This Francis Neau was a privateer officer who married a Mary Lees; she was living in 1870. There was a remarkable duel. A Captain Decourbes had been fishing, and, coming in after curfew bell had tolled at 8 p.m., had to report himself to Captain Grey, R.N., the Commissary. He afterwards met a Captain Robert at the billiard-room at the Black’s Head, who grossly insulted him and struck him in the face, so that the duel became inevitable. Neau, who was present, was deputed to furnish them with firearms; but after ransacking the town, he could only succeed in borrowing one horse-pistol from a private in the Yeomanry. The two met on Balidone Moor at three the next morning, and tossed for the first shot. Decourbes won, and hit his adversary in the breast so that the ball entered at one side and came out at the other. Robert, who was previously lame and had come on to the ground on crutches, then, grievously wounded as he was, gathered himself up and returned the fire, shooting Decourbes in the nape of the neck. Lieut. Vird of the 72nd Regiment of Foot acted as Robert’s second; he was subsequently killed at Waterloo. They all walked back together to Leek, the two combatants treating their wounds very lightly; but Decourbes’ wound went wrong, and he died of it in the course of ten days or a fortnight. The number of prisoners at Leek never exceeded 200, and they came by detachments in 1803, 1805, 1809, and 1812, almost all clearing out after Napoleon’s abdication 5th April 1814. It will not be forgotten that in the earlier period of the war the prisoners on parole in various parts of the country were all removed to Norman Cross; whether any similar change in their condition was experienced, after the resumption of hostilities in 1803, by the prisoners out upon their parole, remains a matter of uncertainty. Passing now to the subject of the Exchange of prisoners, and the chances that a prisoner at Norman Cross or elsewhere had of obtaining his liberty by an exchange for an English prisoner of equal rank, it must be borne in mind that a large number of civilians were in captivity, especially in the second period of the war. This practice of taking captive so many civilians in the second period of the war, 1803–15, was attributed to the British system of seizing all French vessels of every kind and making their crews captive. This practice was adopted as a retaliation for the first act of Buonaparte, then ruling France as First Consul, when hostilities were resumed in May 1803. As a reprisal for what he considered the dishonourable action of two British frigates in seizing in harbour French merchantmen before the formal declaration of war had reached France, the Consul ordered the immediate arrest of every British subject between the age of eighteen and sixty who happened to be in France at that time, thus throwing 10,000 peaceable travellers and others into captivity.