has

THE German Emperor has, since the beginning of the war, professed himself a follower of Napoleon. He has imitated the vices of that great man with sedulous care, though, of course, the great man's genius has remained far beyond his reach. And in nothing has he shown himself an apter pupil than in the deliberate cruelty wherewith he treated his prisoners of war. The brutal outrages which Napoleon inflicted upon his helpless captives will always seem the darkest of the many stains which time will never wash from his name and fame. The man, who enslaved those of his enemies who fell into his hands, or enrolled them in his own armies, that they might fight against their kith and kin, deserves no absolution from a complacent posterity. The ghosts of the six thousand wretched Spaniards who died from exhaustion on the road between Saragossa and the Pyrenees, or were shot because they could not keep up with their comrades, will haunt Napoleon's memory until the end of time. Nor shall we ever forget or forgive the indignities put upon Englishmen-most of them civilians trapped after the cessation of the truce signed at Amiensat Verdun, Bitche, and Givet. To torture the helpless and afflicted is not the deed of a

I.

hero, and until the Kaiser, in all the vulgarity of his Prussian

nature, improved upon the lesson taught by Napoleon, at Ruhleben, at Sennelager, at a dozen other infernos, the sinister reputation of Napoleon stood alone.

And as the Kaiser will bear the full blame for the atrocities which he bade his officers to perpetrate, so Napoleon must be condemned as the only begetter of the miseries and sufferings borne by his prisoners and captives. Before he seized revolutionary France by the throat, and shook her into an efficient autocracy, cruelty and outrage were no part of her settled policy. Such sailors as fell, by the fortune of war, into the hands of the French, were treated with some show of kindness and humanity. Not even the fierce temper of Robespierre carried his countrymen so far on the road of severity as the frigid, calculating malignity of Napoleon. Witnesses of this truth are not wanting, and there lately fell into my hands the manuscript story of a returned prisoner, who celebrates with what eloquence he can the humanity and benevolence of the French people. The manuscript is remarkable for not a few reasons. It is a veritable masterpiece of calligraphy. The author believed that his adventures were so well worth remembering,

that he set them down with all the care and skill wherewith the scribes of old immortalised their thoughts before the black art of printing was invented. And as the books of Gutenberg and Fust owed their style and character to the manuscripts which went before them, so the written record of this prisoner and artist was so closely modelled upon the printed books of his time, that the accuracy of his hand often deceives the reader's eye. But his work is especially interesting because it was designed to correct a false impression. Since his return to his native land, he tells us, he has "heard the most glaring falsehoods basely fabricated by seamen and others for the purpose of exciting pity for themselves." So he celebrates

frankly the amiability of his captors, admitting, like the wise man that he is, certain exceptions. "When discipline," says he, "loses its influence over the minds of men, they do not hesitate to commit the worst of excesses." He did not foresee the excesses which Napoleon's iron discipline would achieve. He dedicates his book, with all sincerity, and in an ornate page, "to a people equally conspicuous in history for their private virtues as well as their public vices: to a nation that, whilst disavowing the Christian faith, still practised in an eminent degree the first of Christian duties, charity and benevolence." And he adds the appropriate epigraph: "I was an hungered, and they gave me meat: naked, and they clothed me."

G. M.-such are his initials -was, in 1794, a midshipman on board the Scout, which, after the evacuation of Toulon, sailed with the fleet under Lord Hood, to take possession of Corsica. The capture of Bastia, the short-lived triumph of "liberty," the exultant speech of Paoli, mere episodes in a wellpacked history, find no place in G. M.'s record. It is more to his purpose that soon after Corsica became, for a few months only, a part of the British Empire, the Corsican merchants asked the protection of a vessel of war for their ships employed in the coral-fishing off the coast of Egypt. This duty fell upon the Scout, which,

taking on board four months' provisions and extra seamen, sailed from Ajaccio on the 18th of July 1794, with thirty or forty large fishing-boats belonging to the island. It left Corsica "accompanied by the best wishes of a vast concourse of people," and from Sardinia steered for the coast of Barbary, intending to make Tunis, but it was compelled to take shelter in the harbour of Bona, and there it remained until the 3rd of August. On the following day those on board descried two strange frigates, which should have given them no trouble at all, for the Scout had the weather gauge, and was a "prime sailer." More

eight miles away, and when the captain ordered all hands to shorten sail, he gave the order without the assent of a single officer. And the captain did still worse, for he spoke with the frigates, which hauled down the Spanish flag they were flying and ran up the tricolour, and then surrendered without striking a blow. Some ships of the convoy escaped, others fell into the hands of the French, and it is some satisfaction to know that the Captain of the Scout was severely censured,1

