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Updated: May 14, 2025
The crowd consisted of a few Russians and many of Napoleon's soldiers who were not on duty Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen, in a variety of uniforms. To the right and left of the post stood rows of French troops in blue uniforms with red epaulets and high boots and shakos.
And everybody felt relieved when he marched farther with his troop. These were the transformed Volons. They had exchanged their crimson shakos in the dense forest for the French helmets, and wrapped themselves in the blue mantles taken from the luggage-wagons.
He fired, and several of us rushed for the ladder, but before we could think of climbing they were upon us. Zébédé, Buche, and all who had not had time to get up the ladder drove them back with their bayonets. It seems to me as if I could see those Prussians still, with their big mustaches, their red faces and flat shakos, furious at being checked. I never had such a shock as that.
The English who had muskets were told off, in equal numbers, to each of these parties; as were those who had nothing but their clubs. The major then ordered his soldiers to take off their coats, and to leave their shakos behind them. The French major took the command of one party, and asked Terence to take command of the other. This he declined.
Meanwhile the flames burst forth anew, and amid the crackling of the burning timbers and the dense smoke of the lighted thatch, the fight went on. "Vandamme! Vandamme!" cried several voices, in ecstasy; "here come the grenadiers!" And, true enough, the tall shakos peered through the blue cloud. "Hurrah for the Faubourg!" shouted a wild voltigeur, as he waved his cap and sprang forward.
Cavalry, artillery, infantry, foot and horse, with oak leaves in their shakos, on their caps, and on the ends of their muskets and lances. They shouted so that you could hear them a league away. Just as you hear the chaffinches, thrushes, and blackbirds, and thousands of other birds in the autumn.
We were following the Wurtzen high road, our muskets slung on our backs, our great-coat capes turned up, bending beneath our knapsacks, and feeling down-hearted enough, as you may imagine. The rain was falling, and ran from our shakos down our necks; the wind shook the poplars, and their yellow leaves, fluttering around us, told of the approach of winter. So hour after hour passed.
At the same time, our soldiers rushed in through the lanes, over the hedges and fences, turning from time to time to fire on the enemy. Men of all arms were mingled, some without shakos or knapsacks, their clothes torn and covered with blood; but they retreated furiously, and were nearly all mere children, boys of fifteen or twenty; but courage is inborn in the French people.
One may imagine the condition of from twelve to fifteen hundred poor wretches clothed in gray great-coats with leaden buttons, shakos shaped like flower-pots, and shoes worn out by marches and counter-marches pale, weak, most of them without a sou, in a rich city like Leipzig.
Pepe Velasquez is a hard hitter, and if I had worn one of their pasteboard shakos, my head would have been split in two like a ripe tomata. But as it was, the blow glanced sideways, and only shaved off a bit of the scalp, though it left me senseless, and as like dead as night be. After the troops and your señoria had marched away, and just as life was returning, some peasants found me.
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