When Napoleon Changed The Rules

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29994, 1 December 1962, Page 3

When Napoleon Changed The Rules

[Reviewed by

H.A.H.I.

Napoleon and his British Captives. By Michael Lewis. Allen and Unwin. 317 pp. Index. Until the eighteenth century wars had always been relatively minor affairs limited to rulers and their paid retainers, their soldiers and sailors. Civilians were never greatly concerned and indeed non-combatants aways considered wars, even those waged by their own sovereign, to be no real concern of theirs. During the wars of France and Britain in Europe, for instance, trade and commercial activities and social intercourse between noncombatants of all countries continued uninterruptedly. In times of war wealthy tourists from many countries continued to ride about in their coaches visiting Paris, Vienna, Florence and Rome with their staffs of coachmen, footmen, body servants and ladies’ maids as though nothing untoward were afoot.

In particular, members of the British upper • classes were everywhere recognised as inveterate travellers, and in the midst of war people of all countries continued to receive them with bows and smiles. For these “travelling gentlemen” spent money, and wars were limited affairs. Wars were the concern of rulers and soldiers, not civilians.

Nevertheless total war, in which civilians are regarded and treated as belligerents equally with soldiers and sailors is not altogether a modern invention; it is not one more of the hideous inventions of the twentieth century. It was Napoleon who first conceived and used total war' as a deliberate state policy, and it was Napoleon who literally overnight, on May 23, 1803, guillotined and killed for ever the whole civilized concept of warfare. On this memorable day after the Peace of Amiens hostilities resumed between France and. Britain, and on this day Napoleon ordered the detention of every Briton between,the ages of 18 and 60 years then on French soil.

As a result many hundreds of civilians as well as servicemen were detained in gaols and internment camps, and this startling departure from accepted conventions of war shocked and insulted public opinion not merely in Britain, but throughout all Europe, including France itself. Napoleon was not, however, in the least dismayed. At one stroke he had gained a powerful bargaining counter. Xt is from this edict that modern ideas of total war, including the bombing of civilians, and even genocide, have developed. In point of sheer numbers, members of the Royal Navy, the merchant navy and, in a rather less degree, the Army were at first the principal sufferers. It had been the gentlemanly custom for captured officers, having given their parole d’ honneur that they would not escape, to be allowed to choose their place of residence and enjoy a reasonable freedom as private citizens within the country of their capture, while awaiting their turn for repatriation under the next negotiated exchange of prisoners. These old seemly conventions of “exchange” and “parole” were wantonly shattered by Napoleon ’and it is this fact which provides Professor Michael Lewis, a naval historian, with an entry into the whole subject. In this book Professor Lewis discusses both principles and people. He describes the conditions of the capture and captivity of all "detenus.” civilians as well as servicemen, their road journeys to their prison depots and internment camps, their lives there, and how, if at all, they got away. The final third of the book is an exciting addition to escape literature. Here we see the forerunners of the Stalag and Colditz of World War 11, pioneers of a thrilling dangerous field of human activity, many of them displaying the same fanatical desire for liberty and the same qualities of endurance, perseverance and ingenuity which fascinate us in modem escape books. At the end of the book Professor Lewis lists the names and the data of all British officer-prisoners and civilian internees that his researches have enabled him to find. The book as a whole is a moving story, most readably written. As an historian he has recorded information of great value, and he has breathed real life into the major characters. Thirteen illustrations, a map of France 1803-1814, and a plan of the citadel of Valenciennes are all closely related to the text and help to bring home to the reader the meaning of the pernicious precedent of which Napoleon was guilty.