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"So you do, sir, so you do! and it was only my gammon. But you do wish you was a swaddy now, and wore a red coat instead of a blue." "No I don't, Dick," said the lad colouring; "but I do think we naval officers ought to wear swords, the same as those boy-soldiers." "So you ought, sir;" said the sailor, winking to himself; "but never you mind about that, sir.
A quick burst of Spanish anger, a sharp stab of the Spanish poniard the frequency of such incidents began to create a panic among the French boy-soldiers. The seizure and sack of a city had for years been a traditional amusement of the grand army, connected in Italy and Germany with little or no loss of life, and enhanced by the acquisition of enormous booty.
There was need of this, for his generals and boy-soldiers did not stop to hold the Duero; evacuating Madrid, they never halted until they were behind the Ebro, in what they considered a kind of French borderland. The siege of Saragossa was abandoned, and Duhesme evacuated Catalonia.
Thenceforth my busy fancies carried me ever into the fascinating world where boy-soldiers kept some outpost for their absent Prince, bearing a shield with his sign of a red cross on it; where devils shaped as dragons came swooping down on the pilgrim, but were driven away defeated after hard struggle; where angels came and talked with little children, and gave them some talisman which warned them of coming danger, and lost its light if they were leaving the right path.
The contempt of the people for the boy-soldiers at whose head he had marched into Madrid, combined with disdain for his own pompousness and with fury at his subsequent cruelty, goes far to account for much that was disastrous to French prestige and to France in the sequel.
On the faces of bearded veterans and boy-soldiers alike was a splendid pride. The victories of Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville had electrified the troops.
All the school-children of the city, down to little mites of things who can scarcely toddle, have been brought out to see him. Boy-soldiers, with Lilliputian muskets, salute him as he passes. A mob of men, heedless of the gendarmes or of the horses' hoofs, run before the cavalcade, in the burning heat, and cheer hoarsely.
The windows, the music, the flowers, all were metaphors of her: and, as the organ swirled his soul along in the rapids of its passionate, prayerful sound, it seemed to him that Alice and he already stood at the gate of Heaven! Presently, across his mingled sensations came a measured tramp as of boy-soldiers marching in line. You have heard it!
Instead of the usual groups of well-behaved boy-soldiers in rough uniforms, the barrack looked deserted, and its lower windows had been closed up to their top panes with bags of hay and mattresses. Not a soldier, not even a sentry, was to be seen. I dressed myself and went out to collect news.