captivity? To answer these questions, I decided to read this book as an epistolary text and as a travelling object. Observed from this angle, the book offers a precious insight into the social intricacies of the prisoners’ charity network and unravels a complex bureaucracy between depots, which made the parole site of Verdun the metropolis of a captive diaspora.

47 First, retracing the book’s journey confirms the importance of the maintenance of individual connections abroad and reveals the agency of the prisoners in distributing and consuming various funds. It is indeed significant that the letter-book is now kept in the personal papers of Matthew Boulton, the famous industrialist of Birmingham. A closer look at the hand-writing and signatures of the entries reveal that Revd William Gorden was a key protagonist in keeping the accounts of the Committee. The book is most likely to have come into the Boulton family’s possession through him, when Gorden met his son, Mathew Robinson Boulton, in Duns Tew in 1815. [145] The correspondence of Matthew Boulton also reveals that he subscribed to the Lloyds Patriotic Fund and took part in various subscriptions for the British prisoners in France. This was certainly owing to his performance as an ‘enlightened industrialist’ in the West Midlands, which, as Peter Jones has argued, relied on a national and international network. Boulton had also some professional interest in the matter. The gold, silver and copper medals that the Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund bestowed on naval men for their prowess at sea were struck at Boulton’s Soho works in Birmingham during the war. Boulton’s humanitarian activities thus combined cosmopolitan and mercantile interests. [146]

48 However, one question remains open: why did Gorden give the book to the family? Why did he not submit it to the Lloyd’s as testament of his good work in captivity? Whilst the Boultons had been involved, professionally and privately, in relieving prisoners at Verdun, some deviations might also have been made by the captives in implementing the Patriotic Fund policy. The prisoners were, after all, the ultimate decision-makers in the distribution of relief, away from the societal and governmental gaze of home.

49 As an object, the letter-book reveals the social mechanics of the Committee. [147] This is a sturdy volume, containing 838 manuscript entries: copies of letters mostly sent, but also received, by the Verdun Committee. It operated as a membership and account book. Written on the edges of the leaves, so as to be read when the book is closed, feature the words: ‘From Jany. 1808 to Augt. 1809’, followed by the number ‘III’ suggesting that this tome was the third of a series. The regularity and neatness with which letters and minutes of Committee meetings were transcribed, indicates the adaptability of prisoners who organised an efficient system of distribution throughout France. [148] The following tables (Fig.3) highlight that members corresponded with various bankers and captive emissaries who formed subordinate committees in eight depots. [149] Amongst these agents featured predominantly naval officers, doctors, clergymen, but also civilian prisoners in permission in cities such as Tours, Lyon and Paris. [150]

Fig 3a.

Number of letters sent between agents of the Committee for the Relief of British prisoners of war in France, and copied in the letter book kept at Verdun, 1808-1809 –– Correspondents in depots: quantification of letters sent per detention place

Number of letters sent between agents of the Committee for the Relief of British prisoners of war in France, and copied in the letter book kept at Verdun, 1808-1809 –– Correspondents in depots: quantification of letters sent per detention place

Fig 3b

Correspondents in depots: breakdown of major agents in depots

Correspondents in depots: breakdown of major agents in depots

Fig 3c

Correspondents in depots: breakdown of minor agents in depots

Correspondents in depots: breakdown of minor agents in depots

Fig 3d

Non-depot correspondents: money-lenders and prisoners in permission outside depots////3d

Non-depot correspondents: money-lenders and prisoners in permission outside depots////3d

50 Letters and diaries penned by members show how this network came into shape before 1809. From the farce performed in 1803 to the letter-book of 1808, the Committee had moved from informal forms of aristocratic relief to an institutionalised system of charity headed by captive clerics and naval men. The initial joyous form of charity, exemplified by the ‘Prologue’ mentioned in the introduction, was essentially vertical, opposing two classes of prisoners within the space of Verdun: the indigent, already deeply indebted, and what Alexander Don called ‘our aristocracy’, namely the wealthy civil travellers with useful connections in Paris and at home. [151] Protestant clerics officially launched the Committee using these connections. Following the farce, a subscription was organised by Revd Lee, a clerical tourist of New College, Oxford, and his correspondent Fiott in Southampton. [152] In 1804, he launched ‘a bureau’ in town, which as contemporary noted, ‘had all the appearance of an English counting house’. [153]

