The Sun.
London, England, 1846-04-09 00:00:00

Ny APRIL 9, 1846. PRICE SD.

the particular thanks of Lord Beresford in his general
orders upon that occasion.
He was then engaged in the battle of Orthes, on the
27th of February, for which he received the medal of
distinction (being the ninth conferred upon him in the
course of this war), and in the subsequent affairs and
operations, concluding with the battle of Toulouse, on
the 10th of April, which was followed by the armistice
and peace of 1814. He was again pointedly thanked
for his eminent services in Lord Beresford's general
orders, at the close of this campaign.
During the whole Peninsular war Sir H. Hardinge
never suffered himself to be absent from his duty by
sickness, leave of absence, or any other cause, except-
ing the very short periods (in neither case sufficient for
that purpose) which he was compelled to devote to tilt
cure of his wounds received at Vimeiro and Vittoria.
After this campaign his Sovereign was graciously
pleased to mark his sense of the signal services he had
performed, by conferring upon him a company in the
anrOrdert,
Bonaparteto otfheth e
Congressßath.
In this year Sir Henry Hardinge accompanied his
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Grenadier Regiment of Guards, and creating him a
returnedoffrVomi.
Elba, and the war broke out anew, the Duke of Wel-
lington immediately placed him at the head-quarters of
the Prussian army, under Marshal Blucher, with the
rank of brigadier-general, as a military ambassador and I
a confidential officer.
This was an employment requiring not only firmness
and military talent, but great discretion, judgment,
and conciliation. His Grace had very rightly estimated
his officer, when he thought him fit for this important
mission, and the result fully justified his choice.
Continuing with the Prussian army, he was in the
obstinate and sanguinary battle of Ligny, on the 16th
June, (which was followed by that of Waterloo on the
18th), and after having given proofs of great military
talent throughout the day, in the suggestion of several
movements which tended much to retard the success of
the enemy, his left band was shattered by a cannon
ball at Marshal Blucher's side, whose unaffected grief
for the misfortune was the best proof of the high opinion
in which he held this gallant Englishman.
Sir Henry tied his handkerchief round the stump, and
remained on horseback till the bat le was over. His
conduct upon this occasion had been so meritorious, and
Marshal Blucher's report of the great service he had in-
dividually rendered so satisfactory, that the Duke of
Wellington devoted a separate Gazette (of the 30th of
June, 1915), to record his approbation of his behaviour,
and his regard for his wound.
He suffered this wound to detain him from his duty
as little as he had done his previous one, although
it occasioned the amputation of his hand, and from
some attendant circumstaaces become one of peculiar
torture and distress, for in one month from the time
he received it, he rejoined Marshal Blucher, at
Paris. He continued his duties at the Prusian
head-quarters during the whole time of the occu-
pation of France by the Allies, and the two following
facts will suffice to show how high his conduct had
placed him in the opinion both of the Monarch, at the
head-quarters of whose army he had been serving at
such a difficult and delicate crisis, and of that consum-
mate captain who commanded the allied armies. At the
Prussian review he was decorated by the King himsel
with the orders of Merit and of the Red Eagle, and the
Duke of Wellington personally presented him with the
sword which he wore, as a mark of his regard.
The long and brilliant series of services, hastily re
corded in the foregoing memoir, will speak for them
selves, and can require no comment.
B. D'URBAN, Major-General.
Hythe, Feb. 9, 1820.

own
number of persons arrested and victims of their own
misdeeds; and, on the other hand, there are duties un-
posed on the Government which it ‘vill not fail to ac-
complish.

