The bishops governed the city and its territory by their viscounts, but the latter often usurped the supreme power, and several times in the eleventh and twelfth centuries besieged the bishops in the town and burnt it. From the middle of the thirteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, it was governed by its own magistrates independent of any other authority, and generally enjoyed tranquillity. By the treaty of Vienna, in 1145, the Duchy of Lorraine being annexed to the crown of France, Verdun and its territory received the same form of government as the rest of the kingdom.

The town is situated nearly in the centre of an oblong valley surrounded on every side by hills, which taking a direction between north west and south west, afford a bed to the Meuse, whose course is here extremely tortuous. The citadel and part of the town stand on the summit and declivity of a rocky eminence on the west bank of the river, and the rest of the town on several islands in it; so that it is divided into the upper and lower town. When France was circumscribed within more narrow bounds, Verdun, as a frontier town, was of considerable importance, but since the fortune of Buonaparte has extended the empire to the banks of the Rhine, and reduced the princes beyond it to a state of vassalage, it is no longer deemed of any consequence; the works are allowed to go to ruin and are dismantled of artillery. The ramparts which surround the town are about three miles in circuit, with regular outworks, and being planted with trees afford a pleasant promenade. The citadel on the summit of a rock was finished under the direction of Marshal Vauban, but is commanded by the neighbouring hills, from one of which the Prussians bombarded it, in 1792, and in a few days obliged it to surrender. The governor put an end to himself, well knowing that the guillotine would otherwise have done so, and his death has afforded a subject for one of the best modern French tragedies.

At the revolution Verdun contained eighteen religious communities, whose revenues amounted to two millions and a half of livres. The whole of the conventional buildings have been either pulled down for the materials, or converted into magazines, hospitals, &c. The episcopal palace, situated on the margin of the rocky elevation before mentioned, is an extensive but plain edifice, now granted to a senator. The cathedral is a very handsome gothic pile, and had formerly four square towers, but two of them have been destroyed by lightning. With respect to commerce, Verdun is celebrated for its dragées, comfits and liqueurs; the former even constituted one of the luxuries of the seraglio of Constantinople, and of the imperial palace of Petersburg. The decrees of Buonaparte, which have raised the price of sugar to six francs the pound, have decreased the manufacture of these objects three-fourths. A few manufactories of coarse felt hats, and some tanneries, are the other trading speculations of the town.

Having now reached the place of my final destination, I shall quit the journal form, and present the reader with such observations as occur to me, without regard to the order of time, The first that naturally presents itself relates to the situation of the prisoners. As the dépôt is solely appropriated to those on parole, each has a passport which permits him to walk or ride in every direction, two leagues from the town, between the opening of the gates at daylight and their shutting at dark. Field officers and naval captains sign a public register once a month; all other commissioned officers every fifth day, and every other prisoner (except by particular indulgence) every day. All general convivial meetings of the prisoners must be sanctioned by the commandant; and as this has never been refused, the anniversary of his Majesty’s birth, and of St. Patrick, have been always celebrated at Verdun, with as much loyalty and devotion as in the capital of the British kingdom.

Sometime after my arrival Monsieur Courcelles was superseded in the command of the dépôt, in consequence of the complaints of the prisoners, particularly the midshipmen, who (without the slightest cause, except his villainous caprice,) he confined in the citadel, where they were subject to every kind of ill treatment and extortion. As a new system commenced with the arrival of the new commandant, my readers will not be displeased at an endeavour to paint the old system, as it was described to me by persons resident in the dépôt since its first establishment.

