In these vaults sailors, soldiers, and midshipmen were penned in together in squalid misery, "among the rats which infested the dungeons." They were allowed between certain hours every day to walk up and down in the confined space of the central courtyard of the fortress, under observation all the time by armed sentries posted on the walls round. All were locked up for the night at seven in the evening in summer, and at four o'clock in winter. A call-over of the prisoners was held at eleven o'clock every forenoon; nominally a roll-call, it was usually a mere formality, the counting of heads by the gendarme in charge of each dungeon. Once a month a general muster and parade was held in the main courtyard, when all were officially inspected by the Commandant. No excuse for non-attendance at that was accepted, we are told, "not even sickness." "If a prisoner was able to crawl, he must attend, and frequently they were carried," relates O'Brien. In spite of everything, in spite of the most elaborate precautions by the officers in charge, the most incredible difficulties of the place and situation-the towering ramparts, the double drawbridges over deep ditches, the triplewalled fortifications which barred access to the world outside-there were several attempts at escape from Bitche. In most instances, unfortunately, the attempts were unsuccessful; but some reckless fellows did actually manage to get away, as will be told farther on in this book. General Lord Blayney, who was at Verdun as a prisoner of war, records this experience of incarceration at Bitche, "which," he says, " I received from a gentleman "I who had inhabited its subterraneous dungeons." "We arrived at Bitche," describes the narrator, "and were marched to the Petty Tett, where we were searched for concealed implements with which we might attempt our escape. From thence we were conducted to the sub terraneous dungeons, and, to our great surprise, were better received than we expected. "The first night we were put into the great dungeon in which were three or four hundred midshipmen, soldiers, sailors, and others jumbled together. The descent to it was about fifty or sixty steps, and on reaching the bottom we were received with three cheers, immediately hoisted on the shoulders of four men, and marched round the place with hallooing and shouting. A blanket was then produced, into which we were forced to enter, and received a hearty tossing. These ceremonies we thought would make us free of these gloomy abodes, but, in addition, we were obliged to give two bottles of 'snick,' an ardent spirit which, when mixed with water, turns quite blue! It is not, however, considered more unwholesome than other spirits. "In two or three days we were shifted from the grand to the little dungeon, called by the seamen 'Saint Giles's.' The descent was by nearly the same number of steps as to the great one, and we were made free by going through the same ceremonies as before, with a double allowance of 'snick,' which being drank, and some of the party being half-sea over, I was asked if I could show ?' To that, not knowing the meaning, I answered 'Yes.' A ring was immediately formed, I was stripped to the buff, and a champion of nearly my height, but much stouter, stood forward, and in self-defence I was obliged to commence a boxing-match, which was regulated by all the rules of pugilism, each having his bottle-holder and second. At the end of every third round we each got a glass of 'snick,' and in this manner I was forced to fight for an hour and a half; but being inferior to my antagonist, I received a drubbing that prevented my moving for six days. "The dungeon, which resembled a large wine-vault, is sunk twenty-five to thirty feet underground, and is excavated in a saltpetre rock. In many places the walls drip continuously from the vaults, and in winter the cold and damp are beyond description; nor had the prisoners in general clothing sufficient to prevent the baneful effects on their health, the blanket allowed to each being usually a condemned one from the soldiers' barracks. "In these shocking dungeons the prisoners were locked up from eight o'clock at night till the same hour in the morning, when they were mustered out and permitted to remain in the yard, which is about one hundred and twenty paces in length and twenty in breadth, until noon. They were then again mustered into the subterraneous receptacle, and remained there till two, when they were again let out into the yard until six in the evening." According to an English visitor to Bitche a few years ago the fortress, it may be mentioned, is now in German possession, being within the Alsatian territory ceded at the close of the Franco-German War of 1870-the names, with ships and regiments, of many of the British prisoners are still to be seen, deeply cut or scored on the outer stone walls of the barracks, "more than one name belonging to well-known English, Scottish, or Irish families." Sedan was the second of the prison-depôts in the time of Napoleon for British prisoners; it was used mostly for those sent for penal detention from Arras and Valenciennes, although a good number also came from Verdun and from Givet. If, to us of these days, Sedan is best known as the scene of the overwhelming disaster to the army of Napoleon III., in 1870, the name, in 1814 and for many a year after that, recalled for nine Englishmen out of ten memories hardly less hateful than those of Bitche. The fortress was visited during 1814, on the conclusion of peace, by Lord Blayney, while returning to England after his captivity, the General taking his way home through Belgium to embark at Ostend. "In going through Sedan," says Lord Blayney, "I had the curiosity to inspect the fortress, so celebrated for being the place of punishment of those English prisoners who attempted to make their escape from other depôts. Nothing could be more formidable than the place of confinement for these poor fellows in the citadel, or château, which is situated nearly in the centre of the town. To arrive at this abode of systematic torture you have to pass two very extensive covered ways, the latter of which is very steep and cut through a solid rock. On entering, you perceive a cell allotted to each person, no communication being ever permitted one with another. The doors of the prison are double, and secured with bars in all directions. Should anyone escape out of his cell, the wall to descend in the lower part is about one hundred and sixty feet deep, and having once attained that point, he has to climb over prodigious rocks and walls of immense height, surrounded by sentinels at short and convenient intervals. "For a stranger to look at these precautions he would suppose it next to an impossibility to escape, but such is the powerful incentive of liberty that I have seen and known many common soldiers and sailors who have escaped from these prisons, without even the assistance of money to clear a passage; but almost all of them, after having surmounted these difficulties and obtained the summit of their wishes, unfortunately committed themselves by some act of intemperance or folly." One of these men Lord Blayney mentions as having been visited by him at Verdun. He was a soldier of the 61st, an Irishman from Ulster, who was then confined in the Porte Chaussée prison of Verdun, after having made his escape from Sedan three times within fifteen months. Yet another punishment-depôt for the British prisoners of war in France was at Sarrelouis in Alsace. What life at Sarrelouis was like, and how some, who had experiences of both places, considered its horrors even worse than the horrors of Bitche, is related by Lieutenant James, whose amazing experiences, adventures, escapes, and recaptures, during the ten years that he spent as a prisoner of Napoleon, are related separately in the next chapter. TEN YEARS A CAPTIVE: WHAT A NAVAL OFFICER WENT THROUGH THE IMPRISONMENT AND ATTEMPTED Escapes of IEUTENANT R. B. JAMES, the author of the following narrative, as a midshipman was held a prisoner under Napoleon between the years 1804 and 1814. He recorded his experiences and adventures after his release at the Peace of 1814 in a manuscript volume, to which he added later an account of his further services in the Mediterranean, intending to publish the whole under the style of "The Naval Officer-or the Vicissitudes of a Sea Life, by Lieut. R. B. James, late First of H.M.S. Revenge." Apparently, however, he died before carrying out his intention, in 1830. The manuscript, which is very clearly written and is bound in volume form, fell in some way into the hands of a country bricklayer, from whom last spring it came into the possession of the present writer. In presenting here the account of Lieutenant James's experiences, the old officer's spelling and punctuation, uncouth as they may sometimes look, have been kept to. The narrative is given exactly as originally set forth, nothing being omitted or altered. "It was in the month of August 1804; that the Rambler brig of war—to which I then belonged as midshipman, was on her return to the channel fleet off Brest ;-having been with dispatches to Sir Robert Calders Squadron off Rochfort;--Being close in with the land, near the Isle of Dieu; we discovered a convoy of small vessels going from |