EXTRAORDINARY TRIAL

Another band of the Spauish brigand; called Tea-
boucayers, chiefly, if not entirely, composed of men who
served in the army of Don Carlos, and took refuge in
France on the final discomfiture of that Prince, were
brought, on the 19th ultimo, before the Court of Assizes
for the Pyrime?s Orientales, upon an indictment, of
which we shall give an epitome. The number included
in it is 22, of whom 17 (in custody) were arraigned at
the bar ; the five others, including a woman named Ca-
therine Gatel, or Lacoste, having evaded capture. The
prosecution was conducted by M. Renard, Procureur-
General of the Cour Royale of Montpellier, assisted by
M. Aragon, the Procureur du Roi. The prisoners were
defended by four counsel. The indictment stated that,
on February 27, 1845, at tea o'clock in the evening, the
diligence going from Girona to Barcelona, was stopped
at a place called Lo Sura de la Palls, near the vilage
of La Tordere. The traces were cut, the doors of
the coach violently opened, and all the passengers
ordered, on pain of instant death, to alight, and lay
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every one, with the most horrible threats, to cast upon
it whatever money, jewels, and other valuables they had
about them, and which might have escaped discovery.
At the same time the diligence was completely plundered.
This, however, was but a prelude to future outrages.
Three of the passengers, M. Balbier, M. Roger, of
Figuieras, and M. Massot, Darams, whose passports
indicated them to be of great consideration, were seized
and bound to be carried off for the sake ef their ransom.
The mother of M. Massot, who was travelling with
him, cast herself at the feet of the bandits, and
entreated them for mercy to her son. But they, repelled
her coarsely, saying that if she did not cease to annoy
them with her cries she should see her son stabbed to
death before her eyes. The sound of a shrill whistle was
then heard, upon which the brigands gathered up their
booty, cut the straps of the pantaloons of their three cap-
tives, in order that they might be able to move more freely,
and led them away across the mountains, recom-
mending those left not to report what had oc-
curred to them, or they would repent it. On May
3, M. Massot wrote a letter to his mother, desiring
her to send him 800 quadruples (rather more than
60,000 francs) for his ransom, saying, " I am worn out
by misery. The cold distresses me, and these men tor-
ment me. A fever is killing me, and yet lam obliged
to march day and night, with pain and grief, through
the snow. All I know is that I am traversing moun-
tains. Embrace my brothers in the name of God, and
beg them not to fall into despair from my death, for I
am already resigned to it." Balbier, who was of an
advanced age, could not long resist his great sufferings,
and in a very few days, finding himself sinking and
unable to write, dictated his last will to Roger, which,
when finished, the brigands took into their hands,
judging they might derive some advantage from its
possession. The unhappy man was left alone in his
agonies on [the snow, and, with a refinement of bar-
barity, the savages took from his shoulders the cloak
he needed only for a few moments more. Three days
after that the Spanish armed force came up with
the band, and an engagement ensued in which two
of the soldiers were killed, and several of the brigands
wounded. Some days after the attack on the
diligence, Mademoiselle Massot, received a letter by the
Girona mail, signed with the name of Jacques Toquabus,
telling her that if she did not send the 800 quadruples
to a place indicated, she should receive her son's ears ;
and if that did not reduce her to compliance, they
would send her his eyes; and if those did not succeed,
she would, at last, have his mutilated head, at the same
time increasing their demand. On the 25th of March,
the brigands and their two prisoners, when in a house
called Perrasole de Perrasole, near Tazadell, were at-
tacked by some armed police, and a conflict ensued, in
which two of the gendarmes were killed, and M. Roger,
received a ball in the back of the neck, which laid him
dead instantaneously. The band then divided into two
parties—five of them going to a place called Matters,
and eight with M. Massot, their sole remaining captive,
n search of the grotto of Passaguada, where they might
conceal and secure him. After wandering for several
days, lost in fogs, they reached and crossed the Mouga,
a river which divides the two kingdom; and finding
the cave, were supplied two days with food by two
peasants of the country, who where included in the in-
dictment as accomplices. Hence four of the eight bandits
went to Las Salines to receive the one thousand quad-
ruples demanded of Madame Massot, for the release of
her son, taking up their abode at the inn of one of their
associates, Barot del Battle, but one of the four, named
Pijade, taking some offence, deserted the rest, returned
to his master, and became the principal means of dis-
covering and arresting the whole band of these brutal
murderers. In consequence of the measures taken by
his information, all the brigands named in the indict-
ment were pursued, found, and arrested. In the end, on
reachinr, the cave or grotto of Passaguada, was dis-
covereethe lifeless body of Dr. Massot, with the ears
cut off, the throat divided, and eleven poignard wounds
in the region of the heart. In the loft of a farm called
Del Aloy, was afterwards found, wrapt in paper, a pair
