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Updated: May 5, 2025
By the 17th all was ready, and having learned by scouting parties sent in the direction of Richmond and as far as Newmarket that the enemy's cavalry was returning to Lee's army I started that evening on my return march, crossing the Chickahominy at Jones's bridge, and bivouacking on the 19th near Baltimore crossroads.
On the contrary, he has turned up the Alamo, and is bivouacking on its bank, for a purpose so atrocious that no one would give credit to it unacquainted with the military life of Mexico in the days of the Dictator Don Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. This purpose is declared in a dialogue between the lancer colonel and his lieutenant, occurring inside the conical tent shortly after its being set up.
There were two regiments of foot bivouacking here, with their arms piled under the trees, while, the men were variously employed, some on duty before the houses, others cleaning their accoutrements, and others again playing at all kinds of games.
But these good times could not last very long, so we were soon marching back to the area we had left, bivouacking one night in a large forest near Barlin, the next night at Roclincourt, and the day following in the line again to the right of our last sector.
Rastignac had seen you the evening before at the Bouffons; we took courage again, and made it a point of honor to find out whether you were roosting in a tree in the Champs-Elysees, or in one of those philanthropic abodes where the beggars sleep on a twopenny rope, or if, more luckily, you were bivouacking in some boudoir or other. We could not find you anywhere.
We here had our first experience with scorpions and tarantulas, and soon learned that it was prudent, when bivouacking on the ground, to carefully turn over all loose rocks and logs in order to find and get rid of those ugly customers. The scorpions were about four or five inches long, the fore part of the body something like a crawfish, with a sharp stinger on the end of the tail.
Meanwhile we did duty at the citadel with a battalion of the Twenty-seventh, and from the top of the ramparts we saw all the environs covered with troops, some bivouacking, others quartered in the villages. The sergeant had formed a particular friendship for me, and on the eighteenth, on relieving guard at Warthau gate, he said: "Fusilier Bertha, the Emperor has arrived."
They advanced by a forced march to reconnoitre as far as Brandy Station, where they met the enemy in force and engaged him in a sharp contest. They returned, however, without serious loss. Our main army is retreating toward Washington. On the evening of the thirteenth, while bivouacking near Bealeton Station, a serio-comical scene diverted for a time the attention of our officers and men.
Again she went up into leagues of clear pine forest, with stems as straight as lances; meeting now a farmer, and now a school-girl or two, and once a squad of scouts, ill-mounted, worse clad, and yet more sorrily armed; bivouacking with the jolly, tattered fellows, Mary and one of the other women singing for them, and the "boys" singing for Mary, and each applauding each about the pine-knot fire, and the women and children by and by lying down to slumber, in soldier fashion, with their feet to the brands, under the pines and the stars, while the gray-coats stood guard in the wavering fire-light; but Mary lying broad awake staring at the great constellation of the Scorpion, and thinking now of him she sought, and now remorsefully of that other scout, that poor boy whom the spy had shot far away yonder to the north and eastward.
They went in one by one. The quay was thronged with soldiers. A regiment was bivouacking there with their arms piled. The Councillors of State soon numbered about thirty. They set to work to deliberate. A draft protest was drawn up. At the moment when it was about to be signed the porter came in, pale and stammering. He declared that he was executing his orders, and he enjoined them to withdraw.
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