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Updated: July 3, 2025
Arriving before any other messenger, he pressed through the open door into the dining-hall and called breathlessly to the men, who were holding a council over their wine: "The Spaniards are here!" The gentlemen hastily rose from their seats. One wanted to rush to the citadel, another to the town-hall and, in the excitement of the moment, no sensible reflection was made.
A grand fancy fair was to be held in the town-hall for the benefit of the infirmary, and we had all promised to work for it; so that nobody was offended when Miss Grantley made known that she intended to give a half-holiday every day for a week, that we seniors might be her guests from two o'clock to eight, and all work together in the garden parlour, or out in the orchard beneath the apple-trees.
On the evening of the day in which they took the town, the royalist peasants went in procession, and with many cheers hewed it to the ground; it was then treated with every possible contumely it was chopped, and hacked, and barked; it was kicked, and cuffed, and spat upon; the branches were cut off, and on the bare top was placed a large tattered cap of liberty; the Vendean marksmen then turned out, and fired at the cap till it was cut to pieces; after that, all the papers and books, which had belonged to the municipality, every document which could be found in the Town-hall, were brought into the square, and piled around the roots of the tree; and then the whole was set on fire and tree, papers, and cap of liberty, were consumed together.
And now with difficulty the soldiers forced a way through the throng for the approaching officer of justice; the great officiating dignitary of the town, who was to preside over the ceremony. He neared the town-hall, to order the unlocking of the prison-door, when the wretched witchfinder again sprang forward, crying, "Mercy! mercy! she is innocent. Hear me, noble Ober-Amtmann!"
It appears that on the very day when he made his obscure entry into the little town of M. sur M., just at nightfall, on a December evening, knapsack on back and thorn club in hand, a large fire had broken out in the town-hall.
A regiment or two and a train of eighty or a hundred waggons coming through the city-gate preceded by the Prince and his body-guard of 300, a tramp of halberdmen up the great staircase of the town-hall, a jingle of spurs in the assembly-room, and the whole board of magistrates were summoned into the presence of the Stadholder.
From all the streets there poured throngs of armed men toward the town-hall, where the wise magistrates were consulting on the possibility of resistance, or toward the commander of Berlin, General Rochow, who had the streets patrolled, and called upon the citizens, by beat of drum, to assemble with arms, and assist in the defence of the town. "The Russian is at the gates!"
Rampart Row the avenues leading into a large open space, in which stand the cathedral, the town-hall, the mint, a cavalry barrack, &c. and the immediate environs, are composed of lofty, well-constructed houses, some standing a little apart in courtyards, and others with a narrow platform in front, ascended by steps, and roofed by the story above.
There, too, is the fine old double flight of steps leading up to the principal entrance on the first floor, as in the town-hall at Heilbronn a feature by no means Italian; and there, about midway up the shaft of the campanile, is the great, gaudy, well-remembered fresco, better meant than painted, wherein Titian, some twelve feet in height, robed and bearded, stands out against an ultramarine background, looking very like the portrait of a caravan giant at a fair....
At the proper stations Duncan blew a rousing pibroch, after which the bellman, who, for the dignity of his calling, insisted on a prelude of three strokes of his clapper, proclaimed aloud that Malcolm, marquis of Lossie, desired the presence of each and every of his tenants in the royal burgh of Portlossie, Newton and Seaton, in the town-hall of the same, at seven of the clock upon the evening next following.
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