Then, hearing the sound of the fight, the general wished to reach the head of my column; but so rapid was the pace at which the two regiments were pursuing the enemy, that he found it impossible to get within the ranks. After several attempts to do so, he and his horse were hustled into the Kinzig, where he was nearly drowned.

During the night the Emperor relieved the army very materially by sending all the baggage off to Coblentz, escorted by some battalions of infantry and the cavalry of Lefebvre-Desnouettes and Milhau. On the morning of the 30th he had with him only Macdonald's and Victor's infantry, 5,000 bayonets in all, and Sébastiani's cavalry.

On the side by which we approached Hanau is covered by a great forest, through which the road passes; the trees of which are large enough to allow scarcely impeded movement. The town of Hanau is on the further bank of the Kinzig. General Wrede, who as a rule was not devoid of military talent, had committed the huge blunder of posting his army with the river in its rear; thereby depriving it of the support offered by the fortifications of Hanau. His only means of communication and retreat was by the bridge of Lamboy. No doubt the position which he occupied barred the road to Frankfort and to France, and he thought himself well able to stop us.

At daybreak on October 30 the battle began. It was like a great hunting expedition. A few rounds of grape, the fire of the infantry skirmishers, and a charge in loose order by Sébastiani's cavalry dispersed the enemy's first line, awkwardly posted on the edge of the wood. But when we had advanced a little further, our squadrons could only act in the few clearings, and the light infantry pursued the Bavarians singly, driving them from tree to tree till they got out of the wood. Then they were brought up by the enemy's line, 40,000 strong, with eighty guns in its front. If the Emperor had then had all the troops whom he brought away from Leipzig a vigorous attack would have mastered the bridge, and Wrede would have paid dear for his rashness; but the corps of Mortier, Marmont, and Bertrand, and the great park of artillery had been delayed by the defiles, and Napoleon had only 10,000 combatants at his disposal. The enemy should have seized the opportunity for a brisk charge; but they did not venture it, and their hesitation allowed time for the artillery of the guard to come up. As soon as General Drouot, who commanded it, had fifteen pieces on the field he opened fire; and his line increased gradually, till it showed fifty guns. These he caused to advance firing, though he had few troops to support him; but this, owing to the smoke of so great a battery, the enemy did not find out. At last, just as a puff of wind drove the smoke away, the chasseurs of the guard appeared.

At the sight of the bearskins the Bavarian infantry recoiled in consternation. Wishing to check the disorder at any cost, General Wrede made all the cavalry at his disposal charge our guns, and in a moment the battery was surrounded by a cloud of horsemen. But at the voice of their intrepid chief, who, sword in hand, was setting the example of a valiant resistance, the French gunners seized their muskets and remained immovable behind the carriages, whence they fired on the enemy at close quarters. Numbers would, however, have triumphed, but that at the Emperor's order the whole of Sébastiani's cavalry and that of the guard, grenadiers, dragoons, chasseurs, Mamelukes, lancers, dashed furiously on the enemy, killing a great number and dispersing the rest. Then, flying upon the squares of Bavarian infantry, they broke them with heavy loss, and the routed Bavarian army fled towards the bridge and the town of Hanau.

General Wrede, being a brave man, determined, before owning himself beaten by a force of half his own strength, to make a fresh effort. Assembling all his available troops, he attacked us unexpectedly. The musketry-fire suddenly drew near to us; again the forest re-echoed with the roar of the cannon, the balls whistled through the trees, bringing great branches down with a crash. The wood was too deep for the eye to penetrate; through the shade cast by the thick foliage of the huge beeches one could barely see the occasional flashes of the guns. On hearing the noise of this attack the Emperor sent off in that direction the grenadiers of his Old Guard, under General Friant. These soon repulsed this last effort of the enemy, who quickly left the field of battle and rallied under shelter of the fortress of Hanau. During the night they abandoned this also, leaving a great number of wounded, and the French occupied the place.

