Prisoners of War (POWs)

[Anthropoid]

I now have about 60,000 Austrian and Prussian POWs in a "container" in Ile de France Province.

I searched the manual and appendix for Prisoner and POWs and all I can find is

POW’s (Prisoners of War) – Surrendered units become Prisoners of War, under the control of the player who captured them. Surrendered cavalry are stripped of their horses and turned into infantry units. Surrendered artillery come under permanent control of the capturing player, and have their Morale lowered to 2.5.
POW’s cannot be deliberately disbanded, though they are automatically disbanded under certain circumstances. . . .

Surrender• – Cost is 1 Diplomatic Action for a nation at war with another. When a nation surrenders the two nations return to a state of peace, all POWs are returned to their rightful controllers, and units are removed from enemy possessions–and players are given a list to choose where to return their units to.

So can I use these as bargaining chips in negotiating peace or anything like that?

I'm guessing if I capture any artillery I can actually put them in my HQ containers and use them as units right?

[Franck]

I believe POW give you surrender points. Those are used after a country surrender to draft a treati in wich you impose stuff on the country that just surrendered.

[Anthropoid]

Kewl

[Ironclad]

Actually POWs don't count directly for victory points (used in surrender treaties) but there is a casualty threshold that a power needs to meet to obtain its full victory point entitlement so surrendered troops should have an impact on this.