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Updated: June 26, 2025
Orders were then given for all to dismount and, leaving their horses to be held by parties of their comrades four horses to one man the rest advanced on foot against their apparently greatly inferior foe, keeping up a heavy fire with their carbines. This was what the commandant of the franc tireurs had hoped for, and expected.
After another halt, they again started; and Captain Duprat accompanied them as far as Montargis, where there was a small body of franc tireurs. Captain Duprat's orders were to sleep at Montargis, and then return to Chateauneuf the next day.
As it is, we are safe; and tomorrow night we shall, I believe, make an expedition, and sweep the woods clear of these troublesome gentry. "These franc tireurs will be mischievous if we do not give them a sharp lesson. The general's proclamation gave notice that every one of them taken would be shot, and our colonel is just the man to carry out the order."
"Perhaps so," Ralph said, a little gravely for he had already noticed that the discipline was very different, among these men, than that to which he had been accustomed among the franc tireurs of Dijon; "perhaps so, but we can hardly be too careful. "How do you all like Colonel Tempe?" "The colonel would be an excellent fellow, were he not our colonel," the officer laughed.
The Germans were still at some distance from Besancon, being watched by Colonel Tempe and his franc tireurs, and by the irregular forces.
It would be difficult to find a more workmanlike little corps than the franc tireurs of Dijon as, with the band of the national guard at their head, playing the Marseillaise, they marched through the old city. Their uniform was a brownish gray Their blankets rolled up tight and carried, like a scarf, over one shoulder and under the other arm were brown, also.
"Well, then, the general received information, yesterday, that that corps of franc tireurs who cut up our cavalry near Blamont, the other day, are hid up in some village in the woods, four or five miles from here; no doubt with the intention of making an attempt to blow up the tunnel. The idea is a daring one and, if the plan had succeeded, it would have done us incalculable harm.
The news which hurried them forwards had been to the effect that a body of two hundred Uhlans had left Sarrebourg, and were advancing towards Blamont. They were going quietly, stopping to levy contributions at the villages on the way. It was probable that they would enter Blamont on the same evening that the franc tireurs reached Halloville.
At a rapid pace for they were running for life the little knot of franc tireurs dashed forward. One or two fell from the fire of the cavalry and, as they were fifty yards distant from the wood, there was a cry and Philippe Duburg fell to the ground.
"It is a proclamation from the Prussian General commanding the district, major, giving notice that he will shoot every franc tireur he may catch; and also giving notice to the inhabitants that if any Prussian soldier be killed, or even shot at, by a franc tireur if a rail be pulled up, or a road cut that he will hold the village near the spot accountable; will burn the houses, and treat the male inhabitants according to martial law, and that the same penalties will be exacted for sheltering or hiding franc tireurs."
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