We were only two short leagues from Frankfort, where there is a stone bridge over the Main. Now, as the French army had to march along this river to reach the French frontier at Mainz, Napoleon sent forward General Sébastiani's corps with a division of infantry to occupy Frankfort and destroy the bridge, he himself with the main army bivouacking in the forest. The high road from Hanau to Frankfort passes close along the right bank of the Main. My friend General Albert, who commanded the infantry which accompanied us, had been married some years before at Offenbach, a pretty little town on the left bank, exactly opposite the spot where, having emerged from the forest of Hanau, we rested our horses in the wide plain of Frankfort. Finding himself so near his wife and children, General Albert could not resist the desire to get news of them, and still more to reassure them of his safety after the battles of Leipzig and Hanau. To this end he exposed himself perhaps to more danger than in those sanguinary engagements. Advancing in uniform and on horseback to the edge of the stream, in spite of all we could say, he hailed a boatman who knew him. While he was talking to this man, a Bavarian officer, coming up at the head of an infantry picket, ordered them to make ready, and was about to fire on the French general. However, a number of inhabitants and of boatmen placed themselves in front of the muskets and stopped the soldiers from firing, for Albert was much beloved at Offenbach. As I looked at that town where I had just been fighting in my country's service I little thought that I should one day take refuge there from the proscription of the French Government, and should pass three years there in exile.

The Emperor, on leaving the forest of Hanau, had scarcely gone two leagues on the road to Frankfort when he learned that the battle had begun again behind him. The Bavarian general, who had feared after his defeat that the Emperor would stick to his heels till he had made an end of him, when he saw that the French army cared more about reaching the Rhine than about pursuing him, plucked up courage and made a smart attack on our rear-guard. But the corps of Macdonald, Marmont, and Bertrand, who had occupied Hanau during the night, received his army with the bayonet and overthrew it with great slaughter. General Wrede was severely wounded, and his son-in-law, the Prince of Oettingen, was killed. The command of the enemy's army devolved on the Austrian general Fresnel, who gave orders for a retreat, while we continued our march to the Rhine unmolested, crossing it on November 2 and 3, after a campaign in which brilliant victories had been mingled with depressing reverses. The cause of these last was Napoleon's mistake in quarrelling with Austria instead of making peace after his victories in the month of June. All Germany followed, and Napoleon soon had the whole of Europe against him.

After our return to France the Emperor stayed only six days at Mainz, and then went to Paris—a prompt departure with which the army found fault. It was admitted that there were strong political reasons calling him to Paris; but it was thought that the duty of reorganizing the army also had claims on him, and that he should have gone to and fro between it and the capital, for experience might have taught him that when he was absent little or nothing was done.

The last cannon-shots which I heard in 1813 were fired at the battle of Hanau, and that day went very near to be the last of my life. My regiment charged five times—twice upon infantry squares, once upon guns, and twice on Bavarian cavalry; but the greatest danger which I ran arose from the explosion of a wagon full of shells, which took place close to me. As I have said, the Emperor ordered the cavalry to make a general charge at a very difficult moment. Now, in such a case, it is not enough for a commanding officer, and especially when he is engaged in a forest, to send his regiment straight forward, as I have seen many do; he must cast a rapid glance over the ground to which his squadrons are coming, so that he may not lead them into swampy places. I marched, therefore, some paces in front, followed by my regimental staff, and having beside me a trumpeter who signalled, as I bade, the obstacles which the various squadrons would find in front of them. Although the trees stood wide apart, the passage through the forest was difficult for cavalry, because the ground was piled with men and horses killed or wounded, weapons, guns, and wagons which the Bavarians had left. It is easy to see that it is difficult in such a case for a colonel, as he gallops amid bullets and cannon-balls, to examine the ground which his squadrons have to cross, and at the same time take any thought for his personal safety. I had to leave this to the intelligence and nimbleness of my excellent horse Azolan; but the small group which followed me close had been greatly thinned by a discharge of grape, which had wounded many of my orderlies, and I had only my trumpeter near me, when suddenly from the whole line I heard shouts of 'Colonel! colonel! look out!' and ten paces from me I saw a Bavarian artillery wagon which one of our shells had just set on fire. A huge tree which had been cut down by the cannon-balls barred the road in front of me. To go round would have taken me too long. I called to the trumpeter to stoop, and, lying flat over my saddle-bow, I took my horse at the jump. Azolan made a long leap, but not long enough to clear all the branches, and his legs got caught among them. Meantime the wagon was blazing and the powder would take fire in a moment. I gave myself up for lost, when my horse, as though he had understood our common danger, began bounding four or five feet high, always getting further from the wagon, and as soon as he was clear of the branches he went off at such a stretching gallop that he was almost literally ventre à terre. I shivered when the explosion took place, but I must have been out of the reach of the bursting shells, for neither my horse nor I was touched. It was otherwise with my young trumpeter, for when the regiment resumed its march after the explosion they saw the poor fellow dead and horribly mutilated by the splinters. His horse also was blown to pieces. My brave Azolan had saved me already at the Katzbach, and now I owed him my life a second time. I caressed him, and, as though to show his joy, the poor animal whinnied aloud. There are moments when one is led to believe that some creatures have far more intelligence than is generally thought.

