Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
The Englishman aimlessly trailed his cane along the green pickets of the fence till they ended in a stone arch which rose high over the driveway. The gates were open, and coming toward the two wanderers as they stood at the curb rolled the royal barouche, on each side of which rode a mounted cuirassier, sashed and helmeted. The Englishman, however, had observed nothing; he was lost in some dream.
Officers of different regiments were crowding everywhere; an extraordinarily lanky cuirassier of German extraction was languidly inquiring of a lame horse-dealer 'what he expected to get for that chestnut. A fair-haired young hussar, a boy of nineteen, was choosing a trace-horse to match a lean carriage-horse; a post-boy in a low- crowned hat, with a peacock's feather twisted round it, in a brown coat and long leather gloves tied round the arm with narrow, greenish bands, was looking for a shaft-horse.
"Well, then, they must stand where they are. I hear cannon towards the left; yonder, near Frischermont." At this moment the light cavalry swept past the base of the hill on which we stood, hotly followed by the French heavy cuirassier brigade. Three of our guns were taken; and the cheering of the French infantry, as they advanced to the charge, presaged their hope of victory.
But it is Amazon's work this, no doubt of it, and the first fine pre-Raphaelite picture of battle we have had; profoundly interesting, and showing all manner of illustrative and realistic faculty.... The sky is most tenderly painted, and with the truest outline of cloud of all in the Exhibition; and the terrific piece of gallant wrath and ruin on the extreme left, when the cuirassier is catching round the neck of his horse as he falls, and the convulsed fallen horse, seen through the smoke below, is wrought through all the truth of its frantic passion with gradations of color and shade which I have not seen the like of since Turner's death."
A motley force, indeed, did we present: cavalry of every sort, from the steel-clad cuirassier to the gay hussar, dragoons, chasseurs, guides, and light cavalry, all mixed up together, and all eagerly recounting the several experiences of the campaign as it fell under their eyes in different quarters.
"He wore the cuirassier uniform of the great Frederick's period, a highly ornamented dress that suited the War Lord, who was painted and powdered to perfection, extremely well, especially as Wellington boots, a very becoming wig and his strange head-gear really and seemingly added to his figure, while his usually stern face beamed pleasantly under the powder and rouge laid on by expert hands."
But I, being nearest, caught up the colors in this here left hand," here the Corporal raised his gleaming hook, "but a Cuirassier, 'e caught them too, and there's him at one end o' the staff and me at t'other, pulling and hauling, and then all at once he'd got 'em. And because why? Because I hadn't got no left 'and to 'old with.
When the Count received me he was clothed in the undress uniform of the Cuirassier regiment, of which he was the colonel.
"I am compelled to ask one of you, messieurs, to act for me. I have brought no friends. Will you?" The one-eyed cuirassier said judicially, "That cannot be refused." The other veteran remarked, "It's awkward all the same."
The great churches were strewn with forage, and filled with the horses of the cavalry; there might be seen the lumbering steeds of the cuirassier, eating their corn from the richly-carved box of a confessional; here lay the travel-stained figure of a dragoon, stretched asleep across the steps of the altar.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking