“Captain Doebel and Lieutenant Mosque, of the Duke of Brunswick Oels corps, being suspected of having acted as officers in Schill’s insurrection in Westphalia, have for several months been treated with the most barbarous cruelty, being confined in separate dungeons, and with chains whose links are so heavy, that it is with difficulty they can move in their narrow cells, and which have worn their legs and arms to the bone; they are nearly naked, and have scarcely a sufficiency of bread and water to preserve their existence, as if the only intention was to prolong their misery. Having by some accident heard of your lordship as being senior officer of the British, and acting with the authority of your liberal government, they wrote to you, but concluded you never received their letter.

“As I am one of their fellow-countrymen, and compassionating their sufferings, I have, at the risk of my life, come hither from Mayence in their behalf. You will see the necessity of my thus visiting you secretly: for if it was known that I forwarded any communication between you and these officers, it would certainly be fatal to me, and might be very disagreeable to you.”

On referring to the army list I found the names of these two officers in the Brunswick corps, in the pay of Great Britain. The stranger put me in the way of corresponding with Mayence, and I immediately sent them fifty louis, and from that time continued to pay them regularly their monthly subsistence. Money soon lightened their chains, and though still closely confined, they have been comparatively comfortable. Nothing can equal their gratitude, as the reader will see by some of their letters, which he will find in the Appendix. [The appendix is not included in this electronic text.] I informed the Duke of Brunswick Oels of their situation, by letter, as well as that of some other officers of his corps, and received the most polite and friendly answer, inclosing the account of these officers with the agents, Messrs. Cox and Greenwood, by which it appeared that a considerable balance was due to them. Indeed, the interest His Serene Highness expressed for these and other officers of his corps, prisoners, did infinite honour to the goodness of his heart, and skews his zeal for the welfare of his soldiers.

In consequence of the defection of the Princes of the Confederation of the Rhine from their self-constituted protector, the whole of the German troops, in the service of France, were ordered to be disarmed. A corps of the Grand Duke of Berg, stationed at Montmedy, however, refusing to lay down their arms, General de Malard, the commandant of the department, marched from Verdun with some cavalry, to enforce the execution of the order, which he succeeded in doing without violence, by dividing the corps and marching them different ways in small detachments. A number of them were brought thus disarmed into Verdun; and there being among their officers several genteel looking men strolling on the parade before my house, I invited them in to take some wine and refreshment, for which they seemed extremely thankful. They were all most violent in their invectives against Napoleon, whom many of them had served for eight or nine years in constant activity of service: for they, as well as all foreign corps in general, were always placed in the most dangerous and fatiguing situations, in order to spare the French troops: they were also, in other respects, treated with the greatest harshness, and had a long arrear of pay due to them, which they had no hopes of ever recovering. One of the officers was so exasperated with his treatment, that he tore the croix d’honneur from his breast and threw it into the fire. Such are the rewards to be expected by those who enter the service of such a government.

The advance of the allied armies produced scenes of a nature more extraordinary than we had yet witnessed at Verdun: for many days and nights there was a continual passage of families running away from Metz, Nancy, and other places, in the same direction: and their flight was so precipitate, that, added to the extraordinary inclemency of the season, the situation of many of them was truly distressing. In one instance, I saw a mother and several children in a little cart drawn by a cow and a goat: and another, in which an ass and a large dog were yoked together. Shortly after, the town became the scene of the most complete confusion, in consequence of the sudden evacuation of the dépôts of the army, formed at Metz. Day and night the streets were filled with pieces of artillery, caissons, waggons loaded with soldiers’ clothing and other military furniture, followed by small detachments of cavalry of different corps, whose horses, as well as the men, were worn down with sickness, fatigue and famine. In short, the whole presented the appearance of the miserable remains of a totally defeated army: and it seemed as if terror, famine, and all their concomitant associates, were now about to finish those who had escaped from the sword.

While contemplating this scene of confusion and misery, we received an order to quit Verdun immediately and prepare to march to Blois, which produced a confusion and distress little inferior to that of our enemies. Having been until the last moment assured that there was no necessity for the removal of the dépôt, few were prepared for the event: it may therefore be easily conceived, what was the situation of families, many of whom had been fixed at Verdun for ten or eleven years, and who, by a long state of idleness had acquired indolent and sedentary habits, which rendered them as helpless as children; and, indeed, the appearance they made on the journey fully bespoke their imbecility, and their want of exertion and arrangement: besides, the scarcity of money was generally felt, and in many instances was the cause of the greatest distress. Those few who were more fortunate were therefore obliged to assist others; and my feelings so entirely overcame my prudence, that I left myself without sufficient funds to finish my journey, and was obliged to borrow on the road.

On the 12th of January 1814, the first division of our countrymen quitted Verdun: it was composed of midshipmen, masters of merchant vessels, and others of inferior classes. The midshipmen, above all; presented a singular and not unmeaning sight, from the bizarrerie of their costumes and equipage, which gave to the scene more the appearance of a masquerade than a march. These young gentlemen, to use one of their own phrases, “were up to every thing;” and such seemed to be the partiality of the beau sexe for them, that few were without a French female companion, many of whom had made a greater progress in plain English than I could have supposed: having perfectly at command the choicest selection of sailors’ oaths and cant sayings, which they applied in the slang stile, and with a tone and manner as if they had received their education at the back of the Point at Portsmouth. All the minor bourgeois of the town crowded together at the gate, to take leave of their English friends, and many of them to make a last attempt at recovering the money due to them by the young prisoners. Few, however, if any, were the instances of success: for several of those who had any money, contented themselves with letting their creditors look at it, merely to tantalize them, and, returning it into their pockets, told them, “they would be paid by the Cossacks!” Indeed I am sorry to be obliged to observe, that the non-payment of the most just debts, so far from being considered as dishonourable, both to the individuals and the national character, was almost deemed meritorious; and the general expression for it was softened down to that of “distressing the enemy.”

