Lord Eliot Convention - Legacy

Legacy

The treatment of prisoners of the First Carlist War was thus regulated. The positive effects were immediate. A soldier of the British Legion wrote that:

The British and Chapelgorris who fell into their hands, were mercilessly put to death, sometimes by means of tortures worthy of the North American Indians; but the Spanish troops of the line were saved by virtue, I believe, of the Eliot treaty, and after being kept for some time in prison, where they were treated with sufficient harshness, were frequently exchanged for an equal number of prisoners made by the Christinos.

Charles Frederick Henningsen, who had served with the Carlists, dedicated his book, Twelve Months' Campaign with Zumalacárregui, to Lord Eliot, whom he described as "one of the very few who have in any way interfered in the civil strife now desolating Spain, whose name will not be a curse to her people, but on whose head the blessings of all ranks of Spaniards will be showered."

However, though “it was mutually agreed upon to treat the prisoners taken on either side according to the ordinary rules of war, a few months only elapsed before similar barbarities were practiced with all their former remorselessness.”