The first commandant was a General Roussel, who treated the prisoners in the best manner; but in a few months he was replaced by General Wirion, as great a rogue as the revolution has produced. Under him every thing was venal, and the prisoners of all ranks were plundered, both by himself and his underlings, in every possible manner. From those whom he knew possessed fortunes, he extorted immense sums, as the price of the indulgences he granted them, or of refraining from sending them to Bitche, which he had the power to do without assigning any cause; and more than once a number of the most quiet persons in the dépôt have been dragged from their beds and marched off to that infernal cavern, without having the slightest knowledge of the reason; and many of them, after suffering two years of the most complicated misery in its dungeons, when they returned to Verdun were still quite ignorant of the motives of their arrest. One instance will be sufficient to give an idea of General Wirion’s character:––  a number of the English of good fortune frequently invited him to dinner, and allowed him to win their money, as a certain way of keeping on good terms with him; one of these gentlemen however had offended unknowingly, and Wirion destined him to Bitche; but receiving an invitation to dine with him, he accepted it, and appeared to be on the very best terms with his host. He was not a little astonished to find, when the General retired towards the morning, two gend’armes enter, and tell him that he had only till daylight to prepare himself to march for that place. The system of extortion of the lieutenant of gend’armes, who was second in command, and of the non-commissioned officers of that corps, was regularly organized. At this time every prisoner without distinction was obliged to sign twice a day; and by another regulation of the General’s, if they neglected to do so, they were obliged to pay three francs to the gend’arme who went to visit them. It was soon found that this measure brought in but little, as none but persons of fortune could afford to pay a crown a day for the liberty of sleeping in the morning and riding out in the afternoon. Hence the system was changed, and for six or twelve francs a month, a tacit permission was granted to forget these frequent signatures.

The masters of merchantmen, by far the greater number of whom were in a state of the greatest distress, did not escape the grasp of these harpies; by the regulations they were obliged to live ten in a house, to be mutually responsible for each other, body for body, and besides were mustered twice a day. In order to be freed from the effects of these regulations, which deprived them of all comfort, they were forced to pay the gend’armes whatever they could scrape together. Besides this open and general system, the gend’armes had another efficient method of raising contributions, by lotteries for horses, watches, trinkets, &c. that often had no existence; or if they had, it made no difference, the winner being well assured that the consequence of insisting on receiving the object would be a visit to Bitche, as was experienced by a gentleman who won a horse in this manner from the lieutenant of gend’armerie, and did not choose to say, as half a dozen others did, who had won the same animal at different times: “Monsieur, je vous prie de le garder, comme un souvenir de l’amitié!”

During the administration of Berthier, as minister of war, the complaints made by the prisoners of the conduct of Wirion, were not paid the smallest attention to, Wirion being one of his protégés, and not taking an active part in forwarding these complaints. Sir T. Lavie, the senior naval officer, was dragged out of his bed, and hurried off to the fortress of Montmedy, where he was kept close confined, as a state prisoner, for some months, and not allowed the use of paper, pen or ink. On General Clerke’s being appointed to the head of the war department, the prisoners renewed their complaints against Wirion, who was now called on to explain his conduct; for which purpose he went from the dépôt to Paris, but his explanation not exculpating him, it is supposed that a public inquiry was ordered, to avoid which he became his own executioner by blowing his brains out in the Bois de Boulogne; while the lieutenant of gend’armerie, who so well seconded him in his system of extortion, was reduced to the ranks.

Wirion was succeeded in the command of the depot by Monsieur Courcelles, a colonel, who before held the situation of commandant de place; as great a villain as Wirion, but taught by his example to avoid the rock on which he split. The open system of extortion now ceased, and be contented himself with what could be picked up by underhanded means. The first of which was in the monthly payment of the prisoners, in which an abuse had existed from the commencement of the dépôt, without having been noticed, or at least complained of. Instead of paying in francs, the prisoners were paid in livres tournois, by which the persons who paid the money put one and a quarter, or more, per cent, into their own pocket; eighty francs being equal to eighty-one livres; which amounted to above fifteen louis a month. Besides the old perquisite, which Courcelles continued, he struck out a new source of extortion, which fell almost entirely on the midshipmen. On pretence of some desertions among this class, he caused the whole of them to be arrested and closely confined in an old convent of the citadel; here they were obliged to pay thirty sous a month each, for the lights kept burning by their guards, besides being charged most enormously for every dilapidation: and the whole produce of both these taxes went into the pocket of Courcelles and his affidés; for the lights were allowed by the government, and the dilapidations were never made good. Upon a moderate average, these two objects produced twenty louis a month. But the third and grand speculation was the wine. Courcelles having a vineyard near Verdun which produced a vin de pays, worth about six sous the bottle, he obliged the persons confined in the citadel to purchase the wine at fifteen sous, from his natural son, whom he had appointed turnkey at one of the dungeons. From an accurate calculation, the profits arising from this monopoly amounted to forty-five louis a month, making in the whole eighty louis. But independent of these extortions, the midshipmen were treated with the most brutal inhumanity, and on the slightest murmur were thrown into a dungeon called the “Tour d’Angoulême,” being a round tower, with but two apartments, in which the Duc d’Angoulême had been confined.