51 Comparing the social backgrounds of the Committee members at three points in time indicate a clear pattern: the movement towards the emergence of a clerico-naval institution (Fig.4). [154] Most of the original members in 1804 were détenus, whilst in 1808 and 1812 military prisoners formed a majority and clergymen became the pillars of the institution by occupying key roles such as president and treasurer. This evolution seems in keeping with Lloyd’s directions. Nevertheless, these were regular members around which gravitated non-regular adherents, whose social milieu did not necessarily fit with the subscribers’ policy. It included other civilians, such as George D’Arcy Boulton who, after being captured on his way back from Canada, acted as a lawyer for the Committee. This exasperated his son in England: ‘My father’s letters are always about business for he has numberless “poor devils” to assist as clients.’ [155] Even more surprising was the involvement of English Catholics, such as Charles Throckmorton, who entered the Committee by connection with other genteel captives.

Fig.4

Members of the Charitable Committee for British POWs at Verdun, 1804

Members of the Charitable Committee for British POWs at Verdun, 1804

Members of the Charitable Committee for British POWs at Verdun, 1808

Members of the Charitable Committee for British POWs at Verdun, 1808

Members of the Charitable Committee for British POWs at Verdun, 1812

Members of the Charitable Committee for British POWs at Verdun, 1812

52 The presence of wealthy civilians coloured the organisation of the Committee. In particular, the networks relied on Grand Tour traveller’s networks with Parisian bankers. This is exemplified by the fact that Revd Lee, a tourist captured as détenu, was the exclusive correspondent with Perrégaux & Co. until 1808. [156] Furthermore, the Committee relied heavily on Verdun détenus temporally residing in towns such as Tours, Avignon, Lyon and Paris (Fig.2), and who were put in charge of distributing shoes and money to prisoners on their march to their respective depots. This formed the basis of an internal missionary system organised from Verdun and branching out to other depots. Sub-committees were instigated through individual and voluntary departures. Revd Wolfe, for instance, left Verdun for Givet with his family in 1805 and settled there as a Committee envoy until 1810. By 1808, the Committee dispersed emissaries to eight depots, with whom they corresponded on a monthly basis and formed a missionary system amongst captives. [157]

53 Churches, schools and hospitals formed the pillars of this system, which strongly resonated with colonial endeavours. A captive-led dispensary was created in Verdun, where 786 patients were admitted between 1804 and 1806. The institution was well-organised, since, by 1806, 737 of these patients had been cured, 2 discharged as incurable, 12 died and only 35 were still on the sick list. [158] Moreover, naval surgeons petitioned the French government to provide medical succour to their countrymen held in other depots, such as Dr Moir who obtained permission to leave for Besançon with his family in 1810. [159] These individual initiatives led to a system of medical missions endorsed by the Transport Office. Their role was then to cure prisoners injured during capture or on the march to their depot, and to contain epidemics amongst those secluded in fortresses. [160] Payment for medicines was however ensured by the prisoners themselves through the Committee, and was only partly reimbursed by the French government after their liberation. [161] Though costly, the mission was efficient. By October 1808, there were captive-led hospitals in every depot except Sarrelibre. [162]

54 Spiritual comforts were perceived as equally vital. The makeshift Protestant church firstly established in Verdun by Revd Gorden was exported to Givet with the transfer of Revd Robert Wolfe. [163] After much debate in the British press and with Canterbury, the activities of these displaced clergymen were recognised by the Church of England in April 1806. Revd Maude recorded, for instance, that Revd Wolfe was ‘appointed by the British Government, Chaplain to the prisoners here with a salary of £200 per annum’. [164] This measure itself reveals the colonial dimension of divine succour to prisoners, which also permeated the language used by clerics in their journals and letters. Providence guided Revd Wolfe’s endeavours. ‘I had a real and earnest desire for the spiritual good of my flock, according to the light which God had given me’, he wrote, justifying his decision to leave the comforts of Verdun for the fortress of Givet. [165] He also conceived his divine task as disciplinary, as a form of social and moral control against ‘the mental debasement, and those habits of depravity and vice’ contracted in idleness. [166]

