LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

He seemed to be an impudent sort of fellow, and said, with the utmost sang-froid, that the reason he deserted was that he had not been made an officer as he was promised, and he hoped that Louis XVIII would be more sensible of his merits than the Emperor Napoleon. We returned to Leuze to dinner in the afternoon. This morning we went to assist at a review of General Clinton's division, on a plain called Le Paturage, about seven miles distant from Leuze. The Light Brigade and the Hanoverian Brigades form this division. The manoeuvres were performed with tolerable precision, but they were chiefly confined to advancing in line, retiring by alternate companies covered by light infantry and change of position on one of the flanks by échelon. The British troops were perfect; the Hanoverians not so, they being for the most part new levies. In one of the échelon movements, when the line was to be formed on the left company of the left battalion, a Hanoverian battalion, instead of preserving its parallelism, was making a terrible diversion to its right, when a thundering voice from the commander of the brigade to the commandant of the battalion: "Mein Gott, Herr Major, wo gehn Sie hin?" roused him from his reverie; when he must have perceived, had he wheeled up into line, the fearful interval he had left between his own and the next battalion on the left.

      After the review had finished we repaired to the château of the Prince de Ligne, then occupied by Lieut.-General Sir H. Clinton, to partake of a breakfast given by him and his lady. On the breaking up of the breakfast party, General Wilson and myself remained at the château to dine with General Adam al fresco in the garden under the trees. The palace and garden of the Prince de Ligne are both very magnificent. The latter is of great extent, but too regular, too much in the Dutch taste to please me. Little or no furniture is in the palace; but there are some family pictures and a theatre fitted up in one of the halls for the purpose of private theatricals. In the garden is a monument erected by the late Prince de Ligne to one of his sons, Charles by name, who was killed in the Russian service at the siege of Ismail. The present prince is a minor and resides at Bruxelles.

      GRAMMONT, May 18.

      We left Leuze yesterday afternoon and arrived here at seven in the evening in order to be present at the cavalry review the next morning. We partook of an elegant supper given to us by our friend, Major Grant of the 18th Hussars, and we were much entertained and enlivened by the effusions of his brilliant genius and inexhaustible wit. The whole cavalry of the British army passed in review this morning before the Duke of Wellington, who was there with all his staff and received the salutes of all the corps like Godfrey, con volto placido e composto. It was a very brilliant spectacle. The Duke de Berri was present. I think I never beheld so ignoble and disagreeable a countenance as this prince possesses. I thought to myself that he had much better have stayed away from this review; for he must be insensible to all patriotism who could take pleasure in contemplating a foreign force about to enter and ravage his own country. We learn that the Duchess d'Angoulême is to have a review of the fidèles very shortly. She is certainly much more warlike than the males of that family; this disposition is increased by her religious fanaticism. This renders her, of course, a most dangerous person to meddle with politics; but great allowances must be made for her feelings, which must naturally be embittered by the recollection of so much suffering during the Revolution and of the barbarous and inhuman treatment experienced by her father and mother.

      I observed a peculiarity in this part of the country, viz., that there are villages lying close to each other in some of which French is spoken, in others Flemish; and that, with some few exceptions, the inhabitants of neighbouring villages are reciprocally unintelligible. General Wilson does not intend to return to Bruxelles. I shall accompany him as far as Gand and then return to Bruxelles to await the issue of the contest.

      BRUXELLES, June 11.

      I took leave of General Wilson at Gand on the 22nd of last month and immediately returned here, where I have been ever since. I have shifted my quarters to a less expensive hotel and am now lodged at the Hôtel de la Paix. We get an excellent dinner at the table d'hôte for one and a half francs, wine not included; this is paid for extra, and is generally at the price of three francs per bottle. This hotel is very neatly fitted up and is very near the Hôtel de Ville. At the table d'hôte I frequently meet Prussian officers who on coming in to visit Bruxelles put up here. We have just learned the proceedings of the Champ de Mai at Paris, by which it appears that Napoleon is solemnly recognized and confirmed as Emperor of the French. This intelligence sent a young Prussian officer, who sat next to me, in a transport of joy, for this makes the war certain. The Prussians seem determined to revenge themselves for the humiliation they suffered from the French during the time they occupied their country, and I sincerely pity by anticipation the fate of the French peasants upon whom these gentlemen may chance to be quartered. Terrible will be the first shock of battle, and it may be daily expected, and dreadful will be the consequences to the poor inhabitants of the seat of war. Cannot this war be avoided? I am not politician enough to foresee the consequences of allowing Napoleon to keep quiet and undisturbed possession of the throne of France; but the consequences of a defeat on the part of the Allies will be the loss of Belgium and the probable annihilation of the British army; certainly the dissolution of the coalition, for the minor German powers, and very likely Austria also, would be induced to make a separate peace. We can clearly see that Napoleon has not now the power he formerly possessed and that the Republican party, into whose hands he has thrown himself, seem disposed not only to remain at peace, but to shackle him in every possible manner. It is evident, too, that his last success was owing to the dislike of the people to the Bourbons from their injudicious and treacherous conduct; and the threats and impossible language held by the priests and emigrants towards the holders of property paved the way for the success of his enterprise and enabled him to achieve a triumph unparalleled in history.

      On the contrary, by forcing him to go to war, should he gain the first victory, Belgium will be re-united to France, all the resources of that country brought into the scale against the Allies; Napoleon will be more popular than ever, the Republican party will be put to silence, the enthusiasm of the army will rise beyond all restraint, and, in a word, Napoleon will be himself again. The other Allies can do little without the assistance of England, and our finances are by no means in a state to bear such intolerable drains.

      As to the Prussians, on minute enquiry I do not find that they were so ill-treated by the French as is generally believed, and that, except the burden of having troops quartered on them (no small annoyance, I allow), they had not much reason to complain. The quartering of the troops on them and the payment of the war contributions was the necessary consequence of the occupation of their country by an enemy; but I have just been reading a German work, written by a native of Berlin, shortly after the entry of the French troops in that city after the battle of Jena in 1806. This work is entitled Vertraute Briefe aus Berlin, and in it the author distinctly declares that the discipline observed by the French troops during the occupation of Berlin was highly strict and praiseworthy, and that the few excesses that took place were committed by the troops of the Rhenish Confederation; and he adds that the inhabitants preferred having a French soldier quartered on them to a Westphalian, Bavarian or Würtembergher. Further, the troops that behaved with the greatest oppression and insolence towards the burghers were those belonging to a corps composed of native Prussians, raised for the service of Napoleon by the Prince of Isenburg.[12] In his recruiting address the prince invites the Prussian youth to enter into the service of the invincible Napoleon, and tells him that to the soldier of Napoleon everything is permitted. The regiment was soon fitted up and the soldiers began to put in practice in good earnest the theory of the affiche. They committed excesses of all sorts; and one officer in particular behaved so brutally and infamously to a poor tailor on whom he was quartered, and to whom, before he entered the French service, he was under the greatest obligations, that General Hulin, the commandant of the place at Berlin during the French occupation, was obliged to cashier him publicly on the parade and to cause his epaulettes to be torn from his coat in order to mark the disgust and indignation that he and all the French officers felt at the base ingratitude of this man.

      This work, "Vertraute Briefe" (confidential letters), contains much curious matter and very interesting anecdotes respecting the corruption, venality and depravation that prevailed in the Prussian Court and army previous to the war in 1806. Let this suffice to show that the Prussians have not so much

Скачать книгу