At length the midshipmen seeing no prospect of any remission of their sufferings, detailed them in a letter to the minister of war, which produced an inquiry into the conduct of Courcelles, and though he had been too cautious to allow any proof of his sharing in the plunder to be brought home to him, and threw the whole burthen on the shoulders of the lieutenant of gend’armerie, his conduct was evidently disapproved of by his being immediately removed, both from the command of the depot, and from the situation of commandant de place. With respect to his catspaw, the lieutenant of gend’armerie, he followed Wirion’s example, giving himself a quietus with a pistol on the glacis.

The prisoners who formed the dépôt were, at the commencement, distinguished into two classes, viz. détenus or hostages and prisoners of war. Among the former were many respectable families, who were travelling peaceably on the supposed sacredness of the laws of nations, when they were suddenly arrested and rigorously confined; but there were also some among this class, who having given the King’s-Bench the slip, came to the continent to live by their wits, in which many of them admirably succeeded. Among the lower class of détenus were also many tradesmen, who fled from their country to avoid the punishment due to their seditious principles, and several of them, particularly tailors, bootmakers and traiteurs, have succeeded better at Verdun than they would probably have done at home, being employed by most of their countrymen. The traiteurs in particular, during the first years of the dépôt, made fortunes by the epicurism of the détenus, In their shops were to be found the most delicate and expensive viands from the most distant provinces of the empire: the celebrated pâtés de foie gras; the poularde aux trufles of Paris; the oysters of Concale; the turbot and cod of the North Sea, and the tunny-fish of the Mediterranean. The prices of these delicacies were enormous, a poularde costing two louis, and turbot and cod four francs the pound; but were never considered, for as Verdun was then full of accommodating Jews, who lent money on personal security at a hundred per cent. interest, it was by no means difficult to raise the wind; and hence, in many instances, there was but little difference in the stile of living of the détenus of the first fortune, the midshipman of the navy, and the bankrupt blacklegs.

At this period Verdun had a Pharo bank and a Rouge et Noir table, to which every description of persons were admitted, where perfect equality reigned, and where our countrymen of the first rank might be seen seated alongside a ragged Jew, a mud covered peasant, or a fille publique. This bank was a ray from the grand gambling luminary of Paris, which I have already noticed; and here a great number of young men were completely ruined, it being supposed that while it continued, £50,000 were lost by the prisoners every year. It was at last shut up, in consequence of general regulations limiting the number of the licenced gambling houses. We need scarce remark, that a nation must be very far gone in corruption, whose government openly sanctions one of the most destructive of vices, in order to increase its revenue. A recent French writer, in describing the gambling societies of Paris, says, “that the intention of government, in authorizing public gaming houses, is to hinder the national gamblers from transporting themselves and money to foreign countries, as well as to attract foreign gamblers into their own.” The same reasons may, with equal justice, be adduced in favour of licensing brothels, and houses to receive stolen goods, from both of which considerable revenues might be raised.

It is not surprising that amongst the variety of characters brought into contact at Verdun, there should be frequent disputes, and that many duels should be the consequence, by which several young men have lost their lives, who, had they been spared, might have been ornaments to their professions.