Thus G. M. began the hardships of a prisoner's life -hardships which he bore with both the courage and buoyancy of his sixteen years, and which he mitigated with the determined hope of escape. The journey to Toulon gave him no earnest of better times to come. Captain Landrie, of La Vestale, one of his captors, was a "despicable wretch," who kept his prisoners all night in the hold, and in whom "republican" frenzy had risen to such a height, that it closely bordered on idolatry. In other words, he compelled the worship of a clumsily carved image which stood upon the quarter-deck, and which was intended to represent the goddess Liberty. Still worse, he robbed his English cap

tives of all their goods, with a promise of restoration, and gave G. M. no more than a wretched assignat of 10 livres for sixty yards of the best linen that could be bought in Dublin ! Then the prisoners set forth on the wearisome march from Toulon to Gap, which was to be the place of their imprisonment. G. M., acutely sensitive to the beauty of the landscape, records with pleasure his first view of "the majestic Alps," and moreover found solace during his journey in in the humours of the road and the sympathy of the inhabitants. At Le Val, in the Department of the Var, he was invited to breakfast with some French soldiers, who proved their love of equality and fraternity by refusing to pay the bill. "We please to give you nothing," said they to the landlord, "unless you choose to accept payment from the points of our swords." As for G. M., he regretted that he had not the talents of a Hogarth to depict the features of "this shrivelled burlesque upon Boniface." His good fortune attended him to Digne in the Basses Alpes, where he was billeted upon a family of considerable note, who treated him as though he had been a long-lost son, and where General Petit Guillaume, who inspected the prisoners, told them they had nothing to fear,

as the miscreant Robespierre

was no more.

Arrived at Gap, which was destined for their depôt, they were told the laws, by no means onerous, which should govern their imprisonment. They were free to range the streets until dark, so long as they did not leave the town, nor discuss politics, nor go about more than four together. Life in Gap might have been easy enough, especially for those who, like G. M., engaged themselves with the citizens as helpers to gather in the vintage. But freedom being always pleasanter than comfort, G. M. straightway set about attempting to escape. There were several reasons why success did not seem beyond his reach. He had a perfect knowledge of the French tongue, and his friends at Gap, inspired by hatred of the National Government, assured him that an attempt was not impracticable. Alas! it was on April 1st, 1795, that he started upon his first adventure, and a veritable fool's errand it proved. His hope was to tramp to Barcellonnette, and then to reach Piedmont through a pass in the Alps. Barcellonnette he gained without mishap, and then found that the pass was so closely guarded by French soldiers, that progress by that road was impossible. "Thus disappointed "I will carry on the narrative in his own words -"I proceeded a few miles up the Durance, where I was told I might procure a boat to ferry me over. I had the mortification, however, to find the

boatman an inflexible, flintyhearted rascal, who, notwithstanding that I endeavoured to allure him with a 3-livre piece, refused to have any. thing to do with me, as I was not furnished with a passport. After cursing the miscreant by my gods, I determined upon fording the river, and accordingly proceeded up its margin a siderable distance in order to find out a convenient spot. Having, as I thought, discovered this, I lost no time in preparing to wade across, when suddenly, to my utter consternation, four peasants (such, at least, I conceived them to be) observing me in the act of stripping off my clothes, rushed upon me, and without the least previous ceremony decorated my wrists with a pair of handcuffs. . . . I was by them conducted to a small Bourg, called Largentière, and immediately ushered before the Maire, who endeavoured (and I am sorry to say succeeded) to intimidate me by his cavalierlike behaviour. According to his verdict, I was either to be shot or suffer decapitation by the guillotine; or at least, as an act of mercy, to be sent to the gallies at Toulon during life. The merciless democrat paid no attention whatever to an inscription over his head, which set forth that 'all men are equal,' but kept me standing, bare-headed, for upwards of half an hour, whilst thundering his denunciations against