aid-de-camp an order, the perusal of which seemed to strike him with astonishment; but after taking a turn or two in the courtyard to compare in his mind the order of to-day with that of the day preceding, he assumed a more courteous demeanor, and approaching the Count de Charney placed in his hands the missive of General Menon. Trembling with emotion, the pris oner read as follows: His Majesty the Emperor and King deputes me, sir, to inform you that he grants the petition forwarded to him by the prisoner Charney, now under your custody in the fortress of Fenestrella, relative to a plant growing among the stones of one of its pavements. Such as are likely to be injurious to the flower must be instantly removed; for which purpose you are requested to consult the wishes and convenience of your prisoner. "Long live the Emperor!" cried Ludovico. "Long live the Emperor!" murmured another voice, which seemed to issue from the adjoining wall; and while all this was proceeding, the commandant stood leaning on his cane by way of keeping himself in countenance; the two officers of justice, completely puzzled, were trying in vain to connect the new turn of affairs with the plot which their imagination had created; while the aid-de-camp and page secretly wondered what could be the motive of the haste which had been so urgently recommended to them. The latter now addressed Charney to inform him that the letter contained a postscript in the handwriting of the Empress; and the Count turning over the page read aloud as follows: I earnestly recommend Monsieur the Count de Charney to the good offices of Captain Morand; to whom I shall feel personally obliged for any acts of kindness by which he may be enabled to alleviate the situation of his prisoner. JOSEPHINE. "Long live the Empress!" cried Ludovico. Charney said not a word. His feelings could not be satisfied with less than raising to his lips the precious signature of his benefactress. The letter, held for some minutes in silence before his eyes, seemed to conceal his face from the curiosity of the spectators. REMINISCENCES OF NAPOLEON'S WARS. BY BARON DE MARBOT. [BARON MARCELLIN DE MARBOT was born in 1782, at the castle of Larivière, department of Corrèze, France. He became major-general in Napoleon's wars, and served under five of the great marshals, finally as chief of staff; 1815-1818 was in exile; 1829 aide-de-camp to the Duke of Orleans, and in regular service till 1848, taking part in the Algerian campaign. He died in 1854.] MARSHAL AUGEREAU. MOST of the generals who became celebrated in the early wars of the Revolution rose from the lower ranks of society; but it is wrong to imagine, as some have done, that they were without education and owed their success to nothing but their brilliant courage. Augereau especially has been much misjudged. People have thought fit to represent him as a kind of rough, noisy, ill-conditioned swashbuckler. This is a mistake; for, although his youth was pretty stormy, and though he fell into sundry errors in politics, he was kind, well-mannered, and affectionate. I can assert that of the five marshals under whom I served he was distinctly the one who did most to alleviate the evils of war, who showed most kindness to noncombatants, and treated his officers the best, living with them like a father among his children. He had an extremely disturbed life, but before judging him one must consider the manners and customs of the period. Pierre Augereau was born in Paris, 1757. His father did a large business as a fruiterer, and had amassed a sufficient fortune to enable him to educate his children well. His mother was a native of Munich, and she had the good sense always to speak German to her son, so that he spoke it perfectly, which both in his travels and in war was of great use to him. Augereau was a handsome man, tall and well built. He was fond of all physical exercises, and a proficient at them: a good rider, and an excellent swordsman. At the age of seventeen he lost his mother, and her brother, who was one of the secretaries of "Monsieur," obtained his enlistment in the carabineers, of which that prince was proprietary colonel. He passed some years at Saumur, the regular garrison of the carabineers. His attention to duty and his good conduct soon raised him to the rank of non-commissioned officer. Unfortunately, at that time there was a craze for duelling, and Augereau's reputation as an excellent fencer compelled him to fight often, for among the garrison it was the correct thing to allow no superior. Noblemen, officers, soldiers, used to fight on the most futile grounds. Thus it happened that on one occasion, when Augereau was on a long leave in Paris, the celebrated fencing-master Saint-Georges, seeing him pass, said in the presence of several swordsmen that "there went one of the best blades in France." Thereupon a sergeant of dragoons named Belair, who claimed to be the next best to Saint-Georges, wrote to Augereau that he would like to fight him unless the other would admit his superiority. Augereau answered that he would do nothing of the sort, so they met in the Champs Elysées, and Belair got a thrust right through the body. He recovered, and, having left the service, married and became the father of eight children. In the early days of the Empire, being at a loss how to feed them, it occurred to him to apply to his old adversary, now become a marshal. I knew the man; he was witty and gay in a very original fashion. He called upon Augereau with a fiddle under his arm, and said that, having nothing to give his eight children for dinner, he was going to make them dance to keep up their spirits unless the marshal would kindly give him the means of supplying them with more substantial nourishment. Augereau recognized Belair, asked him to dinner, gave him money, and in a few days obtained him a very good post in the