That the firmness of the two Governments led to terrible suffering in the British prisons cannot be doubted—a suffering which was not shared by the British in France, who were regularly clothed by the agent of their own Government; and it has been already stated that at certain periods of the struggle, including the latter part of 1797, the British Government did provide, in the last extremity, clothing for the neglected subjects of their enemy, protesting, that they did this only as an act of humanity, and not as a duty. In looking for the apparent unwillingness of the French to meet the British on equal terms, we must remember certain differences in the great principles in which the two nations conducted war. Alison, commenting on the Peninsular Campaign, says: “The British, according to the established mode of civilised warfare, at least in modern times, maintained themselves chiefly from magazines in their rear; and when they were obliged to depend upon the supplies of the provinces where the war was carried on, they paid for their food as they would have done in this country.” {82} The French, on the other hand, by reverting to the old Roman system, of making war maintain war, not only felt no additional burden, but experienced the most sensible relief by their armies carrying on hostilities in foreign states. From the moment that his forces entered a hostile territory, it was a fundamental principle of Napoleon’s that they should “draw nothing from the French Exchequer.” This principle applied to the case of the prisoners of war would certainly never tolerate that France should follow the mode of civilised warfare, at least in modern times, and should maintain her soldiers (varying during the war from 20,000 to 67,000) incarcerated in Britain if, by starving them or leaving them naked, she could thrust the burden of doing so on to the British nation.