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Updated: May 9, 2025
Staff officers, all aglitter with crosses, galloped past; mules, laden with green maize and driven by lean, brown Bedouins, swept past the plate-glass windows of bonbon shops; grave, white-bearded sheiks drank petits verres in the guinguettes; sapeurs, Chasseurs, Zouaves, cantinieres all the varieties of French military life mingled with jet-black Soudans, desert kings wrathful and silent, Eastern women shrouded in haick and serroual, eagle-eyed Arabs flinging back snow-white burnous, and handling ominously the jeweled halts of their cangiars.
Already the sapeurs and infantrymen have joined the ranks of the Old Guard, and Napoleon, with that inimitable verve and inspiring eloquence of which he was pastmaster, was haranguing his troops.
On Monday, which is market day, Briouze presents a most busy scene, and there are plenty of opportunities of studying the genial looking country farmers, their wives, and the large carts in which they drive from the farms. In the midst of the booths, you may see a bronze statue commemorating the "Sapeurs, pompiers" and others of this little place who fell in 1854.
But the sapeurs the old regiment in which Napoleon had served as a young lieutenant in those glorious olden days are now as pale as death, their knees shake under them, their arms tremble in their hands. At ten paces away from the foremost ranks Napoleon halts: "Soldiers," he cries loudly. "Here I am! your Emperor, do you know me?"
They are yelling "Vive l'Empereur!" at the top of their voices, and from walls and bastions reverberates the answering cry "Vive l'Empereur!" vociferated by infantrymen and gunners and sapeurs, and echoed and re-echoed with passionate enthusiasm by the people of Grenoble assembled in their thousands in the narrow streets which abut upon the ramparts.
They were brothers in arms two years ago and served together under the greatest military genius the world has ever known. Napoleon has sent the man on as an emissary, but Delessart will not allow him to speak. "I mean to do my duty," he declares. But in his voice too there has already crept that note of sullenness which characterised the sapeurs from the first.
Sapeurs and infantrymen crowd around the little man in the worn grey redingote, and he with that rough familiarity which bound all soldiers' hearts to him, seizes an old sergeant by the ends of his long moustache: "So, you old dog," he says, "you were going to shoot your Emperor, were you?" "Not me," replies the man with a growl. "Look at our guns. Not one of them was loaded."
The sapeurs murmured an assent, and their officer, Colonel Delessart, feeling the temper of his men, did not dare insist. He quartered them at La Mure to await the arrival of the infantry, and further orders from Général Marchand.
Breakfast being finished, and the ladies having retired, he rose, buckled on his sword again, drew on his gloves, and taking his hat in his hand, he advanced to the window, and desired his men to "fall in." "Men what men?" said poor Mr . "Why, the Marshal has had a company of sapeurs for these three days back in the adjoining village they are now here."
On Monday, which is market day, Briouze presents a most busy scene, and there are plenty of opportunities of studying the genial looking country farmers, their wives, and the large carts in which they drive from the farms. In the midst of the booths, you may see a bronze statue commemorating the "Sapeurs, pompiers" and others of this little place who fell in 1854.
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