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What aggravated the situation of General de Bourmont was that, after having sought a command from Napoleon, as Marshal Ney had from Louis XVIII., he deserted three days before the battle of Waterloo. The royalist, the soldier of the army of Conde, the "Chouan" had suddenly reappeared under the General of the Empire.
These two Generals, Bourmont and Lecourbe, the two arms of Ney as commander, through whom alone he could communicate with the troops, he not only kept with him, but consulted to the last, before he declared for Napoleon. This would have been too dangerous a thing for a tricky politician to have attempted as a blind, but Ney was well known to be only too frank and impulsive.
During the evolutions, a general officer was thrown from his horse; and a universal agitation among a group of ladies evinced that they were in a panic. Soon the name of the general, Count de Bourmont, was heard pronounced; and a faint shriek, followed by a half swoon from one of the fair dames, announced her deep interest in the accident.
Leaving Bourmont in command of the line which holds the Austrians in check, the Emperor himself hastens to oppose Blücher, the most intrepid and the most daring of all his enemies. A cross-march in the depth of winter, with the ground covered with half-frozen snow, will bring him on the flank of the Prussian army. It is dared!
When, on the morrow, Gérard rejoined his chief at the mill of Fleurus, the latter reminded him that he had answered for Bourmont's fidelity with his own head; and, on the general protesting that he had seen Bourmont fight with the utmost devotion, Napoleon replied: "Bah! A man who has been a white will never become a blue: and a blue will never be a white."
Ney found under him in command, as General of Division, Bourmont, an officer of well-known Royalist opinions, who had at one time served with the Vendean insurgents, and who afterwards deserted Napoleon just before Waterloo, although he had entreated to be employed in the campaign.
Six weeks later the insurrection was everywhere subdued; Frotte, and his young aide-de-camp Toustain, had been shot; Bourmont had accepted the offers of the First Consul, and enrolled himself in his service; Georges Cadoudal resisted all the advances of him whom he was soon to pursue with his hatred even to attempting a crime.
During the Hundred Days, General de Bourmont, guilty as was Marshal Ney, abandoned the cause of Napoleon as the Marshal had that of Louis XVIII. But there were attenuating circumstances for their conduct. One could not resist the prestige of the Emperor, nor the other that of the King.
Not only did Ney leave Bourmont in command, but, requiring another Divisional General, instead of selecting a Bonapartist, he urged Lecourbe to leave his retirement and join him.
The natives had conceived they would rush at once to the fort of the Emperor, which they therefore mined, and expected to destroy a number of the enemy by its explosion. This obvious device of war was easily avoided, and General Bourmont, in possession of the heights, from which Algiers is commanded, had no difficulty in making himself master of the place.
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