that French prisoners were fed on dead cats and dogs, Captain Swinburne was informed that at Dunkirk the English captives had very few blankets, at Amiens none, and that at Brest sixty captains or passengers of merchant vessels were debarred exercise and in want of necessaries. Sir William Eden (afterwards Lord Auckland) went to Dieppe in May 1795 to propose an exchange of sailors, but the Convention would only agree to an exchange of naval officers. When the expedition to Ireland was being prepared, Nicholas Madgett,[1] a priest born at Kinsale, County Kerry, and a friend of Tone's, was sent to Orleans to pick out Irish prisoners to be enrolled in it. The result was a quarrel between English and Irish, and the removal of the former to Valenciennes. Three or four hundred seamen were induced to join the expedition, by being plied with drink and assured that England had left them to their fate for the sake of one man, Sir Sidney Smith. In February 1798 France agreed to England's proposal that each should feed and clothe its own subjects, and in the following September it was arranged that officers should be free on parole and civilians liberated without exchange; but in October the
- ↑ Himself a prisoner from May to November 1795, having landed with a passport under the name of Hurst. The open, not to say ostentatious way in which the expedition was organised is explained by the fact that it was a mere sham, designed to frighten England into peace, and became serious only on Lord Malmesbury's departure.
