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Napoleonic prisoner of war

G

gemma

master brummie
I wonder if any of you clever people out there can help me. I know from family letters an ancestor of mine who was born in birmingham was a prisoner of war in France in 1810. Would he have been due to him fighting in the napoleonic wars? When he returned to England after four years he became a fishmonger so what would have inspired him to be a soldier and fight oversees. Are there any records of prisoners of war in France. I don’t have any other clues to what regiment he would have been in. None of his children’s baptisms showed an occupation nor did his marriage certificate. I have tried the online files the national archives have but I don’t seem to get anywhere. I done have a subscription to ancestry or find my past would there be information on I may find on these sites to make it worthwhile paying for.
Thank you
 
gemma said:
I wonder if any of you clever people out there can help me. I know from family letters an ancestor of mine who was born in birmingham was a prisoner of war in France in 1810. Would he have been due to him fighting in the napoleonic wars? When he returned to England after four years he became a fishmonger so what would have inspired him to be a soldier and fight oversees. Are there any records of prisoners of war in France. I don’t have any other clues to what regiment he would have been in. None of his children’s baptisms showed an occupation nor did his marriage certificate. I have tried the online files the national archives have but I don’t seem to get anywhere. I done have a subscription to ancestry or find my past would there be information on I may find on these sites to make it worthwhile paying for.
Thank you
Click to expand...
The French Revolutionary Wars lasted from 1792 until 1802. There's a short peace, then the Napoleonic Wars
https://www.historyextra.com/period/georgian/napoleonic-wars-timeline/.
So yes, your ancestor would be a soldier or a sailor if he was a prisoner of war in 1810. In that year the French won a naval battle Battle of Grand Port, August 22–27, at Île de France (Mauritius), which was one of the last French overseas possessions to be captured by Britain.

Could you share his full name and date of birth then those of us with Ancestry and Find My Past could help search?

(My own ancestor was a French officer of a privateer who was a British POW but escaped. He married in England but then seems to have disappeared. It is hard to trace people then.)
 
Stagg doesn't seem to be a Birmingham name, mostly West Country around that time as far as I can see.

When you talk about why he joined you can only speculate (which is nice) and may depend on where he was born. It may be different if he was born in a port like Bristol or Plymouth rather than inland. - patriotism, lack of opportunities, pressganged.

I wouldn't advise getting a subscription just to look for records for him because it may be difficult to be sure (because of the lack of info on them) that any record you did find for a William Stagg would be for yours. And don't discount records for Stag/Stags/Staggs. You could do a free trial but remember to cancel or wait for a free weekend.

There appear to be a number of records for William Stagg on familysearch, one or two with the name Ann listed as well, but they don't give much more info on the transcript and they seem to be from the National Archives so you've probably seen them.
 
hi gemma just had a quick look on ancestry...you may already know this but william and ann harding married in june 1805 at st martins church and it looks like william was buried at st marys church on the 24th of june 1827 his address on his burial record is given as staniforth st..i will do a bit more digging later on

lyn
 
Besides soldiers or sailors, merchant seamen and civilians were detained as prisoners of war. Officers and 'gentleman travellers' on both sides might be paroled, but the common men had a tougher time of it. J. David Markham describes their lot in the final paragraph of his paper.
http://www.napoleonicsociety.com/english/pdf/j5markham.pdf

@gemma - do your letters give any clue as to where William was detained? Lots of POWs were kept at Verdun.
He was released at the end of the war in 1814.
 
Last edited:
gemma said:
No I don’t know where he was detained unfortunately. How do you know he was released in 1814?
Click to expand...
Gemma, you say in your first post:
gemma said:
was a prisoner of war in France in 1810. Would he have been due to him fighting in the napoleonic wars? When he returned to England after four years he became a fishmonger
Click to expand...
Every prisoner was released in 1814 at the end of the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon was hostile to prisoner exchanges or early release as he thought that this would simply free men to attack France.
 
Stokkie said:
Gemma, you say in your first post:

Every prisoner was released in 1814 at the end of the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon was hostile to prisoner exchanges or early release as he thought that this would simply free men to attack France.
Click to expand...
The Corsican Ogre or Boney
as he was called by us
was on the island of Elba
in 1814
so he had no control over
Prisoner Release
 
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