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A Royal Engineer in the Low Countries

A Cavalry Surgeon at Waterloo

With the Third Guards during the Peninsular War

The First and Last Campaigns of the Great War

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Vincent O'Sullivan

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Algernon Blackwood

Narratives of the Anglo-Zulu War

and many others

The Napoleonic Novels: Volume 2

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The Napoleonic Novels: Volume 2
Leonaur Original
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Author(s): Erckmann-Chatrian
Date Published: 2009/07
Page Count: 432
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-705-9
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-706-6

Two classic novels of the Napoleonic epoch

The events portrayed in these two novels of the Napoleonic period properly fit in time between those of the first volume. They appear together here since each—unlike the other two in this series—is a stand alone work. All of the Erckmann-Chatrian Napoleonic novels form part of the 'National' series which begins in the revolutionary period and extends to include the Franco-Prussian War. The Napoleonic works all concern the period of the fall of the First Empire. In The Blockade of Phalsburg it is 1814 and the allied army is invading France following Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig. War has reached the small walled town of Phalsburg and the inhabitants resolve to defend the city. So the siege begins. The Invasion of France 1814 is another perspective of the invasion as French peasants determine to defend the country from the expected marauding German troops and Cossacks. These are stories of ordinary people forced to come to terms with great events expertly related by perhaps their greatest advocates in fiction.

Every time these veterans gave fire, five or six Cossacks came on like the wind, with their lances lowered; but it did not frighten them: they leaned against a tree and levelled their bayonets. Other veterans came up, and then some loaded, while others parried the blows. Scarcely had they torn open their cartridges when the Cossacks fled right and left, their lances in the air. Some of them turned for a moment and fired their large pistols behind like regular bandits. At length our men began to march toward the city.<br>
Those old soldiers, with their great shakos set square on their heads, their large capes hanging to the back of their calves, their sabres and cartridge-boxes on their backs, calm in the midst of these savages, reloading, trimming, and parrying as quietly as if they were smoking their pipes in the guard-house, were something to be admired. At last, after seeing them come out of the whirlwind two or three times, it seemed almost an easy thing to do.<br>
Our sergeant commanded them. I understood then why he was such a favourite with the officers, and why they always took his part against the citizens: there were not many such. I wanted to call out, “Make haste, sergeant; let us make haste!”but neither he nor his men hurried in the least.<br>
As they reached the foot of the glacis, suddenly a huge mass of Cossacks, seeing that they were escaping, galloped up in two files, to cut off their retreat. It was a dangerous moment, and they formed in a square instantly.<br>
I felt my back turn cold, as if I had been one of them.<br>
Our sharpshooters behind the ammunition wagons did not fire, doubtless for fear of hitting their comrades; our gunners on the bastion leaned down to see, and the file of Cossacks stretched to the corner near the drawbridge.<br>
There were seven or eight hundred of them. We heard them cry, “Hurra! hurra! hurra!”like crows. Several officers in green cloaks and small caps galloped at the sides of their lines, with raised sabres. I thought our poor sergeant and his thirty men were lost; I thought already, “How sorry little Sâfel and Sorlé will be!”<br>
But then, as the Cossacks formed in a half-circle at the left of the outworks, I heard our gun-captain call out, “Fire!”<br>
I turned my head; old Goulden struck the match, the fusee glittered, and at the same instant the bastion with its great baskets of clay shook to the very rocks of the rampart.<br>
I looked toward the road; nothing was to be seen but men and horses on the ground.<br>
Just then came a second shot, and I can truly say that I saw the grapeshot pass like the stroke of a scythe into that mass of cavalry; it all tumbled and fell; those who a second before were living beings were now nothing. We saw some try to raise themselves, the rest made their escape.<br>
The firing by file began again, and our gunners, without waiting for the smoke to clear away, reloaded so quickly that the two discharges seemed to come at once.<br>
This mass of old nails, bolts, broken bits of cast iron, flying three hundred metres, almost to the little bridge, made such slaughter that, some days after, the Russians asked for an armistice in order to bury their dead.<br>
Four hundred were found scattered in the ditches of the road.<br>
This I saw myself.<br>
And if you want to see the place where those savages were buried, you have only to go up the cemetery lane.<br>
On the other side, at the right, in M. Adam Ottendorf’s orchard, you will see a stone cross in the middle of the fence; they were all buried there, with their horses, in one great trench.<br>
You can imagine the delight of our gunners at seeing this massacre. They lifted up their sponges and shouted, “Vive l’Empereur!”<br>
The soldiers shouted back from the covered ways, and the air was filled with their cries.<br>
Our sergeant, with his thirty men, their guns on their shoulders, quietly reached the glacis. The barrier was quickly opened for them, but the two companies descended together to the moat and came up again by the postern.<br>
I was waiting for them above.<br>
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