But though there was a light side, out of which the humorists of the period made a market, the Napoleonic scare was no laughing matter for the poor people, who had nothing to gain and everything to lose, by even the possibility of the thing. We, who, in these peaceful times, are apt to swagger about Britannia ruling the waves, cannot perhaps realize what it meant to have this great military genius sitting down with his legions of three hundred thousand opposite our shores, keenly watching for and calculating our weakest point of defence! What should we think if, in every cottage home in this district, it was necessary, on going to bed at night, to be prepared for a sudden alarm and departure from all that was dear to us in old associations; if our little children, before retiring to rest at night, took a last look in fear and trembling to the hills above Royston Heath, where the beacon was ready to flash out the portentious news to all the country round, and asked "is it alight?"--if each little one had to be taught as regularly as, if not more regularly than, saying its prayers, to pack up its little bundle of clothes in readiness for the dread news that Boney had indeed come! Yet all this is only what really happened to our great-grandfathers in that terrible time of 1803! It may be of interest to glance at the means taken for repelling the invader should he make his appearance. This was no mere machinery of conscription, such as under other circumstances might have been necessary, for a spirit of intense patriotism was suddenly aroused, fanned into flame by stirring ballads, such as the following, to the tune of "Hearts of Oak"---- Shall French men rule o'er us? King Edward said No! And No said King Harry, and Queen Bess she said No! And No said old England--and No she says still! They will never rule o'er Us--let them try if they will! In all parts of the country, where Volunteers and Loyal Associations had not already been formed, these sprung up with one common purpose so finely expressed by Wordsworth-- No parleying now! in Britain is one breath, We all are with you now from shore to shore. Ye men of Kent, 'tis Victory or death! Even little boys in the streets, as Cruikshank has told us, formed regiments, with their drums and colours "presented by their mammas and sisters," and made gun stocks with polished broom-sticks for barrels! It is a singular circumstance and comment upon the much smaller extent to which our food supply depended upon foreign countries then than now, that, in the midst of all this perturbation and impending evil, wheat was selling in Royston market as low as 32s. per load!