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Updated: April 30, 2025
* An officer wrote me during the Franco-Prussian war that at Rezonville, in 1870, when brilliantly charging at the head of his men, Michel Ney, then a colonel of dragoons, received three sabre-cuts over his head and face, and after killing five Prussians rolled under his wounded horse. He eventually recovered.
"Yes; it is I, Monsieur the Baron," replied the artilleryman, proud to be recognized; "the first time was at Austerlitz, the second at Jena, and then I received two thrusts of a lance at Smolensk." "Yes, yes," said the surgeon kindly; "and now what is the matter with you?" "Three sabre-cuts on my left arm while I was defending my piece from the Prussian hussars."
Whether it was owing to the medicine or to his iron constitution gaining the upper hand, at all events, in six weeks he was on his feet. His wounds had closed, and only the scars of the sabre-cuts showed how deeply injured the old Cossack had been. But he was markedly sad and morose. Three deep wrinkles engraved themselves upon his brow and never more departed thence. Then he looked around him.
There was one countenance, which, deadly white, and gashed by a Turkish sabre, had been ruddy with young life in the morning. It was that of Nicholas Naranovitsch. He lay on his back near his dead horse, and close to a heap of slaughtered men. He was so faint and so shattered by sabre-cuts and bullets as to be utterly unable to move anything but his eyes.
The book of the law must be covered, when those who have torn and stained its pages by musket-balls and sabre-cuts receive the civic honours.
In the next year he fought in Italy under Maréchal de Maillebois. In 1746, at the disastrous action under the walls of Piacenza, where he twice rallied his regiment, he received five sabre-cuts, two of which were in the head, and was made prisoner.
They were stark veterans, too, every man seamed with ancient sabre-cuts, whereas my crew had many of them hardly attained the maturity which is the gift of ten long summers and the whole thing was so sudden that I had no time to invent a reinforcement of riper years.
At that moment the army came up; it was composed of five divisions, and had not yet been in action with its singular enemies. To swiftness and the charge of horse, and to sabre-cuts, it would be necessary to oppose the immobility of the foot-soldier, his long bayonet, and masses presenting a front on every side.
Many of the young men were dressed in the picturesque taste peculiar to German students. Gay feathers and unique caps set off to advantage the fine features and fair complexions which render some of the students remarkable, though the faces are too often disfigured by tell-tale sabre-cuts.
He had two sabre-cuts on the head, a musket ball in his shoulder; and it was here that he and I who had got two thrust of a lance for my share were taken prisoners; and by whom, worse luck? why, a renegado! By a Frenchman an emigrant marquis, then colonel in the service of Russia and who afterwards but one day you shall know all."
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