The Story As Told By Smollett Does Not Wholly Agree With The Best
Authenticated Particulars.
The Dick Turpin of eighteenth century
France, Mandrin has engendered almost as many fables as his
English congener.
[See Maignien's Bibliographie des Ecrits
relatifs a Mandrin.] As far as I have been able to discover, the
great freebooter was born at St. Etienne in May 1724. His father
having been killed in a coining affair, Mandrin swore to revenge
him. He deserted from the army accordingly, and got together a
gang of contrebandiers, at the head of which his career in Savoy
and Dauphine almost resembles that of one of the famous guerilla
chieftains described in Hardman's Peninsular Scenes and Sketches.
Captured eventually, owing to the treachery of a comrade, he was
put to death on the wheel at Valence on 26th May 1755. Five
comrades were thrown into jail with him; and one of these
obtained his pardon on condition of acting as Mandrin's
executioner. Alas, poor Joseph!
Three experiences Smollett had at this season which may well fall
to the lot of road-farers in France right down to the present
day. He was poisoned with garlic, surfeited with demi-roasted
small birds, and astonished at the solid fare of the poorest
looking travellers. The summer weather, romantic scenery, and
occasional picnics, which Smollett would have liked to repeat
every summer under the arches of the Pont du Gard - the monument
of antiquity which of all, excepting only the Maison Carree at
Nimes, most excited his enthusiastic admiration, all contributed
to put him into an abnormally cheerful and convalescent
humour.
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