55 Educating their fellow captives was a key element of the Verdun Committee. Their policy was twofold: enhancing literacy amongst the captives’ children and providing professional training to young naval men. There were around 500 children in British depots in France. Each year, subscriptions were organised by one hundred captives in Verdun for the maintenance of ‘English schools’ to educate them. [167] In 1805, a note to Lloyd’s from Verdun recorded that eleven girls were ‘educated and dressed at Verdun’, and sixty-five boys were attending the school. [168] There were, in the same year, 140 pupils in Givet, 120 in Valenciennes and 119 in Sarrelibre. [169] These ‘scholars’, as Revd Lee called them, were educated by clergymen but also naval lieutenants such James Brown and John Carslake. However, another school was specifically created for young naval men, namely midshipmen aged between four and twelve, who could prepare for the lieutenant examination by taking classes in mathematics, languages and navigation. Whilst the naval school was shut in October 1808, most of the midshipmen having been transferred to the North, Revd Gorden noted that:

56

an institution has been formed in town for the purpose of affording an opportunity of instruction to the younger part of the mates of vessels, and about 40 persons of this description constantly partake of its benefit. The whole number in the different depots who receive daily instruction from your benefactions amounts to 2137 individuals. [170]

57 The use of the money extended to the furnishing of schoolrooms, as is suggested by a letter from John Bell in May 1808, at Sarrelibre, who noted that ‘the schools are now well fitted, clean whitewashed, and all the tables and stools in complete repair’. [171]

58 Out of approximately 16,000 prisoners, 13,125 captives received funds from Verdun in 1812, which indicates the efficiency of their network. [172] In order to achieve this, clear deviations were made from the subscribers’ requests. Whilst the Lloyd’s provided funds for captives who were not treated in existing military hospitals, the line between French and captive dispensaries was far from being evident in the daily life of the depots. In Arras, for instance, the French commandant instigated a scheme in which English physicians were asked to attend ‘an infirmary’ in the town. [173] In Verdun, at least ten British doctors worked in the civil hospital and helped with the vaccination of French locals. [174] The Hippocratic Oath and the cosmopolitan nature of their profession placed these captive doctors above martial and national antagonisms in their provision of relief. Furthermore, not all the captive recipients mentioned in the letter book were British. The committee also used the funds from the Patriotic Fund to provide help to ‘foreign’ prisoners at Mont Léon (Fig.5) and Swedish seamen, on the grounds that they had been taken under English colours. [175]

Fig.5

Recipients of relief in 1812

Recipients of relief in 1812

59 The Committee clearly amalgamated funds to ensure that most of the distressed prisoners would receive some support. In 1807, the Committee sent a request to the Patriotic Fund to relax their restrictions and permit the payment of three sous a day to captives of other classes, which Lloyd’s rejected. Nevertheless, the Committee ignored their decision. They used the monies not only in behalf of naval prisoners, but also the civilians who had settled in France before 1803. The distribution of the Louis Fund was equally subject to some adaptations, the number of prisoners greatly exceeding the five thousand coins to be given to each of them. The deficiency was made up by transferring money from the remittances of the Patriotic Fund. [176] The distribution of funds in 1812 (Fig.5), when Lloyd’s ceased to offer subsidies, also indicates that the special subscriptions for merchant masters and mates were incorporated into a general fund to continue sustaining the mass of Royal Navy seamen and redcoats in Sarrelouis, Cambray, Valenciennes and Givet. [177]

