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Heedless of all that the future might bring, and concentrating his thoughts on the problems of the present, the great warrior journeyed rapidly eastwards to Châlons-sur-Marne, and opened the most glorious of his campaigns. And yet it began with disaster. After sharp fighting, the Prussians were driven from the castle and town. But the success was illusory.
Certainly you had a thousand times better excuse than had the Austrians and Prussians, who, after having been our allies, entered upon this savage war of invasion without a shadow of excuse, save that it was the will of Napoleon.
Along that road the army could halt, and stem the tide of pursuit, however hotly it pressed. The Prussians had already united with the Russians; the defection of Austria could not be long distant; Saxony was appealed to, as a member of the German family, to join in arms against the Tyrant; and the wild "houra" of the Cossack now blended with the loud "Vorwarts" of injured Prussia.
There was room for six, provided they were careful how they disposed of their legs. Loubet, by way of diverting his comrades and making them forget their hunger, had labored for some time to convince Lapoulle that there was to be a ration of poultry issued the next morning, but they were too sleepy to keep up the joke; they were snoring, and the Prussians might come, it was all one to them.
Both propositions were strenuously contested by Rogers. In regard to the second point in particular, he showed triumphantly, by citations from the "Polonians, Prussians, and Lithuanians," that commissions ought to be previously exhibited.
"The French! what could the French do, or indeed all the world besides, against the English and Prussians united, who between them had restored peace to Europe, and dethroned Buonaparte;" but I am not quite sure that we decided the question by whom the battle of Waterloo was won, a matter concerning which my friend appeared to be sensitive, and I, in the consciousness of having fact to fall back upon, felt altogether indifferent.
At the same time, it is possible that it may arouse such a burst of national enthusiasm that the resistance which, as far as the civil population is concerned, has as yet been contemptible in fact, has not been attempted at all may become of so obstinate and desperate a character that the Prussians may be fairly wearied out. "There is scarcely any hope of future victories in the field.
At the Assembly Gambetta came up to me and said: "Master, when can I see you? I have a good many things to explain to you." Thiers has been named chief of the executive power. He is to leave to-night for Versailles, the headquarters of the Prussians. February 18. To-night there was a meeting of the Left, in the Rue Lafaurie-Monbadon. The meeting chose me as president.
Prussian right wing pushing grandly forward, bent in that manner, to take Kesselsdorf and its fire-throats in flank. The Prussians tramp on with the usual grim-browed resolution, foot in front, horse in rear; but they have a terrible problem at that Kesselsdorf, with its retrenched batteries, and numerous grenadiers fighting under cover.
A conical height of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet; rises rather suddenly from the still-sloping ground, checking the slope there; on which the Austrian populations have built some memorial lately, notable to Tourists. Here Friedrich "stood during the Battle," say they; and the Prussians "had a battery there."
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