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When we visited St Cloud, it was the head-quarters of Prince Schwartzenberg; and the Austrian grenadiers mounted guard at the gates of the Imperial Palace. The banks of the Seine, below the Palace, were covered by an immense bivouack of Austrian troops, and the fires of their encampment twinkled in the obscurity of twilight amidst the low brushwood with which the sides of the river were clothed.

The general-in-chief refused to billet them in the villages for fear, said he, of indiscipline and compelled them to bivouack, under canvas, in the mud; seldom, moreover, allowing any fires to be kindled. For a score of days did this state of affairs continue, and the effect of it was seen at the battle of Beaune-la-Rolande.

The curtains were closely tucked in all round, and, in their fleeting and hurried glance, they felt no inclination to disturb them, and rather proceeded to draw up the table before the hearth, to which they speedily removed the fire from below; and, ere many minutes, with that activity which a bivouack life invariably teaches, their supper smoked before them, and five happier fellows did not sit down that night within a large circuit around.

As his children were at school, captain Willoughby determined not to take his family immediately to the Hutted Knoll, as the place soon came to be called, from the circumstance of the original bivouack.

The appearance of this bivouack, dimly discerned through the rugged stems of lofty trees, or half-hid by the luxuriant branches which obscured the view; the picturesque and varied aspect of the plain covered with waggons, and all the accompaniments of military service; the columns of smoke rising from the fires with which it was interspersed, and the innumerable horses crowded amidst the confused multitude of men and carriages, or resting in more sequestered spots on the sides of the river, with their forms finely reflected in its unruffled waters presented a spectacle which exhibited war in its most striking aspect, and gave a character to the scene which would have suited the romantic strain of Salvator's mind.

They landed at some distance from the beach, and, as it was late in the day, they would not make their public entree till the next morning; for the New Zealanders are very fond of giving a grand effect to all their public meetings. I determined to pay them a visit, to witness the ceremonies of the night bivouack, which proved a most picturesque scene, and wild and beautiful in the extreme.

As I walked along, each moment some old and early association being suggested by the objects around, I felt my arm suddenly seized. I turned hastily round, and beheld a very old companion in many a hard-fought field and merry bivouack. Tom O'Flaherty of the 8th. Poor Tom was sadly changed since we last met, which was at a ball in Madrid.

It is remarkable that the business of cooking the food, which, in houses and cities, is considered a disagreeable drudgery, which is to be kept as much as possible out of sight, is always in the woods a very important part of the entertainment, in which all the guests are pleased to take a share. Our party of travellers remained at the place of their bivouack more than an hour.

We had now entered that charming region where elk and antelope abounded. On our morning-march we had seen herds of both trooping over the sward almost within range of our rifles. Even as we sat, a band of beautiful antelopes appeared in the open ground near our bivouack fire; and, after satisfying their curiosity by gazing at us for a moment, they trotted off into the covert.

On the 6th of November, the Russian winter fairly set in; and thenceforth, between the heavy columns of regular troops which on every side watched and threatened them, the continued assaults of the Cossacks who hung around them in clouds by day and by night, rushing on every detached party, disturbing every bivouack, breaking up bridges before, and destroying every straggler behind them, and the terrible severity of the climate, the frost, the snow, the wind the sufferings of this once magnificent army were such as to baffle all description.