decided that they were soldiers, and, willing or unwilling, they were transported to the isles of Oleron or Ré, where officers, selected from amongst the most brutal in the army, treated them like negroes.[1] The atrocity, of this measure was the cause that many young men, who would not submit to such treatment, offered themselves to the police as auxiliaries: Coco-Lacour was one of the first to try this path of safety, the only one open to him. At first, some difficulties were raised against his admission; but at length, persuaded that a man who had dwelt amongst robbers from his earliest infancy would be an admirable acquisition, the préfet consented to enrol him amongst the secret agents. Lacour made a formal engagement to become an honest man, but could he keep such an undertaking? He was without pay, and when the appetite is keen, the stomach sometimes prevails over the conscience.
To be a spy without pay, what a situation! it is to be a spy and thief at the same time; and thus, the evidence of the necessity established against the secret agents a prejudice which always told against them, whether innocent or guilty. If a brigand, to be revenged upon them, should determine to inculpate them as his accom-
- ↑ The colonial battalions, at a period when France had no colonies, were destined to be the scum of our land force. The officers were almost all swindlers and cheats, dishonoured from misconduct, and rather intended to carry a constable's staff than a soldier's sword. When imperial despotism existed in all its vigour, the colonial battalions recruited amongst a crowd of respectable citizens, military or otherwise, whom Fouché, Rovigo, Clarke, &c. immolated to their caprices, or those of the master whose slaves they were. Generals, colonels, adjutant-commanders, magistrates, and priests, were used as common soldiers in the isles of Ré and Oleron. The police had united in this exile royalists and patriots with grey hairs, who were compelled to submit to the same discipline as the incorrigible robbers. The Commandant Latapie made them march side by side without distinction.
