ciennes, where they had no amusement, no diversions to dissipate their ennui.

Some others had escaped from the towns where they had been permitted to remain. Mr. Charles Wollesley soon after his detention had decamped from Spa.

RE-UNION OF THE THREE DEPOTS AT VERDUN.

AT length an order arrived in December, 1803, that the three depôts should be united at Verdun, and that all the detenus in France should be transported thither at their own expence. The party from Fontainbleau were suffered to make this journey without gendarmes, and the road that they were to take being marked out for them, they might travel on foot or on

horseback, in their own carriages or in the diligence, at their own option, provided they arrived at Verdun on the fixt day. But the government had less confidence in their guests at Valenciennes. They were obliged to travel under the guard of a gendarme, to whom they were ordered to pay five shillings a day, and to defray his eating and drinking at the inns on the road; and as the gendarme generally recommended whatever inn he thought proper, he probably received a fee from the inn-keeper, which was charged in the detenus' bill.

This was one of the first impositions that the English suffered in France. The French, who when accused or suspected of any crime, are, instead of being thrown into prison, committed to the care of a gendarme, must pay him five shillings a day to defray the expences of his living; whereas the English

were ordered to pay every gendarme the same sum, and to pay his expences besides; and these fellows preferred the best wines, and called for the best cheer that the inns could produce.

The General de Boubers, who did every thing in his power to soften the rigor of his orders, and took leave of his prisoners almost with tears in his eyes, had recomiended to them to make parties to go on the same day; as one gendarme might in that case have charge of two or three carriages, and a number might defray the expences of a guard between them; whereas, if they went separate, each must pay for a guard.

Conceive the indignation of free-born Britons, of people of rank and education, travelling like culprits under the orders of a constable, and to each of these constables they were obliged to pay from one hundred and fifty to two

hundred livres, besides his expences on the road.

Those gentlemen, who at first refused to pay this sum, were menaced to be marched on foot with the common sailors, to be guarded from stage to stage by the gendarmes of the different towns on their route, and to be shut up at night in the common jails with half a pound of straw to sleep on: and they were told, that if the local gendarmes were not ready to escort them, they might be obliged to wait their leisure for several days together; among the filth, vermin, and felons of a prison. And what was their crime?— their confidence in the loyalty of the Great Nation.

I cannot here omit the spirited conduct of Lieutenant Colonel Swayne of the Artillery. Upon every occasion acting suaviter in modo, he acted in this fortiter in re. He positively refused

to take a gendarme. The general expressed his regret that he should be obliged to send him on foot with the common people. "In that case," answered he, "I will march at their head in my colonel's uniform." The general was afraid of the sensation that this would cause, and before the next morning sent him and two of his friends, Mr. Darell, and Mr. Ruding, a particular permission to make the journey together, without a gendarme.

Another time, Colonel Swayne silenced in the completest manner Lepinat, the colonel of the gendarmerie, who had come to Valenciennes to take the command over the detenus, and who had the indelicacy to assert at General de Bouber's house, that the French prisoners in England were confined in the coal-mines-an accusation against the British government, which the French government have been at the