United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Upon that day the news reached Wellington that General Chauvel, with 2000 cavalry, and 20 guns, would reach Marmont on the evening of the 22d, or the morning of the 23d, and the English general therefore resolved to retreat, unless Marmont should, by some mistake, give him a chance of fighting to advantage.
His old friend, Marmont, who had won the Marshal's baton after Wagram, measured his strength with Wellington in the plains of Leon with brilliant success until a false move near Salamanca exposed him to a crushing rejoinder, and sent his army flying back towards Burgos.
Marmont had drawn his whole army back across the Toro on the night of the 16th, had marched to Tordesillas, crossed there, and in the afternoon, after a march of fifty miles, had fallen upon Cotton's outposts, and driven them across the Trabancos.
And as he rode, de Marmont thought more and more of Crystal. The last three months had only enhanced his passionate love for her and his maddening desire to win her yet at all costs. St. Genis would of course be fighting to-day. Perchance a convenient shot would put him effectively out of the way.
"Remember, he had turned me out of his house two nights before, without a word of courtesy or regret on the mere suspicion of my intercourse with de Marmont. Were you too full with your own rage to notice what happened then? Mlle. Crystal drew away her skirts from me as if I were a leper. What credence would they have given my words? Would the Comte even have admitted me into his presence?"
The next moment the door of the coach was opened from without, and the light of the lanthorn held up by a man in uniform fell full on the figure and on the profile of Victor de Marmont. "M. le Comte, I regret," he said coldly, "in the name of the Emperor I must demand from you the restitution of his property." The Comte shrugged his shoulders and vouchsafed no reply.
He was on the point of starting for Sabugal, whither he had perforce to carry a dozen skins of wine, and with some little trouble I persuaded the old barber-surgeon to accompany us, bearing a petition to Marmont to be allowed peaceable possession of his shop.
Leaving Marmont along with Grouchy's horse to hold Blücher in check on the east, he struck westwards against Sacken's Russians near Montmirail.
Egypt was, he thought, the right place to maintain his reputation, and to add fresh glory to his name. On the 12th of April 1798 he was appointed General-in-Chief of the army of the East. It was about this time that Marmont was married to Mademoiselle Perregaux; and Bonaparte's aide de camp, La Valletta, to Mademoiselle Beauharnais. This is another fictitious incident of his historical romance.
De Marmont did not wait to ask him to what this brief remark had applied; he bade his friend a hasty farewell, then he turned on his heel, and gaily whistling the refrain of the "Marseillaise," stalked out of the hotel.
Word Of The Day