Last turn though a large force of French troops fled into Kassel after a battle. Next turn they surrendered. I was pretty surprised when I was notified that I had captured 283.000 prisoners!! Especially since about 30.000 French soldiers fled inside last turn....
So the questions:
- are the prisoners one gets actual soldiers the other side loses? Or are they an abstract number calculated based on the number of units involved in the battle?
- might the calculation (or the soldier count) be a bit off in case of the surrerender of a town?

Connected but a different question: the number of prisoners I have seems to go down each turn (when I dont capture new ones). What happens to those prisoners? Do they die? Escape? Enlist in my service? Get exchanged for troops the enemy captured?
Nb.: I now have 373.700 enemy prisoners... I havent even the soldiers to guard them!!!