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Updated: May 13, 2025
"Be to-morrow what you have always been, my brave fellows," said he, "and the Russians are ours; we have them!" The air resounded with cries of 'Vive l'Empereur', and there was neither officer nor soldier who did not count on a victory next day.
But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away, there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must flee. An external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this shock came in due time. It was what the French called "le hourra de l'Empereur." Some Cossacks on the prowl for booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly captured him.
It was a bright day, with a clear, frosty atmosphere and a blue sky, and well suited the brilliant spectacle. Scarcely had the Emperor issued from the Tuileries, when ten thousand shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" rent the air; the cannon of the Invalides thundered forth at the same moment; and the crash of the military bands added their clangor to the sounds of joy.
He was riding a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse with a crimson gold-embroidered saddlecloth. On approaching Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did so, Rostov, with his cavalryman's eye, could not help noticing that Napoleon did not sit well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions shouted "Hurrah!" and "Vive l'Empereur!"
He jumped to his feet, then he picked up his hat from the table where he had laid it down, tossed it up into the air as high as it would go, and shouted with all his might: "Vive l'Empereur!" The man who now drew rein with abrupt clumsiness in front of the auberge looked hot, tired and travel-stained.
For the first days, some few solitary voices alone accompanied the "Vive l'Empereur!" of his generals, and of his aides-de-camp. This indifference, or, as he called it, mutinous spirit, was so much the more provoking as it was unexpected.
Then the major handed me his eagle, saluted for the last time by the glorious fragment of the intrepid regiment with cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" they were going to die for him. It was the Cæsar morituri te salutant of Tacitus, but in this case the cry was uttered by heroes. The infantry eagles were very heavy, and their weight was increased by a stout oak pole on the top of which they were fixed.
That officer, Feodor Feodorovitch, is a man who knows vintages and boasts that he has never swallowed a glass of anything so common as Crimean wine. When I named champagne he cried, 'Vive l'Empereur! A true patriot. So we started, merry as school-children. The entire company followed, then all the diners playing little whistles, and all the servants besides, single file.
While the rigours of the conscription had invaded every family in France, from Normandie to La Vendee while the untilled fields, the ruined granaries, the half-deserted villages, all attested the depopulation of the land, those talismanic words, "l'Empereur et la gloire," by some magic mechanism seemed all-sufficient not only to repress regret and suffering, but even stimulate pride, and nourish valour; and even yet, when it might be supposed that like the brilliant glass of a magic lantern, the gaudy pageant had passed away, leaving only the darkness and desolation behind it the memory of those days under the empire survives untarnished and unimpaired, and every sacrifice of friends or fortune is accounted but little in the balance when the honour of La Belle France, and the triumphs of the grand "armee," are weighted against them.
And then we would have our little mutinies, too, and up would come the infantry and the guns from Plymouth, and that would set us yelling 'Vive l'Empereur' once more, as though we wished them to hear us in Paris. We had lively moments at Dartmoor, and we contrived that those who were about us should be lively also.
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