Protestantism in France From Death of Henry IV to the Revolution - James Aitken Wylie

chained together. Our chain made a very long file,
for we were about four hundred."[8] The fatigue of
walking was excessive, each having to carry about
fifty pounds weight of chains. One of their haltingplaces,
the Chateau de la Tournelle, he thus speaks:
"It is a large dungeon, or rather spacious cellar,
furnished with huge beams of oak placed at the
distance of about three feet apart. To these beams
thick iron chains are attached, one and a half feet in
length, and two feet apart, and at the end of these
chains is an iron collar. When the wretched galleyslaves
arrived in this dungeon, they are made to lie
half down, so that their heads may rest upon the
beam; then this collar is put round their necks,
closed, and rivited on an anvil with heavy blows of
a hammer. And these chains with collars are about
two feet apart, and as the beams are generally
about forty feet long, twenty men are chained to
them in file. This cellar which is round, is so large
that in this way they can chain up as many as five
hundred. There is nothing so dreadful as to behold
the attitudes and postures of these wretches there
chained. For a man so chained cannot lie down at
full length, the beam upon which his head is fixed
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