The General, after some remarks about the very different way in which such an affair would have been conducted in France, appends a note quoting the case of General Virion, who, on being accused of cruelty and rapacity towards the English prisoners in Verdun, blew his brains out rather than face the disgrace of a trial. Pillet wrote to Lovel, the editor, thus: ‘On board the prison ship _Brunswick_, Chatham, May 19, 1813. ‘SIR: ‘Since I have become acquainted with the business of the letter of “Honestus” I have been filled with indignation against the coward who, having seemed to wish to expose the horrible truth about the character and amount of the robberies practised upon prisoners of war, persists in maintaining his incognito when you have asked him to come forward in your justification.... Unhappily, we are Frenchmen, and it seems to be regarded in this country as treason to ask justice for us, and that because it is not possible to exterminate France altogether, the noblest act of patriotism seems to consist in assassinating French prisoners individually, by adding to the torments of a frightful imprisonment privations of all sorts, and thefts of clothing of which hardly a quarter of the proper quantity is distributed.... ‘We have asked for impartial inquiries to be made by people not in the pay of the Admiralty; we have declared that we could reveal acts horrible enough to make hairs stand on end, and that we could bring unimpeachable witnesses to support our testimony. These demands, even when forwarded by irreproachable persons, have been received in silence. Is it possible that there are not in England more determined men to put a stop to ill-doing from a sense of duty and irrespective of rank or nation? Is it possible that not a voice shall ever be raised on our behalf? ‘Your condemnation makes me fear it is so. ‘If only one good man, powerful, and being resolved to remove shame from his country, and to wash out the blot upon her name caused by the knowledge throughout Europe of what we suffer, could descend a moment among us, and acquaint himself with the details of our miseries with the object of relieving them, what good he would do humanity, and what a claim he would establish to our gratitude!’ Pillet adds in a note: ‘Lord Cochrane in 1813 wished to examine the prison ships at Portsmouth. Although he was a member of Parliament, and a captain in the navy, permission was refused him, because the object of his visit was to ascertain the truth about the ill-treatment of the prisoners. Lord Cochrane is anything but an estimable man, but he is one of those who, in the bitterness of their hatred of the party in power, sometimes do good. He complained in Parliament, and the only reply he got was that as the hulks were under the administration of the Transport Office, it could admit or refuse whomsoever it chose to inspect them.’