Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/200

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180
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

and had not the slightest notion that he was being tried. Only when placed in the cart did he awake to a consciousness of his fate, and lament that he should see his mother no more. He was heir to a considerable fortune. This evidently relates to Delany, but it is, to say the least, highly embellished. Delany—sometimes called Lainy or Laing, perhaps because he had renounced the first syllable of his name, lest it should be mistaken for the aristocratic particle—was accused of being a spy. So far from not understanding that he was on his trial, he energetically denied the charge, and in confirmation of his denial asserted that he had taken the first opportunity of offering to join the French army. As, moreover, three fellow-countrymen were tried with him, Newton, Roden, and Murdoch, they would manifestly have enlightened him as to his danger, had he been unconscious of it. Other parts of the story may, however, be authentic, and in any case the execution of a lad of seventeen was a barbarity which, except in the sanguinary annals of the Revolution, would bear a special mark of infamy.

Charles Francis Chambly, a native of Louisburg, Canada, was guillotined in the same batch as Ward. Patrick Roden, a deserter from the English army, was executed in the same batch as Newton. Charles Edward Frederick Henry Macdonald (he is styled Count in the pension list, where he figures for 1800 francs), born at Dublin in 1750,