{222} This is how the naval authorities summed up the failure of the negotiations for exchange: “There is no fixing the French Government to any basis of exchange. Every concession on our part has produced fresh demands. We have about 50,000 prisoners of war in England, in France there are about 12,000, two-thirds of whom are not prisoners, but _détenus_, many of them women and children. Even these our Government were willing to exchange, when the French Government proposed that their 50,000 should be sent over _en masse_, for the 12,000, and then afterwards the Spaniards would be released. This would enable it to man twenty-five sail of the line, and still retain the Spaniards, our allies, in his hands.”—_Naval Chronicle_, vol. xxiv., p. 327. {232} Appendix H. {233} A good description of Verdun in 1811 will be found in the _Narrative of a Forced Journey through Spain and France an a Prisoner of War in the Years_ 1810 _to_ 1814, by Major-Gen. Lord Blanfrey. In 2 vols. 1814. Vol. ii., chaps, xxxvi.-xxxvii., good account, viii., ix., xl., xli., xlii., xliii., xliv. The author says he was confined for seven weeks as a hostage to prevent the English Government from punishing a French officer who had projected a rising of the French prisoners in England. {238} _Naval Chronicle_, xiv., 17; xv., 122; xvi., 108; xvii., 108; Douglas Jerrold, _The Prisoner of War_, 1842; _A Picture of Verdun_, _or the English detained in France_, from the Portfolio of a Détenue, 1810, 2 vols.; _Letters from France_, _written in the Years_ 1803 _and_ 1804, _including a Particular Account of Verdun and the Situation of the British Captives in that City_, 2 vols. 1806; _Chambers’ Journal of Literature_, _Science_, _and Art_, 1854, vol. i., p. 330. {240} Few of the Danes were brought to Norman Cross, either at this period of the war or in the second period when there were a considerable number confined in Great Britain. From a return made to the House of Commons in 1812, it appears that of 54,508 prisoners confined at the various depots, 52,640 were French and 1,868 Danes, but no register of Danish prisoners confined at Norman Cross has been found. {241} Mr. Share often heard his grandmother speak of her husband’s acts of kindness to the prisoners who were landed at Plymouth. One incident which he recollects was, that one day, just as the family were sitting down to dinner, Captain Holditch ran in, seized the large beefsteak pie just placed on the table, and carried it off, saying, “I want this, there are a batch of French prisoners going by, and they look famished, they must have it.”