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Updated: June 6, 2025
"And if you were not, if you had the best horse in the whole brigade, what would it serve you now, except to pass the day riding between two battle-fields, and see nothing of either? for we shall have hot work here, depend upon it. No, no; stay with us. Be a voltigeur for to-day, and we 'll show you something you 'll not see from your bearskin saddle."
Voltigeur went confidently forward, and I was very content to sit upon his back and to peer about me, avoiding every light. For three hours we advanced in this cautious way, until it seemed to me that I must have left all danger behind me. I then pushed on more briskly, for I wished to be in the rear of the whole army by daybreak.
And so was it: some of the wild, young voltigeur fellows had fastened a lighted furze-bush to the beast's tail, and had set him, at a gallop, through the very middle of the encampment, upsetting tents, scattering cooking-pans, and tumbling the groups, as they sat, in every direction.
Without the least proneness to blandishments, he gained and held the affection and confidence of his men. Brave and impetuous in action, he had been often wounded, and no officer of the general staff of the old United States army had seen so much actual service with troops. During the Mexican war he was permitted to take command of a voltigeur regiment, and rendered brilliant service.
This rebuke seeming to have engaged the suffrages of the company, he went on: "The boat division consisted of four battalions of infantry, two batteries of light-artillery, and a voltigeur company of the "Regiment de Marboeuf" to which I was then, for the time, attached as "Tambour en chef." What fellows they were the greatest devils in the whole army! They came from the Faubourg St.
His shoulders and haunches were so muscular, and yet his legs so fine, that it thrilled me with joy just to gaze upon him. A fine horse or a beautiful woman, I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood. You can think how it was in the year '10. "This," said Massena, "is Voltigeur, the swiftest horse in our army.
"The voltigeur needs no trumpet sound, No bugle has he to cheer him on: Where the fire is hottest, that 's his ground, Hurrah for the Faubourg of St. Antoine!" As they came to the conclusion of this song, they kept up the air without words, imitating by their voices the roll of the drum in marching time.
"Par Saint Joseph! if I'd been as modest, it's not maître d'armes of a voltigeur battalion I 'd be to-day; though I may say, without boasting, I'm not afraid to cross a rapier with any man in the army. No, no; that's not the way I managed." "How was that, Maître Francois?" said a young officer, who felt curious to learn the circumstance to which he seemed to attach a story.
There were three besides myself at first: old Bouvet, of the Hussars of Bercheny, Jacques Regnier, of the Cuirassiers, and a funny little voltigeur captain whose name I forget; but they all got well and hurried on to the front, while I sat gnawing my fingers and tearing my hair, and even, I must confess, weeping from time to time as I thought of my Hussars of Conflans, and the deplorable condition in which they must find themselves when deprived of their colonel.
We shall have amply disposed of the subject of transportation when we add that the neighborhood or city supply to the thirteen entrance-gates is provided for by steam-roads capable of carrying twenty-four thousand persons hourly, and tram-roads seating seven thousand, besides an irregular militia or voltigeur force of light wagons, small steamers and omnibuses equal to a demand of two or three thousand more in the same time.
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