ead the news of the
Cossacks fighting for Napoleon's body. At the Marsh Gate, Lambeth, he
entered a hackney coach, telling the post-boys to spread the news on
their return. By a little after ten, the rumours reached the Stock
Exchange, and the funds rose; but on its being found that the Lord Mayor
had had no intelligence, they soon went down again.

In the meantime other artful confederates were at work. The same day,
about an hour before daylight, two men, dressed as foreigners, landed
from a six-oar galley, and called on a gentleman of Northfleet, and
handed him a letter from an old friend, begging him to take the bearers
to London, as they had great public news to communicate; they were
accordingly taken. About twelve or one the same afternoon, three persons
(two of whom were dressed as French officers) drove slowly over London
Bridge in a post-chaise, the horses of which were bedecked with laurel.
The officers scattered billets to the crowd, announcing the death of
Napoleon and the fall of Paris. They then paraded through Cheapside and
Fleet Street, passed over Blackfriars Bridge, drove rapidly to the Marsh
Gate, Lambeth, got out, changed their cocked hats for round ones, and
disappeared as De Bourg had done.

The funds once more rose, and long bargains were made; but still some
doubt was felt by the less sanguine, as the ministers as yet denied all
knowledge of the news. Hour after hour passed by, and the certainty of
the falsity of the news gradually developed itself. "To these scenes of
joy," says a witness, "and of greedy expectations of gain, succeeded, in
a few hours, disappointment and shame at having been gulled, the
clenching of fists, the grinding of teeth, the tearing of hair, all the
outward and visible signs of those inward commotions of disappointed
avarice in some, consciousness of ruin in others, and in all boiling
revenge." A committee was appointed by the Stock Exchange to track out
the conspiracy, as on the two days before Consols and Omnium, to the
amount of L826,000, had been purchased by persons implicated. Because
one of the gang had for a blind called on the celebrated Lord Cochrane,
and because a relation of his engaged in the affair had purchased
Consols for him, that he might unconsciously benefit by the fraud, the
Tories, eager to destroy a bitter political enemy, concentrated all
their rage on as high-minded, pure, and chivalrous a man as ever trod a
frigate's deck. He was tried June 21