On the 13th, the second division, consisting of officers and families, left Verdun. My equipage consisted of a handsome dog-cart, drawn by two excellent Norman horses, which was much admired on the road, particularly by the French. Besides my clothes, this conveyance carried all my comforts, consisting of four dozen bottles of choice wine, and provisions for a week, so that I was entirely independent of inns, except for a bed. As I preferred riding, and having lent a spare horse to a friend to accompany me, I put my servants into the dog-cart, and we set off in a most intense frost. On our arrival at Clermont, we found all the auberges so full, that it was impossible to obtain any kind of accommodation, and were obliged to have recourse to an old woman and her family, with whom I had got acquainted in my former excursions to this town. Though the mansion of these good people was of the most humble kind, being constructed of wood and twigs, and the crevices filled up with mud; or, in other words, that kind of cottage which is intolerably hot in summer, and intensely cold in winter: we prepared to make the best of it, and having with difficulty procured accommodation for the horses, and sent the servants to make them comfortable, my companion and myself set about preparing our supper. On opening the provision cupboard, I was agreeably surprised by the sight of two unexpected good things: a piece of finely marbled beef, which had been kept fifteen days for steaks, and which I now cut up dexterously for that purpose, and a delicate poularde aux truffles-videlicet, a fine fat capon stuffed with truffles. The want of a spit presented a difficulty, which was however soon removed, by means of a nail and string, which one of the old woman’s daughters complaisantly offered to twist; so that having secured the poularde in a manner to prevent its bursting from the heat, and thus losing the truffles, my next care was to prepare a sauce for the steaks, and having no oysters, I was obliged to be content with onion sauce. Having succeeded, à merveille, in dressing the steaks and poularde, with the addition of part of a wild boar’s head from our own store, and some toasted cheese, washed down by a bottle of Madeira and two bottles of good Claret, my friend and I braved our hard fate, and composed ourselves till morning, when we resumed our journey.

In the course of the day we passed many broken down carriages of our countrymen, whose equipages were in general wretched. The road was strewed with dead horses belonging to the fugitives from Metz, many of whom had themselves perished, from the inclemency of the weather, which the previous fatigues of the German campaign had rendered them incapable of supporting. About a league and a half beyond Clermont I stopped to take a more exact view of the position occupied by Arthur Dillon, which I have had occasion already to mention. In a military point of view, this position is immensely strong, occupying nearly to the summit of a steep and winding hill, and flanked to a considerable distance on each side by thick woods, and ground so abrupt and irregularly broke, as to appear the effect of some violent convulsion of nature. As this is the only practicable road for an army to approach Paris on this side, and as it is impossible to turn this position, from the nature of the country, its occupation would have been of wonderful importance to the Prussians in 1793, for by it they might have checked the success of the revolutionary army, and thereby have given confidence to the Royalists, and probably have arrested the progress of that convulsion, which has since produced such unhappy changes and calamities to all Europe.*

* The Allies have seemed to be aware of the easy defence of this position, and have accordingly avoided it, and followed the route by Bar sur Ornain to Chalons.

Among the numerous groups of corps of fugitive cavalry I have already noticed, I observed several superior officers of hussars, who stopped their horses to admire my dog-cart and one of them, an old colonel, seemed desirous to enter into conversation, by several times riding close up to me, and at last broke silence by praising the horse I was riding. I returned the compliment, at the same time adding, that the figure of the Arabian horse on which he as mounted was familiar to me. On farther inquiry, the old colonel and another officer perfectly recollected me at Madrid, and expressed their joy at our rencontre, The former then gave me the history of his own and his horse’s adventures since that time, informing me that the animal had carried him during the whole of the campaigns through Germany to Moscow, and was now the only survivor of his stud, from the fatigues and inclemency of weather to which they had been exposed in their disastrous retreat. We then spoke of the war in Spain, and I derived no small degree of internal satisfaction, from the handsome manner in which these officers spoke of the loyal, generous, and gallant conduct of the English troops in the Peninsula. Indeed I must observe, in justice to the French officers whom I have latterly met, that in this respect they are candid, and do ample justice to the merit conduct of Lord Wellington and his army.

The old colonel observed, that he and one of the other officers in company had now been in constant active service for twenty-four years, and that at present the successes or reverses of their arms were equally indifferent to them, as the former produced neither individual advantage nor national utility: “thus,” concluded the veteran, “I am heartily tired of it, and am now going to a dépôt for a remount, in which I shall endeavour to create as much delay as possible, in order to avoid the rest of the winter’s campaign.” Thus it appears a total change of sentiment has taken place in the French army, and those persons, who at the beginning of the campaign were enflamed by military ardour, and boasting of their exploits past and to come, now think there is equal merit in devising the means of escaping from “the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war;” or more familiarly speaking, of evading their duty. How great, and how worthy of admiration, is the contrast between Old England and France during the course of this war! We may indeed say with perfect truth, what Napoleon has most falsely asserted: “we have never been too much elated by success, nor ever despondent in misfortune.”

Having rode some distance at a very sharp rate, and stopping at an inn, I found my new acquaintance, like most Frenchmen, beginning to grow tiresome, by their fulsome compliments. I therefore took the opportunity of quitting them, and proceeded to Chalons, which I reached toward the close of the evening: and found it crowded with troops and carriages of all descriptions, and proceeding in every direction: an inconvenience to which Chalons was necessarily subject, from its central situation, and the many roads all leading to the same point.