60 Finally, whilst letters from home were addressed to the ‘the Gentlemen composing the Committee at Verdun’, the network did not only consist of genteel captives. [178] The creation of citadel sub-committees complicates the time-honoured assumption that captive distributors were from the elite and their recipients situated at the base of the social pyramid. British inmates of septentrional citadels were not passive recipients of genteel endeavours from Verdun. In Arras, they replicated practices of ‘plebeian associational culture’ by forming friendly societies and burial clubs, very much in the fashion of the thriving informal associations in Britain, to relieve their co-captives grieved and concerned by an increasing death toll. [179] In February 1808, common soldiers and sailors formed a separate committee within the citadel of Valenciennes, in addition to the commission headed by Charles Sevright in the same depot. [180] Whilst the lack of communication could explain the creation of this second committee, it also suggests that the distribution of charity did not necessarily create consensus but tensions between prisoners of different classes.

VIII. Charity, not solidarity: Naval patronage and discipline

61 From the shores of Cherbourg, where HMS Minerve was wrecked, to Verdun, Captain Jahleel Brenton marched apart from his crew. On the journey, he contrived to travel a day ahead of the main convoy to arrange their lodgings, or else a day behind to care for the sick and latecomers. [181] In January 1804, once arrived in Verdun, he obtained permission to ‘advance [his] people some money on account of their pay’, and addressed them a letter. [182]

62 I shall never forget you … This money is intended to make you comfortable … and I trust you will make a proper use of it. Let me request of you, then, one and all, to respect the situation you are in, to be sober and obedient to officers the fortune of war has placed over you, attentive to discipline, and patient under the misfortune which has befallen us. It is this kind of conduct that gains us respect in every situation, and when happier days arrive you will remember with pleasure having supported adversity like men.

63 Born in a loyalist family in Rhode Island, Jahleel Brenton had developed strong religious feelings since serving under James Saumarez. Yet, it was only in his thirties, with hardships and captivity now offering time to reflect on his soul, that he experienced a spiritual awakening. This growing devotion was at the core of his charitable actions towards common sailors whom he represented as a senior officer. Indeed, Captain Brenton’s letter attests the confessional, professional and disciplinary nature of his aid to fellow seamen, which manifested itself particularly acutely in the manual he published after his release entitled The Hope of the Navy: or the True Source of Efficiency and Discipline. [183] His case shows that, for naval officers, charity was a religiously-inspired masculine duty to ‘support adversity like men’. [184]

64 Contriving to maintain a link with the crew was part of a naval code of conduct following shipwreck and capture. [185] This was put in practice with dedication by certain commanding officers who, having experienced the Great Mutinies of 1797, embraced the following paternalistic turn. Senior officers, such as Captain Otter and Captain Woodriff, put a particular emphasis on petitioning the Admiralty for bills of exchange for their men detained in northern depots. Between 1806 and 1809, at least twenty-four letters were addressed by naval officers to William Marsden and William Wellesley Pole at the Admiralty on this matter, which attest to their active lobbying. [186] Sir Thomas Lavie, Captain Woodriff and Captain Leveson Gower were particularly active in ‘drawing bills upon board’, acting as senior naval officers for the Committee. [187] Pay lists drawn by officers in Verdun for the naval men in this depot, and those kept in Bitche, Arras, Givet and Valenciennes, show that they obtained half-pay from the British authorities for their captive subordinates across France. [188]