of human ears, with some of the hair of the head still
sticking to them by the clotted blood. These were after-
wards proved to be the ears of the unfortunate Massot,
which the eight brigands, who had excised, them
carelessly left there, little thinking how clear a proof
it would be of their having been the perpetrators of
this act of cruelty. As an evidence of their insensibility
to all feeling of pity, when the cars were exhibited to
them on their being examined before the magistrate they
pretended not to know what they were, calling them,
with the ,most audacious levity, dried mushrooms. It
is also stated that after the death of their two captives,
M. Balbier and M. Roger, the bandits sent letters to their
families, stipulating for large sums for their ransom,
which was to be sent to certain spots indicated, but
which, if they had been paid, would have been in pure
loss, for those sought to be redeemed were no longer in
existence. The above are the material facts disclosed
by the accomplice Pujade, and which were confirmed by
the evidence that was produced. In support of the
prosecution, no fewer than 114 witnesses were sum-
moned, all of whom attended the trial except two or
three. They consisted of the other passengers in the
diligence with the three unfortunate victims, the con-
ducteur of the diligence, farmers, and other persons
in Spain and France who had been forced by the
brigands to afford them shelter and concealment,
the Esconados, or armed police of Spain, with
whom they had the encounter, and the gendarmes in
France engaged in their capture. Their united evi-
dence, which ran to the length of eight days, is too
voluminous for us to give even any general epitome of
it, nor would it be of any great interest, inasmuch as it
only exhibited in minute detail the circumstances upon
which the indictment was founded, and which recapitu-
lates all the most prominent, all the essential facts and
circumstances. Pujade, the associate of the gang, ad-
mitted to give evidence, was a Spauish refugee Carlist,
who for two years was in the domestic service of M.
Pons, a man of independent property, living at Passa,
(Pyr6nes Orientales), but in February, 1545, was se-
duced away by three men, one of whom M. Pons recog-
nised among the prisoners, under the pretence of going
to see their relations in Spain. He went on leave of ab-
sence for a fortnight, but did not return till towards the
end of April, when M. Pons declined taking him back.
Another of the prisoners had also been in service with
another family in France, but left it under the same
pretext. In the course of the evidence it appeared
that the main object of the band in attaching
the diligence was a knowledge they had obtained
by some means that there was a considerable sum of
money to be conveyed by it. This they searched for,
and not finding it, and being unable to learn from the
conductor or from any of the passengers whore it wns
• sncealed, they became the more violent and brutal. 11
fact, as stated by the conductor, this money was, on the
coach being stopped, thrown by him at the bottom of the
coupe, where they never thought of looking for it, and
where it remained safe until after they were gone. The
most interesting, but at the same time, the most painful
part of the proceedings, was the examination of the
bereaved mother, Madame Massot. When called the
first time to appear in court, she was too ill to come
forward, and the President postponed her interrogation
till the following day, contenting himself with reading
her previous depositions, which gave a most interesting
but afflicting statement of the manner in which, in
spite of all her entreaties, prayers, and promises,
her son was torn from har arms by main force,
when all threats of wrong and insulting violence to
herself were insufficient to induce her to relinquish her
grasp upon her child. On the following day she ap-
peared in court, clothed in deep mourning, and so over-
whelmed in grief that she could scarcely be led to the
place from which she was to give her testimony. The
President addressed her in the kindest tones, remind-
ing her that, however cruel the task, it was her duty if
possible to rouse herself and enlighten justice. lie then
desired her to look at the prisoners, and say if she re-
cognised an) of them. With terror in her countenance
she turned her eyes towards them, and, pointing to one
of them named Jean Simon, exclaimed in tones of agony
—" Oh ! that is he who tore my son away from me,
and with him tore away my own life. lie it was who
rejected all my prayers. Yes ! yes ! Indeed it was ho
who forced him from my arms. Murderer ! murderer !"
Simon, who on the first entrance of Madame Massot
had hung down his head, and had ever since
cre-
mained immovable, now resumed all his audacity, and
addressed the most grossly insulting apostrophes to her.
and
ordered President spoke to him in strong terms,
ordered the two gens'darmes between
whom
placed to compel him to sit down and
silent. Mademoiselle M h
assot, a vi
againer , h e wasbe
t h ssur-
veyed
Sagalls, as the man who "
vdneyegry the prisoners,recoveredhearnd selfpointed - commandrig in
namedar
and
examined the faces of the prisoners. lighted the h u
hers. Simon upon this asserted
had l out atctmoeltdor,
notch
re
cognise any of the others.
that he saw there was aconspiracy against him, and that
'
if 50 such witnesses ware brought against him, they
would
all recognise him,
adding, ,1 shall be condemned