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Updated: May 24, 2025
A day or two after this, the Snider rifles ordered from England by Captain Barclay arrived; and although the men at first preferred the chassepots, with which they were familiar, they were soon accustomed to the new weapons; and readily acknowledged the advantage which as their commander pointed out to them the dark-brown barrels possessed, for skirmishers, over the bright barrels of the chassepots which, with the sun shining upon them, would betray them to an enemy miles away.
Our only arms were the captain's whip, our uniforms our peasants' blouses, and our food the Gruyere cheese. Our sole wealth consisted in our ammunition, packages of cartridges which we had stowed away inside some of the large cheeses. We had about a thousand of them, just two hundred each, but we needed rifles, and they must be chassepots.
Station after station we passed; bridges, level crossings, tunnels. Everywhere I saw soldiers guarding the line and the bayonets of the old chassepôts glinting in the starlight. Now and again the train would suddenly pull up for some mysterious reason.
The Monarchists appointed a Committee of Nine to negotiate this matter with the prince at Fröhsdorf; but Marshal MacMahon gave them this warning: "If the White Flag is raised against the Tricolor, the chassepots will go off of themselves, and I cannot answer for order in the streets or for discipline in the army."
That is from a battery up at Creteil, and now the Prussian guns on Montmesly, and all the way round Ville Juif, are answering. The affair is becoming hot. Listen, the Chassepots are at work." Indeed, between the sounds of the cannon a continuous murmur could be heard. It sounded like a railway train passing over a distant viaduct. "Is there any place where we can see better from?"
The men are armed with French chassepots, and are well dressed in new uniforms supplied by an Oran firm. All the war material was embarked on board the French yacht Zut, which landed it last month on the shores of Rastenga between Cape Eau and Melilla under the direction of the Pretender's troops."
Very few of them guessed what that peculiar sound meant, or imagined that they had been engaged with the French, but next morning Europe knew from General De Failly's report that 'the Chassepots had done wonders.
Gladstone long life to him had said, "We must do something for you." Now what could that be? He'd scarcely go so far as to give them out Minié rifles or Chassepots, though arms of precision, as they call them, would have put many a poor fellow out of pain as Bob Magrath said when he limped into the public-house with a ball in his back "It's only a 'healing measure, don't make a fuss about it."
Barricades had been thrown up across the Douzy road, and all the smaller streets; small parties of soldiers had been thrown into the houses by way of garrison; every narrow lane, every garden had become a fortress, and since three o'clock the troops, awakened from their slumbers without beat of drum or call of bugle in the inky blackness, had been at their posts, their chassepots freshly greased and cartridge boxes filled with the obligatory ninety rounds of ammunition.
But the objects that were encountered most frequently, at every step, in fact, were abandoned weapons, sabers, bayonets, and, more particularly, chassepots; and so numerous were they that they seemed to have sprouted from the earth, a harvest that had matured in a single ill-omened day.
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