Sir F. Burdett: .."From all that he knew of the history of the country, he held it to have always been the distinguishing feature and universal characteristic of Englishmen to feel a jealousy of foreigners, and particularly of armed foreigners, being introduced into this service. "

General Tarleton: . . . With respect to the employment of foreign troops abroad, he thought, in the present state of the world, we could not have too many of them; but with respect to taking them into English regiments, he was in direct opposition to such a measure. Mixing Germans and English together into one regiment, was like mixing baser metals with gold and silver. The highest testimony had been borne to the superiority of English soldiers in former times, by such men as marshal Turenne and marshal Villars; and this superiority we had" still maintained. Would Great Britain ever allow herself to be over-run, and her character to be debased, in the manner of Prussia and Austria? He was of opinion, therefore, that government might take as many foreigners as they pleased into pay; but let them still be called mercenaries:

Of course, all of these "foreigners" being discussed were German. Any hint of a Frenchman being employed in the English army would have been explosive.

There is no question in my mind that, outside of the Germans, there weren't any Frenchmen commissioned in the regular army, other than in the German Legion with apparently one or two exceptions which, as indicted by these Parliamentary reports, caused some problems.

By the way, I find several sources, that state Sir Sidney Smith’s influence gained Phélippeaux a British Colonelcy. He also was given a Turkish commission as a colonel as did at least one of Smith's officers, Douglass, so it was possible to have commissions from both.

I can recall a source that goes into some detail about the crew of the Tigre including the Frenchmen and their ranks. I suspect it would be in Barrows but haven't gotten around to looking. What made all of this possible is that Sir Sidney was given complete control of assembling his crew, something not normally done.