This crushed out of her any soft and feminine feelings she might have possessed, and she vowed vengeance on the hated Republicans. She obtained a musket, taught herself how to use it, learned some elementary drill, and then, donning man’s attire, joined the royalists. Among them she was known by the name of Langevin, and where the fight was fiercest, there she would be, and none suspected that the daring trooper was a woman. On horseback, and on foot, she fought in above two hundred battles and skirmishes, frequently wounded, but seldom much hurt. Such was the terror with which she inspired the Bonapartists, that, when the rebellion was put down, Napoleon specially exempted Langevin from pardon, and she languished in prison until the Restoration. She died in 1828. THE ‘TIMES’ AND ITS FOUNDER. A discursive book anent the eighteenth century, as this is, would be incomplete without a mention of one of the greatest powers which it produced. This marvellous newspaper, whose utterances, at one time, exercised a sensible influence over the whole of the civilised world, and which, even now, is the most potent of all the English press, was founded by Mr. John Walter, on January 1, 1788. This gentleman was born either in 1738 or 1739, and his father followed the business of a ‘coal buyer,’ which meant that he bought coals at the pit’s mouth, and then shipped them to any desired port, or market. In those days almost all coals came, by sea, from Newcastle, and its district, because of the facility of carriage; the great inland beds being practically unworked, and in many cases utterly unknown: it being reserved for the giant age of steam to develop their marvellous resources. His father died in 1755, John Walter then being seventeen and, boy though he was, he at once succeeded to his father’s business. In it he was diligent and throve well, and he so won the confidence and respect of his brother ‘coal buyers’ that when a larger Coal Exchange was found necessary, in order to accommodate, and keep pace with its increasing business, the whole of the arrangements, plans, and directions were left in his hands. When the building was completed, he was rewarded by his brethren in trade with the position of manager, and afterwards he became Chairman to the Body of Coal Buyers. He married, and, in 1771, things had gone so prosperously with him that he bought a house with some ground at Battersea Rise, and here he lived, and reared his family of six children, until his bankruptcy, when it was sold. He also took unto himself partners, and was the head of the firm of Walter, Bradley, and Sage. For some time all went well, but competition arose, and the old-fashioned way of doing business could not hold its own against the keenness, and cutting, of the new style. Let us hear him tell his own story.[39]