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Just curious as to what Napoleon did with all the prisoners of war he aquired since he fought so many battles during his reign against Austria, Prussia, Britain, Russia and Italian campaigns etc...
Did he house them in prisoner camps or did he release them back to their countries to fight against him another day as it seemed like those opposing countries always had armies of 30,000 to 50,000 to fight against his over the years and that's not including all the opposing countries war dead.
Thanks for the link Grandstander....i just got to thinking about all the prisoners of war in WWI and WW2 in europe and yet with all the battles in the ''Napoleonic Wars'' i never read about prisoner of war camps by the French.
On the British side, there's a memorial in Leek St Edward's graveyard in the county of Staffordshire to French Napoleonic prisoners-of-war who died in the town. french leek
That was just fantastic information berenice as i had no clue how or where the British kept the Napoleonic French prisoners. Although they were officer POW's and not enlisted that was very informative !!!!
Some more interesting links here; however, references to British prisoners-of-war are so few that I've only come across one mention, via Google, of British captives, being held in Lille in 1798. Maybe I entered the wrong search phrase and if you googled in France you'd find more.
I did some more digging and i did find out that he did have prisoner of war camps (Austrians/Prussians) as in 1800/1801 he had Austrian/Prussian POW's build roads in Corsica and he also allowed them freedom if they switched sides to fight for him. They probably were a good portion of the 600,000 who invaded Russia in 1812.
Not knowing, I would guess there was alot of prisoner exchanges or just plain releasing them under some sort of gentleman's agreement that they would not take up arms again.
They did this often in the American Civil War, at least during the first few years. During the American War of Independence the British would keep the American POW's on barges kept on the water - very primitive and raw conditions with understandably high death rates.
If one were to judge by those Horatio Hornblower and Sharpe's Rifles novels and films, escape from French captivity was never a big problem, they always found a way out before too terribly long.
Maybe Napoleon didn't have any prisoners because they all always escaped.
Not knowing, I would guess there was alot of prisoner exchanges or just plain releasing them under some sort of gentleman's agreement that they would not take up arms again.
That's what i was thinking as it seemed like everytime France fought Austria and Prussia those opposing armies had roughly the same amount of forces as the previous battles and yet many were killed or captured as they're armies should have started to shrink eventually.
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