3810.) 
ducting the business of the day, the go- 
vernor’s ears were assailed by a horrid. 
human shriek, procecding from an in- 
closed area nnder a window of the coun-. 
cil-chamber. Springing  instanctively 
from his seat to the window, he beheld a 
miserable wretch fast bound to a post, 
fixed upright in the ground, with one leg 
strained violently back towards the thigh, 
by means ofa sions iren-hoop, inclosing 
both the les and the thigh at some dis- 
tance, above and below the knee, With- 
in this hoop, along the front of the leg, 
was an iron wedge driven in by an exe- 
cutioner, armed with a sledge hammer. 
Near the sufferer sat at a small table, a 
person habited like a judge, or magistrate, 
and asecretary, or clerk, with paper be- 
fore him, to mark down the declarations 
to be extorted from the criminal in 
agony. Yiiled with borror at this sight, 
and regardless alike of the assembly 
around him, and of the consequences of 
his act, with respect to himself, the 
General, throwing open the aoe or- 
dered a vgatiie in aitendance to rush 
forward, O prevent a repetition of the 
stroke on the iron wedve, and to release 
the wretch from his torture. While this 
was going forward, the members of the 
council, no strangers to his dispositions, 
had « arrounded the governor at the win- 
dow, and the attorney-general of the 
colony respectfully, but earnestly, remon- 
strated against this interruption of the 
course of justice, styling it an infraction 
of their capi itulation, -which in every 
other point and title, he acknowledged, 
had-been most religiously fulfilled by the 
governor, whose conduct in his office 
had, he added, given universal satisfac- 
tion. 
To these representations, General M. 
answered, that he had always been, and 
always would be, most solicitous to merit 
the good opinion of the colony, by a 
conscientious discharge of his duties ; 
but that neither by his natural feelings, 
nor by his education as a Briton, could 
he be reconciled to the practice of tor- 
ture. He concluded by sclemaly de- 
claring, that whether torture were, or 
were not, authorised by the French laws, 
a point he did not presume to determine, 
such a practice, where he commanded, 
he never would endure, and that they 
would find his conduct, on that occasion, 
if an infraction of the capitulation, the. 
only infraction on which they would ever 
have it in their power to complain. 
Ajl the members ef the council dined 
that day with the governor; and although 
Memoirs of the late General Melville. 
45 
the object of his clemency was reported 
to have been singularly undeserving, 
were secretly well pleased with the oc- 
currence, and the only effect produced 
by it on the minds of the inhabitants at 
large, of Guadaloupe, and the other 
French islands, was to increase the po. 
pularity of their British commander, who, 
while he remained in the West Indies, 
never heard that recourse was had to 
torture, in judicial proceedings, either in 
Guadaloupe, after its restoration 10 
France, or in any other French colony. 
Having finally closed his relations with 
the West Indies, as a governor and com- 
mander in chief of the forces, with entire 
satisfaction to all concerned at home and 
abroad, as well as to his own mind, (for 
in the seven years during which fe dis- 
charged all the duties of Chancellor in his 
government, not one appeal from his 
decisions was bi rought home to the King 
in council,) General M. seized the earliz 
est Opportunity of turning lis attention 
to what had always been his favourite 
study——mulitary history and antiquities, 
He had already visited Paris, Spa, &c. 
but the years 1774, 1775 Pind 1776, he 
devoted to a tour through. rance, 
Switzerland, Italy, Germany, the Low 
Countries, eo during Which, besides the 
objects of the fine arts, in which he pos-= 
sessed a very delicate taste, with great 
sensibility of their beauties and detects, 
he examined the scenes of the most me- 
morabie battles, sieges, and other mills 
tary exploits, recorded in antient or mo- 
dern history, trom ‘the Portus itius of 
Cesar, on the margin of the English 
Channel, to the Cann of Polybius; on 
the remote shores of the Adriatic; and 
from the fields of pie to those of 
Detungen and Blenheim. With Polybius 
and Cassar in his hand, anc 1 referring to 
the most authentic narrations of modern 
warfare, he traced upon the ground the 
positions‘and operations of the most dis- 
tinguished Commanders of various pe- 
riods, noting where their judgment, skill, 
and presence of mind, were the most con- 
spicuots, and treasuring up, for future use 
the evidences of the mistakes and errorss 
from which the most eminent were not - 
exempted. Relying on the authority of 
Polybius, and guided by da raison de- 
guerre, or common sense, applied to war, 
fe traced the route to Tealy parsued by 
Annibal, from the point where probably 
he crassed the Rhone in the neighbour- 
hood of Rtequemaure, up the left ‘bank of 
that river, nearly to Vienne, across Dau. 
phiné, to the entrance of the mountains __ 
at 