Government Parcels Office, and got two of his sons into a lycée. This conduct needs no remark. All Augereau's duels did not end thus. According to a most absurd usage, ancient feuds existed between certain regiments, the cause of which was often pretty much forgotten, but which were handed down from one generation to another, and gave rise to duels whenever those corps met. Thus the Lunéville gendarmes and the carabineers had been at war for more than half a century, although in all this period they had not seen each other. At last, at the beginning of Louis XVI.'s reign, these two bodies were summoned to the camp at Compiègne; so to show that they were no less brave than their predecessors, carabineers and gendarmes resolved to fight, and the custom was of such ancient date that the chiefs felt bound to wink at it. However, in order to avoid too great bloodshed, they contrived to make a regulation that there should be only one duel. Each corps was to appoint a combatant to represent it, and after that there should be a truce. As the self-esteem of each side required that the selected champion should be victorious, the carabineers picked out their twelve best swordsmen, Augereau being among them, and it was agreed to choose by lot the one to whom the honor of the regiment should be intrusted. The lot was that day even blinder than usual, for it fell upon a sergeant named Donnadieu, who had five children. Augereau remarked that they ought not to have put among the papers one bearing the name of a father of a family, and demanded to act as his substitute. Donnadieu declared that as the lot had fallen on him he would go out; Augereau insisted. At last the generous contest was terminated by the meeting accepting Augereau's proposal. They soon learnt who was the combatant chosen by the gendarmes, and it only remained to bring the adversaries together, so that a shadow of a quarrel might furnish a pretext for the meeting. Augereau's adversary was a terrible man, an excellent swordsman, and a professional duellist, who, to keep his hand in while waiting, had on the previous day killed two sergeants of the Garde Française. Augereau, without letting himself be frightened by this bully's reputation, went off to the café, where he knew that he would come, and sat down at a table to wait for him. The gendarme entered, and as soon as the carabineers' champion was pointed out to him he turned up his coat-tails and sat down insolently on the table with his hindquarters a foot from Augereau's face. The latter was at this moment taking a cup of very hot coffee; he gently opened the slit which in those days existed in the waistband of the leather breeches worn by the cavalry, and poured the scalding liquid upon the person of the impertinent gendarme. The man turned round in a fury. The quarrel was started, and they went off to the ground, followed by a crowd of carabineers and gendarmes. On the way the gendarme, by way of a ferocious raillery of his intended victim, asked Augereau in a jeering tone, "Would you rather be buried in the town or in the country?" Augereau replied, "I prefer the country, I have always liked the open air." Very good," said the gendarme, turning to his second, "you may put him beside the two whom I packed off yesterday and the day before." This was not very encouraging, and might have shaken the nerves of another 66 than Augereau. It was not so with him. Resolved to defend VOL. XXI. -7 his life to the best of his power, he played so close and so well that his adversary, enraged at being unable to touch him, lost his temper and blundered. Augereau, always calm, profited by this to run him through, remarking, "You shall be buried in the country." When the camp was broken up the carabineers returned to Saumur, where Augereau continued to serve quietly until a disastrous event drove him into a life of adventure. A young officer of high birth and very hasty temper, happening to find some fault with the manner in which the horses were groomed, fell foul of Augereau, and in a fit of anger offered to strike him with his whip in presence of the whole squadron. Augereau replied to the insult by sending the imprudent officer's whip flying from his hand. In a rage he drew his sword and attacked Augereau, saying, "Defend yourself!" Augereau at first confined himself to parrying, but, having been wounded, he at length returned a thrust, and the officer fell dead. General Count de Malseigne, who commanded the carabineers as deputy for "Monsieur," was soon informed of this affair; and although the eye-witnesses with one accord testified that Augereau had been most unjustly provoked, and that it was a case of lawful self-defense, the interest which he took in Augereau led him to think it advisable to get him out of the way. He therefore summoned a soldier named Papon, a native of Geneva, whose time expired in a few days, and asked him to let Augereau have his paper of discharge, promising him another shortly. Papon agreed, for which Augereau was always most grateful to him. Having reached Geneva, he learnt that in spite of the evidence a court-martial had condemned him to death for having drawn his sword on an officer. The Papon family exported watches largely to the East. Augereau resolved to accompany the clerk who was sent in charge of them, and thus visited Greece, the Ionian Islands, Constantinople, and the shores of the Black Sea. When he was in the Crimea a Russian colonel, judging from his fine bearing that he had been a soldier, offered him the rank of sergeant. Augereau accepted, and passed some years in the Russian army, serving under Souvaroff against the Turks, and being wounded at the assault on Ismail. Peace having been made between Russia and the Porte, Augereau's regiment was ordered to Poland; but, not caring to stay longer among the Russians, half-barbarous as they were, he deserted and reached |