During the Revolutionary War with France, Edinburgh Castle again received French prisoners, mostly, as before, privateersmen, the number between 1796 and 1801 being 1,104. In the later Napoleonic wars the Castle was the head-quarters of Scotland for distributing the prisoners, the commissioned officers to the various parole towns of which notice will be taken in the chapters treating of the paroled prisoners in Scotland, and the others to the great dépôts at Perth and Valleyfield. We shall see when we come to deal with the paroled foreign officers in Scotland in what pleasant places, as a rule, their lines were cast, and how effectively they contrived to make the best of things, but it was very much otherwise with the rank and file in confinement. ‘An onlooker’, says Mr. Forbes, ‘has described the appearance of the prisoners at Edinburgh Castle. He says:—These poor men were allowed to work at their tasteful handicrafts in small sheds or temporary workshops at the Castle, behind the palisades which separated them from their free customers outside. There was just room between the bars of the palisade for them to hand through their exquisite work, and to receive in return the modest prices which they charged. As they sallied forth from their dungeons, so they returned to them at night. The dungeons, partly rock and partly masonry, of Edinburgh Castle, are historic spots which appeal alike to the sentiment and the imagination. They are situate in the south and east of the Castle, and the date of them goes far back.’ It is unnecessary to describe what may still be seen, practically unchanged since the great war-times, by every visitor to Edinburgh. In 1779 Howard visited Edinburgh during his tour round the prisons of Britain. His report is by no means bad. He found sixty-four prisoners in two rooms formerly used as barracks; in one room they lay in couples in straw-lined boxes against the wall, with two coverlets to each box. In the other room they had hammocks duly fitted with mattresses. The regulations were hung up according to law—an important fact, inasmuch as in other prisons, such as Pembroke, where the prison agents purposely omitted to hang them up, the prisoners remained in utter ignorance of their rights and their allowances. Howard reported the provisions to be all good, and noted that at the hospital house some way off, where were fourteen sick prisoners, the bedding and sheets were clean and sufficient, and the medical attention good. This satisfactory state of matters seems to have lasted, for in 1795 the following letter was written by the French prisoners in the Castle to General Dundas: ‘Les prisonniers de guerre français détenus au château d’Edinburgh ne peuvent que se louer de l’attention et du bon traitement qu’ils ont reçu de Com.-Gén. Dundas et officiers des brigades Écossoises, en foi de quoi nous livrons le présent. ‘FR. LEROY.’