events which took place about this time, I can only guarantee the facts
and not the dates: I relate everything as it happened; but the day on
which it happened may sometimes have escaped my memory, for it is easier
to recollect a murder to which one has been an eye-witness, than to
recall the exact date on which it happened.

The garrison of Nimes was composed of one battalion of the 13th Regiment
of the line, and another battalion of the 79th Regiment, which not being
up to its full war-strength had been sent to Nimes to complete its
numbers by enlistment. But after the battle of Waterloo the citizens had
tried to induce the soldiers to desert, so that of the two battalions,
even counting the officers, only about two hundred men remained.

When the news of the proclamation of Napoleon II reached Nimes,
Brigadier-General Malmont, commandant of the department, had him
proclaimed in the city without any disturbance being caused thereby. It
was not until some days later that a report began to be circulated that a
royal army was gathering at Beaucaire, and that the populace would take
advantage of its arrival to indulge in excesses. In the face of this
two-fold danger, General Malmont had ordered the regular troops, and a
part of the National Guard of the Hundred Days, to be drawn up under arms
in the rear of the barracks upon an eminence on which he had mounted five
pieces of ordnance. This disposition was maintained for two days and a
night, but as the populace remained quiet, the troops returned to the
barracks and the Guards to their homes.

But on Monday a concourse of people, who had heard that the army from
Beaucaire would arrive the next day, made a hostile demonstration before
the barracks, demanding with shouts and threats that the five cannons
should be handed over to them. The general and the officers who were