to a flock of sheep whose fold was occasionally changed in order that the whole field, that is to say France, might be fertilised. Verdun, however, from its inland position, was the town most favoured in this respect. The hundred wealthy hostages indulged in horse-racing, cock-fighting, and amateur theatricals, in which last a Mr. Concanon was the most active, until he obtained permission to live at Vienna. The divorced wife of Lord Cadogan gave entertainments, and there were marriages in an unconsecrated building, the validity of which was disputed by reversioners to property. Some of the hostages got into prison for debt.
Captain Myles Byrne, an Irish refugee in the French service, relates that his Irish legionaries, marching to Boulogne in 1806, should have halted for a night at Verdun, but the commandant of the garrison, apprehensive of a collision, lodged them outside the town, through which they passed next morning before it was light enough for their green flag, inscribed "The Independence of Ireland," to be seen. When, however, the band struck up "Patrick's Day in the Morning," many windows were opened and gentlemen in their night-shirts peeped out, bewildered at hearing a Hibernian air. "The prisoners," Byrne says, "could ramble freely all day, but had to answer the roll-call at sunset." When his regiment stopped a night at Arras, the commandant deemed it prudent to make the English