I keenly regretted my trumpeter, who was beloved by the whole regiment no less for his courage than for his general behaviour. He was the son of a professor at the college of Toulouse; had been through his course there, and took great delight in spouting Latin. An hour before his death the poor lad, having observed that nearly all the trees in the forest of Hanau were beeches, and that their spreading branches formed a kind of roof, found it a suitable occasion to repeat the Eclogue of Virgil which begins with the verse

Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi.

Marshal Macdonald, who happened to pass at the moment, laughed heartily, exclaiming, 'There's a little chap whose memory isn't disturbed by his surroundings! It is certainly the first time that anyone has recited Virgil under the fire of the enemy's guns.'

‘He who takes the sword shall perish with the sword,' says the Scripture. If this saying does not apply to all soldiers, it did to many of them under the Empire. M. Guindet, who in October 1806 had killed Prince Lewis of Prussia at Saalfeld, was himself killed at the battle of Hanau. No doubt it was the fear of a like fate which led the Russian general Czernicheff to fly from the danger. You will remember that early in 1812 that officer, then a favourite aide-de-camp of the Emperor Alexander, happening to be at Paris, had abused his position to corrupt two poor officials in the War Office.1 They were executed for selling information about the French army, while the Russian colonel only avoided the punishment which he deserved by secretly escaping from France. On returning to his own country, M. de Czernicheff, though more of a courtier than of a soldier, became a general, and in that capacity commanded a Cossack division, the only Russian troops at Hanau. The part its leader played there made him the byword of the Austrians and Bavarians who were present at that fight. So long as Czernicheff expected to meet none but sick and demoralized troops, he crowed loudly; but he changed his tone when he found himself face to face with the veterans from Leipzig. General Wrede had at first much trouble to make him take his place in the line, and no sooner did he hear the roar of our artillery than with his 3,000 horsemen he trotted away from the battle-field, amid the hootings of the Austrians and Bavarians. General Wrede hurried up in person to reproach him. Czernicheff replied that his horses wanted food, and that he was going to bait them in the neighbouring villages. This excuse was thought so ridiculous that before long the walls of nearly every town in Germany were covered with caricatures representing Czernicheff feeding his horses on bundles of laurel gathered in the forest of Hanau. The Germans can be caustic sometimes.

The remnants of the French army expected when they crossed the Rhine that their hardships would be at an end as soon as they were on their native soil, but they were greatly mistaken. The Government and the Emperor himself had so reckoned on our success that no arrangements had been made to receive the troops at the frontier and reorganize them. On the very day of our entry into Mainz the men and horses would have had no food if they had not been billeted about in the neighbouring towns and villages. The inhabitants, however, had had no experience of feeding soldiers since the old Revolutionary wars. They complained loudly, and in fact the charge fell too heavily on the communes.

The sick and wounded were established as well as circumstances permitted in the hospitals of Mainz, and in order to watch the line of the Rhine from Basle to Holland all able-bodied men joined the nuclei of their regiments, and the divisions and army corps, sadly weakened, were distributed along the river. My regiment, with what was left of Sébastiani's corps, went down the Rhine by easy marches. The weather was splendid, and the country lovely; but we were all heart-broken, foreseeing, as we did, that France was going to lose these fair countries, and that her misfortunes would not stop there.

After passing some time at Cleves and Urdingen, we went on to Nimeguen. On the further bank we could see the Dutch and German population tearing the French flag from their towers and replacing those of their old sovereign. Amid our melancholy thoughts the colonels did their best to reorganize their few remaining troops; but we could do little for want of supplies. Moreover, the necessity of feeding the army forced the Emperor to keep it scattered; while in order to organize it, it should have been concentrated. Meanwhile the enemy required time to recover from the rough handling we had given them, and were in no condition to cross the Rhine and interfere with our reorganization. They left us alone, therefore, throughout November and December, and I passed those months chiefly on the banks of the Rhine with the phantom of an army corps commanded by Macdonald.

At length all the colonels received orders to take all their men who were unmounted to the depots of their regiments, and that of the 23rd Chasseurs being still at Mons, I went there. There I saw the eventful year 1813 out—a year in which I had borne many toils and incurred many dangers. But before concluding my account of it I must briefly describe the closing events of the campaign.

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