Alexandria Gazette, Commercial And Political

Adjutant General's Office, Head-Quarters, Montreal, December 12th, 1813.

GENERAL ORDER.

His Excellency the Governor in Chief and Commander of the Forces has to announce to the troops under his command, that he has received a communication from Major Gen. Wilkinson, commanding a division of the army of the United States of America, by order of the Government, of which the following is an extract:

"The Government of the United States adhering unalterably to the principle and purpose declared in the communication of General Dearborn to you, on the subject of the Twenty three American Soldiers, prisoners of war, sent to England to be tried as criminals; and the confinement of a like number of British soldiers, prisoners of war, selected to abide the fate of the former, has in consequence of the step taken by the British government, as now communicated, ordered Forty-six British officers into close confinement, and that they will not be discharged from their confinement until it shall be known that the Forty-six American officers and non-commissioned officers in question are no longer confined."

It would be superfluous to use any argument to refute an assumption so extravagant, unjust, and unprecedented, as to deny the right of a free nation to bring to a legal trial, in a due course of law, her own natural born subjects taken in the actual commission of the most heinous of offences that man can commit against his King, his country, and his God, that of raising his parricide arm against his allegiance to his countrymen, by leaguing with their enemies, a crime held in such abhorrence by every civilized nation in Europe, that summary Death by the Law martial, is its avowed reward, and is inflicted with unrelenting severity by France the ally of the U. States.

This pretension must appear to every unprejudiced and upright mind, as iniquitous and unjust, as is the retaliation which the government of the United States has adopted, by placing in close confinement three and twenty British soldiers, as hostages for an equal number of infamous wretches the unworthy offspring of Great Britain: who, when drawn from the ranks of the enemy, solicited to be suffered to expiate their treason by turning their arms against their recent employers. These rebels have, (with the contempt they merit) been consigned to the infamy and punishment that awaits them from the just laws of their offended country; while the government of the United States does not blush to claim these out-cast traitors as their own, and outrage the custom of civilised war, in the persons of honorable men, by placing them on a par with rebels and deserters.

No alternative remains to the Commander of the forces, in the discharge of his duty to his King, his country, and his fellow soldiers, but to order all the American officers, prisoners of war, without exception of rank, to be immediately placed in close confinement, as hostages for the forty-six British officers so confined, by the express commands of the supreme authority in that country, until the number of forty-six be completed, over and above those now in confinement.

His excellency directs that this general order, together with that issued on the 27th October, be read to the troops, that the British soldier may be sensible of the terms on which America has determined to wage this war; confident, that he will meet them with proper spirit & indignation; for should he become the prisoner of a foe so regardless of those laws which governed civilized nations in war, he would be doomed to a rigorous confinement, and that perhaps only preparatory to a more savage scene.

(Signed)

EDWARD BAYNES,
Adjutant General B. N. A.