In 1808 Europe was the theatre of considerable wars, there was the continental blockade, the war in Spain and Portugal. The difficulties with Rome obliged Napoleon to raise 270,000 conscripts, torn from their families to lay their bones on foreign battlefields. The dislike to conscription caused many young men to retire into hiding away from their homes, and others to desert after enrolment. These were the object of incessant research by the imperial gendarmerie. Among such was a young fellow of twenty called Claude Béraud, son of well-to-do parents near Le Puy, who had already lost one son at Jena, and another was with the army of occupation of Naples, but had not been heard of for long. His parents furnished Claude with money sewn into a leather belt he was to wear next his skin, and bade him hide till the search was over. One winter night, in 1808, this unfortunate young man came to the inn at Peyrabeille and asked to be taken in. Snow was falling, and a storm raging. He was received, and incautiously told his hosts what he was and that he was well supplied with money. They made up for him a roaring fire, and gave him hot spiced wine as he sat over it. The change from the cold without to the heat within made him drowsy, and as he nodded, Pierre Martin struck the leg of his chair and upset the youth, about whose neck Rochette at once slipped a thong and strangled him. The body was searched, the belt taken off, and the pockets emptied. From the belt 350 francs were taken; from the pockets a peculiarly ornamented knife, which Jean Rochette appropriated, and a watch from which hung a piece of cornelian in the form of a disc. It was by identifying these latter articles twenty-five years later that the parents of Claude first learned his fate. When he was dead, Pierre Martin and the serving-man carried the body to a distance, leaving a little loose silver in the pocket, and threw it into a snow-drift that filled a ditch. Not till late in the spring was the corpse found, and then it was so disfigured by wolves that identification was impossible, and the money in the pocket led the police to suppose that the death was due to accident. In the month of July, 1812, Jean Rochette received news through a wagoner who halted at the inn that a stranger, presumedly a merchant and well-to-do, was on his way thither, and might or might not spend the night at Peyrabeille. He was riding on an apple-grey horse with a long tail, and had holsters to his saddle with pistols in them.