65 Naval relief was entrenched in a system of professional patronage, which aimed to discipline the younger generations of naval captives. This materialised in the creation of a third seminary for non-commissioned naval men. There, young midshipmen improved their literacy and had the opportunity of taking the lieutenant examination, which transformed Verdun into an exiled naval academy and a space of socio-professional mobility. [189] Whilst this measure somewhat confirms the meritocratic wave affecting the provision of commission in the Georgian Navy, the objectives of the two founders were clearly disciplinary. Their intention was to contain the evils of idleness: extract young men from the hands of ‘professional’ women and gambling-house keepers, and inculcate discipline and maintain professional hierarchies amongst them. Paying the expenses of the school out of their own pockets, Captain Otter and Captain Hoffman aimed to nip duelling, gambling, drinking and all kinds of ‘evil communications’ in the bud. [190] This was not an easy venture. Alexander Stewart wrote that few of his young colleagues from the lower deck were willing to attend this training. As a result, the senior officers made the naval school compulsory. [191] This measure in itself reflects the relations of power between prisoners, who formed a strongly hierarchical group, an internal panopticon, which corroborates Rafael Scheck’s observations on the propensity of captive officers to become ‘jailors of their own men’. [192] Naval officers of Verdun prompted charity, not solidarity amongst the prisoners. The difference is important, as it served to maintain religious obedience, patriotism and socio-professional hierarchies, which confirms the change in attitudes towards piety and morality in early nineteenth-century Royal Navy, identified by Richard Blake. [193]

66 Paternalistic officers relieved common sailors and soldiers in order to prevent them from succumbing to the siren call of the French army. [194] French military records indicate that around twenty British naval men from Verdun decided to serve in the French Navy, owing to a lack of financial means. [195] Flickering loyalties were almost instantly reported to the Admiralty. In 1809, for fear of being implicated in a court martial, Captain Otter denounced two captive midshipmen, Alfred Parr of the Ignition and Robert Mortimore of the Magpie, for having entered French service. [196] These denunciations, along with denials of patronage, created tensions between the naval agents of the Committee at Verdun and the lower deck. [197] Senior officers were held responsible for their men’s attempts at escape. In June 1805, two midshipmen named Murray and Robinson, to whom a ‘cautionnement par corps’ (bail bond for them to stay on parole) had been offered by officers, took French leave. [198] This led Captain Gower, Robinson’s superior, to take a serious measure: ‘very affected by the breach of parole, [he] ask[s] the Admiralty to exclude [Robinson] from the Navy’. [199] In his diary, Robert James, a common sailor held in Bitche, condemned such decisions and accused the Verdun Committee of distributing monies ‘only among a set of scoundrels, who never dared show their faces again in England … [and] Despards gangs; such as Taylors, and shoemakers’, a situation he ascribed to the negative influence of civil détenus in the Committee. [200] This last comment from a member of the lower deck reveals how the provision of captive relief was perceived through a prism of conflicting socio-professional perspectives.

Conclusion

67 This article aimed to throw into relief the multifaceted nature of a transnational charity network, which should not be relegated to a binary between captive recipients and nationalistic benefactors at Lloyd’s. The study has highlighted that prisoners were the instigators and mediators of their own relief. It has also shown the importance of connections, particularly banking and naval ties in channelling funds at home and abroad. As a result of these connections, relief had different meanings, whether it was derived from a meagre military welfare provided by the French State, or whether it emanated from cosmopolitan philanthropy, marine insurance, spiritual remembrance, and regional solidarities in Britain. Various languages of kinship were articulated in raising and channelling funds, which led to tensions between prisoners of different geographical origins and socio-professional statuses. Overall, despite acting within discourses of national pride, the various actors of this humanitarian network did not serve a univocal patriotic effort. Charity did not equate to solidarity amongst prisoners, as the ‘colony of captives’ was marked by strong social antagonisms. [201] Their situations, particular those of the civilian détenus, reveal the ambiguities of the totalisation of warfare and nation-buildings at work during the period. [202] This is a powerful reminder of the fruitfulness of approaching the history of prisoners of war, and indeed war itself, from below and through a socio-cultural approach that reveals the neglected significance of transnational networks and contacts in conflicts. [203] It also reminds us of the complexities of the ‘Humanitarian Revolution’, which sociologists and historians have identified in enlightened discussions of violence and anti-slavery lobbying during the period. [204] In particular, the aforementioned petition sent by British captives to Wilberforce, to consider war captivity as a ‘worse case’ than slavery, attests to the politicisation of philanthropic actors and debates, as much as the social, economic, regional and racial tensions that animated humanitarian endeavours during the Napoleonic conflicts.