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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

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The Life of the Real Brigadier Gerard Volume 2 Imperial Aide-De-Camp 1807 - 1811

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The Life of the Real Brigadier Gerard Volume 2 Imperial Aide-De-Camp 1807 - 1811
Leonaur Original
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Author(s): by Jean-Baptiste De Marbot
Date Published: 03/2006
Page Count: 269
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-041-8
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-052-4

The further adventures of Napoleon’s cavalry officer This second volume of Marbot’s career finds him attached to the staffs of Napoleon’s Marshals. This puts him in an ideal (if often precarious) position to witness and play his part in some of the most momentous events and battles of the Napoleonic Age. Marbot moves from war in the Peninsula to the apocalyptic events at Aspern-Essling and Wagram where his own combat experiences are vibrantly retold. Here we also find Marbot undertaking special missions for Bonaparte which are so far from the experience of normal soldering that it is easy to see why Conan-Doyle found them an irresistable inspiration for his famous Brigadier Gerard.

At the word, de Viry and I darted out, crossed the promenade at a run, and, lowering our ladder, descended into the ditch. Our comrades followed with fifty grenadiers. In vain did the cannon thunder, the musketry rattle, grape-shot and bullets strike trees and walls. It is very difficult to take aim at isolated individuals moving very fast and twenty paces apart, and we got into the ditch without one man of our little column being wounded. The ladders already indicated were lifted, we carried them to the top of the rubbish from the ruined house, and placing them against the parapet, we ran up them to the rampart. I was first up one of the first ladders, Labédoyère, who was climbing the one beside me, feeling that the lower end of it was not very steadily placed on the rubbish, asked me to give him my hand to steady him, and we both reached the top of the rampart in full view of the Emperor and the whole army, who saluted us with a mighty cheer. It was one of the finest days of my life. De Viry and d’Albuquerque joined us in a moment with the other aides-de-camp and fifty grenadiers and by this time a regiment of Morand’s division was coming towards the ditch at the double.

The chances of war are often strange. The two first detachments had been annihilated before reaching the foot of the breach, and yet the third suffered no loss whatever. Only my friend de Viry had a button of his pelisse carried away by a bullet; yet if the enemy on the parapet had had the presence of mind to charge with the bayonet on Labédoyère and me, it is probable that we should have been overwhelmed by their number, and either killed or hurled back into the ditch. But Austrians lose their heads very quickly; the boldness and rapidity of our attack astonished them to such a point that when they saw us swarming over the breach they first slackened their fire and soon ceased firing altogether. Not only did none of their companies march against us, but all went off in the opposite direction to the point which we had just carried.

As I said, the attack took place close to the Straubing gate. Marshal Lannes had ordered me to get it opened or break it down, so that he could enter the town with Morand’s division. Accordingly, as soon as I saw my fifty grenadiers on the ramparts, and the head of the supporting regiment already arrived in the ditch, where their passage was secured by a further supply of ladders, I went down into the town without further delay, every moment being precious. We marched steadily towards the Straubing gate, only a hundred paces from the breach, and great was my surprise to find an Austrian battalion massed under the immense archway, all the men facing towards the gate, so as to be ready to defend it if the French broke it in. The major in command, thinking only of the duty which was entrusted him and taking no heed of the noise which he heard on the ramparts close by, was so confident that the French attack would fail that he had not even placed a sentry outside the archway to let him know what was going on, so he was thunderstruck at seeing us come up in his rear.

He had taken up his position behind his men, so that having faced about on seeing us approach, he found himself fronting the little French column, the strength of which he was quite unable to judge, for I had formed it in two squads which rested on the sides of the arch and closed it completely. At their major’s cry of surprise, the battalion all faced round, and the rear sections, which had become the front, presented their muskets at us. Our grenadiers also raised theirs, and as only one pace separated the two parties, you may imagine what a horrible massacre would have resulted if a shot had been fired. The situation was very dangerous for both sides, but their greater number gave the Austrians an immense advantage, for if we had opened fire muzzle to muzzle, our little column would have been destroyed as well as the enemy’s company which was in front of our muskets. But the rest of the battalion would have been cleared. It was lucky that our adversaries could not tell the weakness of our force, and I hastened to tell the major that as the town had been taken by assault and occupied by our troops, nothing remained for him but to lay down his arms under pain of being put to the sword.
The assured tone in which I spoke intimidated the officer; all the more so that he could hear the tumult produced by the successive arrival of our soldiers who had followed us over the breach, and hastened to form in front of the archway. We harangued his battalion, and, after having explained the situation to them, ordered them to lay down their arms. The companies who were close to our muzzles obeyed, but those who were at the other end of the archway, close to the gate and sheltered from our shot, fell to shouting, refused to surrender, and pushed forward the mass of the battalion till we were nearly upset. The officers, however, succeeded in quieting them, and everything seemed in a fair way to be settled, when the impetuous Labédoyère, impatient at the delay, lost his temper, and was on the point of ruining the whole thing; for, seizing the Austrian major by the throat, he was just about to run him through if the rest had not turned his sword aside. The other side then resumed their arms, and a bloody battle was about to take place, when the gate began to resound on the outside under the powerful blows which the axes of the pioneers of Morand’s division, led by Marshal Lannes in person, were delivering upon it. Then the enemy, understanding that they would be between two fires, surrendered, and we made them march disarmed from under the archway towards the town. The gate thus cleared, we opened it to the marshal, whose troops rushed into the place like a torrent.
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