Prisoner of war the custody of a person, then the responsibility was on the individual. The freeing of prisoners was highly recommended as a charitable act. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, established the rule that prisoners of war should be released without ransom at the end of hostilities and that they should be allowed to return to their homelands. There also evolved the right of "parole", French for "discourse", in which a captured officer surrendered his sword and gave his word as a gentleman in exchange for privileges. If he swore not to escape, he could gain
Duchy of Limburg Eighty Years' War, ended by the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. An area known as Limburg of the States, consisting of parts of Overmaas (but no part of the Duchy of Limburg itself), was ceded to the Dutch Republic. In 1661, the Dutch and the Spanish agreed on a re-partition of the county of Dalhem. The duchy of Limburg itself remained undivided under Spanish Habsburg rule as part of the Southern Netherlands, passing to the Austrian Habsburgs under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. When the region was occupied by the French in 1794, the Austrian duchy of Limburg proper was