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Updated: May 28, 2025
A week earlier, he had foreseen the chance that that leader would expose his flank: on the 7th he charged Marmont to occupy Sézanne, where he would be strongly supported; on the afternoon of the 9th he set out from Nogent to reinforce his Marshal; and on the morrow Marmont and Ney fell upon one of Blücher's scattered columns at Champaubert.
A week earlier, he had foreseen the chance that that leader would expose his flank: on the 7th he charged Marmont to occupy Sézanne, where he would be strongly supported; on the afternoon of the 9th he set out from Nogent to reinforce his Marshal; and on the morrow Marmont and Ney fell upon one of Blücher's scattered columns at Champaubert.
"Oh, the poor man." Crash goes a shell. Everybody wonders where it has fallen. In a few seconds the éclats rain down into the street. "Dirty animals," says the voice of the old man in the darkest of all the corners. Madame Champaubert begins the story of how a cousin of hers who keeps a grocery-shop at Mailly, near the frontier, was cheated by a Boche tinware salesman.
Napoleon resumed, however, his march, and having been detained some time at Ferté, in consequence of the destruction of the bridge, took the direction of Chateau-Thierry and Soissons, while Mortier and Marmont received his orders to resume the offensive in front of Meaux. He hoped, in this manner, to throw himself on the flank of Blucher's march, as he had done before at Champaubert.
But the Ring had sailed peacefully along, three thousand feet aloft, deluging the countryside with its dazzling light, sending its beams into the casemates of the huge fortresses of the Rhine and the outer line of the French fortifications, searching the redoubts and trenches, but doing no harm to the sleeping armies that lay beneath it; until at last the silence of the night had been broken by the thunder of "Thanatos," and in the twinkling of an eye the Lavender Ray had descended, to turn the village of Champaubert into the smoking crater of a dying volcano.
On this occasion the commanders on both sides were exposed to personal danger, for Napoleon had a horse killed under him, and a Cossack fell dead by the side of Marshal Blucher. A few days after this battle Napoleon entered Troves, where he stayed but a short time, and then advanced to Champaubert. At the latter place was fought the battle which hears its name.
Meantime the van of the same army, commanded by Sacken, who were advancing on La Ferté, and the division of D'York, already in sight of Meaux, turned on hearing the cannonade of Champaubert, and countermarched with the view of supporting Alsusieff.
He left none of them unanswered. Let us see, why should his father be indignant? Are there not cases where insurrection rises to the dignity of duty? What was there that was degrading for the son of Colonel Pontmercy in the combat which was about to begin? It is no longer Montmirail nor Champaubert; it is something quite different.
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