Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/332

 290 OHIG1N OF THE WAR OF 1853 chap, deliberation, that many of the poor fellows put L_ to death were allowed to dispose of their little treasures before they died. Thus, one man, when told that he must die, entreated tire officer in command to be allowed to send to his mother the fifteen francs which he carried in his pocket. The officer, consenting, took down the address of the man's mother, received from him the fifteen francs, and then killed him. Many times over the like of this was done. Mmieof Great numbers of prisoners were, brought into some of the the Prefecture of Police, but it appears to have prisoners at. . . i r thePrefec- been thought inconvenient to allow the sound ot ture. ° the discharge of musketry to be heard coming from the precincts of the building. For that reason, as it would seem, another mode of quiet- ing men was adopted. It is hard to have to believe such things, but according to the state- ment of a former member of the Legislative Assembly, who declares that he saw them with his own eyes, each of the prisoners destined to undergo this fate was driven, with his hands tied behind him, into one of the courts of the Pre- fecture, and then one of Maupas's police-officers came and knocked him on the head with a loaded club, and felled him — felled him in the way that is used by a man when he has to slaughter a bullock.* ' Legislative,' as stated in the text, but— of the Constituent Assembly, is one of those who states that he was an eyewitness of these deeds, having seen them from the window of his cell. He says, 'Souvent quand la porte (Stait referme'e les sergens da
 * M. Xavier Durrieu, formerly a member — not of tho