HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
431 
In this manner they toiled up the hill, the greater part 
of them carrying loads on their heads, and many of them 
being mothers had an infant at their backs, or led one or 
two of their children by the hand. When the troops, who 
needlessly guarded the wearied and sorrowing prisoners, had 
conducted them to the place appointed for their temporary 
accommodation, they were delivered to the officers of govern¬ 
ment, in whose charge they remained until publicly sold into 
slavery, and retained in the establishment of their masters 
at the capital, or sent to different parts of the country. 
The savage exultation which the return of successful troops 
from the south had produced, however, was soon followed 
by tidings of the disasters attending the troops which had 
been sent to Ambongo, where disease had committed 
dreadful ravages, and famine threatened their entire destruc¬ 
tion. Additional idols were brought from the villages 
deemed sacred, in which they were kept, to the capital, and 
costly offerings were publicly made to them by the queen, 
with a view of averting from the troops the threatened 
calamities, and securing the aid of the idols in defeating the 
enemies of her person and government. 
The report which had reached the capital in the middle 
of the year, respecting an hostile expedition from France, 
was shortly afterwards found to be correct. Six French 
ships, under the command of Commodore Gourbeyre, 
arrived in the roads of Tamatave, in the middle of October. 
They found the place comparatively unprotected, and met 
with but a feeble resistance. Their arrival appears to have 
taken Prince Corroller, the officer in command of the sta¬ 
tion, by surprise; and when, on the 14th of October, the 
morning after their arrival, the vessels opened their fire on 
the battery, in a little more than a quarter of an hour the 
magazine was blown up, many of the houses were destroyed, 
